There are many reasons as genetics, biology, human evolution, and the social sciences explain, and none of it is because there are actual gods that some people can detect through reason or some special ability.
Why some people become believers and other don’t is related to desires and preferences. Humans have the will/ability to make choices based upon their desires and preferences. Our desires and preferences come from a combination of factors such as
childhood upbringing, heredity, education, adult experiences, and present life circumstances. How
free we are to make these choices varies with the situation.
God cannot he detected by any special abilities but God can be discovered through the use of reason, but since we all reason differently, people will come to different conclusions when they apply reason. That applies to anything in life, not just belief in God. For example, it seems reasonable for me to continue driving old cars but that would seem very unreasonable to most people who had my kind of money. This again is related to our desires and preferences which are derived from the combination of factors I just mentioned.
Your paragraph here ignores a lot of facts. First it is disputable that 93% of humans are theists. Second, even if this was the number we can observe that there is a broad range of very mild and liberal theists to hard core extremists, and these are far from being in the same category of belief and reason.
Since 7% of the world population are positive atheists and agnostics that means that 93% of the world population are either theists or those who are not positive atheists and agnostics. So you are correct that 93% of people in the world are not all theists. The 93% have varying degrees of belief in God and some are uncertain if God exists. If 93% were as certain that God exists as I am, the world would be a lot different, as fear of God eliminates the possibility of evil.
Third, as studies show through many types of scientific approaches humans evolved with a tendency to believe in social norms which includes religion. Fourth, most all people on the planet are born into some sort of cultural framework, and these include some sort of religious belief that children are conditioned to think is true.
It's this last item that is very important. Children learn to believe in religious ideas as part of their social learning and development. This on top of the genetic trait to adopt and apply social norms means this influence will become like the brain's software as they grow into adolescence and adulthood. You and other theists want to believe your religious beliefs were arrived at objectively and via facts. If that was the case then this religious framework would be part of science and reality, yet none are.
Most people were born into some sort of cultural framework, including some sort of religious belief, and most children are conditioned to believe in the religion they were raised with, so that explains why most people believe in God and a religion, but then you have to ask why people have believed in God and religion since humans evolved. That also does not explain why so many people leave religion and become agnostics or atheists and why some people who were born into atheist families later become religious.
I don’t know about other theists but my religious beliefs were arrived at objectively and via facts
– facts about my religion. No religious framework will ever be part of science because science is a completely different part if reality from religion. True religion does not ignore science; it is just outside the purview of science. Science addresses the material world and what we need to survive and live comfortably, including protecting our natural environment; religion addresses morals and values and what we need to acquire by way of character in order to get along with other people.
That there are so many theists, and so many varieties of fervor and passion and commitment, is only exaggerated by so many different religions and different types of gods. Religion isn't like science where theres a uniform set of conclusions. Religion has a huge disparity of personal opinion, and the facts are highly subjective and inconclusive. Let's note most even different theist claims facts for their god yet you dismiss them. They dismiss yours. Atheists dismiss everyone's. So you are much like an atheist except where it comes to your preferred religious framework, and of course the evidence to values for that is what you value so you can justify your belief.
The obvious reason why there are so many different religions and beliefs in different types of gods is because religion has been revealed to humanity progressively over the course of thousands of years, and it was revealed in different parts of the world. The same cannot be said for science, which does not date back as far as religion.
It is true that religion has a huge disparity of personal opinion, and the facts are highly subjective and inconclusive, but that does not mean there are no objective facts or that no conclusions can be drawn. Of course I am biased towards my own religion as religious people are, but logically speaking my bias does not mean my religion is not true; it is either true or false, and that is for everyone to determine if they want to know. Otherwise they can just choose to remain in the religion they are in, be a nonreligious believer, or be a nonbeliever.
Given that the huge number of people who are inclined to believe in religious ideas is not due to reason or following some select set of facts. It is due to genetic factors, and as learned from social experience. PET and fMRI scans have shown that religious belief in subjects do not process in the frontal lobes, rather they activate the reward center and emotion center of the brain. The research shows that these ideas actually bypass the reasoning part of the brain. This data and results can be read about in certain chapters of the book Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Coleman.
I agree that the huge number of people who are inclined to believe in religious ideas is not due to reason or following some select set of facts, but that does not mean that there are no religious people whose beliefs are based upon reason and facts. To say that would be the fallacy of hasty generalization. Moreover to suggest that all religious people believe on emotion rather than reason is definitely the fallacy of hasty generalization.
All humans act on both emotion and reason, no matter what they believe and some people are more emotional some more reason-based. Some of this has to do with their genetics and intelligence level but more is related to childhood upbringing and later life experiences. For example, I was not raised in any religion or believing in God so I never had any feelings about God the way most Christians do. To me God is an intellectual construct, an entity I try to understand, not and entity I desire to relate to on a personal level. I have always been more analytical than emotional and my husband is the very opposite, and thus I cannot reason with him when it comes to certain beliefs he holds about God, even though they make no logical sense to me.
