do religious people really believe?

[Nobody]

I think those who claim to believe do so largely because they're afraid not to.

Back in the ancient times when heretics and apostates were burned at the stake, the penetant watching were told it was to cleanse the victims of their sins. This way they'd not suffer the eternal flaming ravages of Hell, having had that what condemned them to that fate burned away while alive here on earth.

Watching that spectacle of carnage would tend to stick with a person. Obey or else this will be you.

I think it's largely what's responsible, along with the crusades that slaughtered the competition, for manifesting the 'meme' Dawkins refers to.

A person has to set aside the intellect in order to accept something unseen, with no proof it exists but that of man made fictions promising it does, not only cares about the human condition but is so egoistic and prideful that it cares how lesser beings feel about it.

And when displeased it does bad things like, according to Pat Robertson and the now very surprised Reverend Jerry Falwell, allowing September 11th to occur. Because America has fallen away from obeying malevolence in Heaven and so it let's Malevolence on earth teach us a lesson....

Because it loves us.