Why Believe?

What puzzles me greatly, is why so many people, with a good education and great learning skills, buy into the delusion of religions. I can understand that great philosophers in the past when the actual knowledge of the reality of nature was much more limited than it is now, tried to explain the world around us, since the urge to discover, what is behind the horizon, seems to be an inherited drive that has been of a great advantage during evolution. We know so much more now that we can understand why the ancient suppositions are not tenable anymore.
The urge to influence an unpredictable nature rather than feeling helpless created gods, in some religions many gods, each master of a part of nature and in the major religions today one god, master of everything, which led to the invention of rituals which could influence the happenings in the real world, such as offerings, prayer and idolatry.
Today, however, when we have so much more knowledge and have so many answers why cling to old myths and old morals that do not fit today’s society. Clinging to old superstitions and belief in the supernatural, without evidence seems illogical. We must never stop searching for more answers and we are doing that, at an exponential rate.
Why then are so many bright people still clinging to their religion is a puzzle to me. We are driven by a strong desire to discover more and more, but perhaps it is also driven by the inborn emotion of fear of the unknown. Fear is a powerful motivator, which has been also a very successful emotion, during evolution. We will always make speculations about the unknown until we find an answer. We will always have a wish to know what lies ahead, a tendency that is very financially rewarding for psychics, who pretend to have the power to predict the future and religions which allays the fear of death or the promise of eternal life.
This is the end of my rambling, today. I expect a strong reaction, hopefully, a civil discussion, of constructive criticism, from which we can all learn.