Because they have been taught, from childhood, to just believe whatever the guy up front tells them to.

I think you have it backwards, it’s no wonder people who are easy to manipulate get drawn into religion.

The same reason why people who believe in crystal-healing are easy to manipulate.

Because they have glaring gaps in their rational thinking ability

People in general are easily manipulated, and those who manipulate use the beliefs of the people they’re manipulating to do so.

Religion certainly is a something used for that, but it’s hardly the only one.

If you believe in a magic man in the sky and a talking snake, it’s probably pretty easy to convince them of other things too.

Evangelical in the sense of protestant christians or in the sense of that crazy cult that’s going on over in the Americas? Maybe it’s just the news giving me the wrong idea, but I really don’t recognise my religion just one ocean away.

I am a scepticist, but (or rather because) I grew up with a progressive church that allows and encourages critical thinking. Very tame stances overall, no overly aggressive rethoric, laughing and coloring you hair very much allowed. Then you cross the pond and hear fuming people talk about filthy infidels and holy wars like wth…

I think these people are not necessarily easy to manipulate, but indoctrinated to hell and back

Pretty simple. They are groomed from birth and often until death, to blindly trust the “leaders” of their community. At some point they develop critical thinking skills, but they are so deeply manipulated to trust the cult that they face an internal conflict: Break away from your core values, family, friends, community, comfort of purpose and greater value, etc. Or don’t apply critical thinking to certain topics in your life.

Faced with what is essentially a social and moral death they ofteb choose the simpler option, just don’t let logic into that part of their life.

Honestly, hard to balme them, I myself have faced similar issues in my life and sadly didn’t always have to courage and strength to go with logic and instead kept with social norms that I know are wrong. To be fair, I think that 90% of people are blind to their own illogical (and often harmful) beliefs, but they easily identify it in others.

Because they’re people; and people, in general, are easy to manipulate.

The bubble. I have a friend who ended up in a ‘bubble’ church. They get all their news from the church. TV channels: church. Cinema: church.

They have a STEM degree. They’re not stupid, and yet they are.

I think it’s because religions, cults, sports teams or whatever have community. Community comes with shared identities and beliefs. Nobody wants to be outcasted or shunned. So you follow along. Your friends are there, your family is there … they all believe the same thing.

People with a highly metaphysical worldview are easier to deceive and manipulate because their normal logic barriers have already been broken down - ie, if you already believe that the earth and everything on it was created by an omnipotent superbeing in six days, it’s not much of a further leap to believe that demons are making you horny.

I often wonder about this with regard to right wing Americans believing such ridiculous things. It’s seem that what Trump supporters ultimately have in common is not one set of beliefs but a shared belief in things that make no sense: that all Democrats are paedophiles, that JFK wasn’t really assassinated, that vaccines don’t work, that climate change isn’t real, that Donald Trump is anything but a foolish, evil corrupt man. What do these views have in common? They’re fundamentally foolish things to believe.

The fact is that once you believe one patently absurd thing - for example, that an interventionist god exists - your thinking gets warped. When you then make this absurdity the centre of your worldview and your identity, your views on everything become warped. After a certain point, they seem to start believing things because they make no sense.

If a person believes God actually answers prayers, something there is no reason whatsoever to believe, they’re primed to believe all kinds of other nonsense. This is exactly why many religious people have stopped believing in that kind of thing, and now take refuge in the idea of prayer as comfort or as asking for ‘strength’ rather than asking for anything specific (note that this requires them to ignore the plain meaning of the words of, e.g., the Lord’s Prayer). Most people find it uncomfortable to believe in nonsense. For others, it becomes the point.

There is also a selection bias at play here. I suspect that people who are more susceptible to manipulation are more likely to be religious.

People are stupid. They can be made to believe any lie because either they want to believe it’s true or because they are afraid it’s true.

-Terry Goodkind, “Wizard’s First Rule”

Hate to break it to you, it’s not just religious people.

Literally, because they’re trained, usually from the age of children, to believe things without evidence. Their beliefs are based ENTIRELY on the conviction of other brainwashed idiots religious people, which can be very convincing as a small child who’s otherwise completely and utterly dependant on the understanding of the adults around them.

This is from someone who grew up in a religion and thankfully realized other peoples’ conviction is absolutely NOT a valid basis for understanding truth.