When I was a believer, I would probably have boiled it down to a feeling of security. Knowing all of the necessary answers to all of the relevant questions, particularly "what comes after?" was a great comfort. The feeling that everything worked towards some great purpose was comforting. I can understand why people in bad circumstances can so easily accept religious belief: it's very comforting to think that no matter how bad things are, there's a better life later on, and everyone can reach it. It doesn't require money, or political connections, or any of the things that the downtrodden don't have.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
