Religion Explained

Generation effect: Memory for self-generated information is often superior to memory for perceived items. In a particular scene you imagined, the details you volunteered will be recalled better than the ones suggested by others.

People are said to believe in supernatural agents because they are superstitious, they are led astray by their emotions, they are not mentally balanced, they are primitive, they do not understand probability, they are not scientifically trained, they are brainwashed by their culture, they are too insecure to challenge received wisdom. In this view, people believe because they fail to (or forget to, have no time to, are unwilling to, or just cannot) censure ill-formed or poorly justified thoughts

Consensus effect: People tend to adjust their impression of a scene to how others describe it; they may see for instance a face as angry, but if various people around them see is as 'disgusted' they too say they perceive it as expressing that emotion.