Its hard to imagine a non-neurological basis for the ardent believers, it takes a lot to stick to belief in obvious falsehoods. There have been hundreds of religions throughout history, all of them thought they were the true one. None of them even stand scrutiny to basic arguments, let alone the very high amount of rigor such a supposedly fundamental truth must demand.
The point of a religion is to provide a devoted in-group with a coherent set of values and principles, subsequently fulfilling an individual's social needs of stability and belonging. God and other supernatural concepts are just social communication tools to enable the same, and are not meant to be treated as scientific theorems to prove or disprove.
Your ad-hominem tirade is embarrassingly juvenile.
I have met very few religious people who claim the god and supernatural stuff isn't capital T Truth. They'd be offended if I said religion is just a lifestyle or moral system, some even to the point of violent genocides.
Of course they do, because that intangible symbol of God is the base of the whole social structure. Just like how cash is nothing but paper without the underlying intangible idea of a nation to give an exchange value to it. It doesn't matter that it's artificial, what matters is that it's held up with collective faith to give validity to a set of ideas and values.
Normally we'd call that schizophrenia, hallucinations or any number of serious mental illnesses. The religious are on the other hand coddled. I'll be honest, at a fundamental level, I don't trust religious people at all, I work with people as needed to, but its like trusting a wild unpredictable beast, you never know what dangerous form their insanities would one day pop up as.
Cash has value because the government, which is a real thing that verifiably exists and has power because of collective decisions made regardless of whether you agree with them, demands that you pay taxes and will put you in prison if you don't.
What verifiably happens to me if I don't pretend I believe your particular god exists?
What gives a government legitimacy and power to extort taxes and punish people? Collective acceptance and trust, nothing else. Same goes with religion.
> What verifiably happens to me if I don't pretend I believe your particular god exists?
Used to be not that long ago that you'd face similar punishment. It's fairly recently that religion as a social institution has weakened to obscurity. If you attack its symbols, you attack its society.
And how many governments claim no other country or currency is legit and anyone who isn't their country is a blasphemer or at least seriously misguided? Does French government say Germans are fundamentally wrong, the German government should be dissolved and every German should be French?
Show me which government claims cash came from outside the universe and the govt itself invented the universe and is omnipotent and can read everyone's minds.
They are liars because they don't just say "Let god fix it" when they face crime, disease, what not. Well, some are insane enough that they do yes, I'd at least consider those people honest who go to faith healers for problems.
But why do they claim god has powers over man if he needs mans hand to execute it? Cash or governments don't claim to be some all powerful fundamental truth of the universe. Nobody ever said that. Why do we infantilize and accept such utter absurdity from religious people? And what's funnier is most religions hate "LGBT" because its made up....how is it more made up than their beliefs? At least gender is a real thing that we can see, and one day in theory the body could be modified to truly change gender. Religion hasn't even, in principle given us any reason or explanation for their absurdities yet violently push back on anyone saying doubts.
