Check out Plato's cave.
These people are told from an early age what to believe and when you lead them out of the cave (ei enlightenment with atheism) they would rather go back into the "cave" of religion and believe a simple lie.
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Mankind thinks themselves gods. Why else would they try to hard to live up to the expectations of a god, or separate themselves so much from the earth and animals that we would destroy them for comfort. In a way religion exists because of man's narcissism.