Like people in trouble or children in need, we look to a stronger more able being to help us in our hour of need. Perhaps there are no normal persons to help us we look for a supernatural being and often refer to them as a last resort. Then there are societal pressures to conform and believe.

There are a few tendencies in human thinking that might have been reinforced by evolution.

One is the tendency to attribute unexplained phenomena to an agent.
A prehistoric human might associate the rustling sound of leaves with the approach of a predator and hide, or, try to look for evidence of what might be the cause. It is easy to see how an inquiring mind will be a trait much harder to pass on to the next generation.

Another is the tendency to submit to authority. A child's mind is not capable of understanding the world well enough to make quick decisions. Accepting the parent's decision might save the child's life, and ensure the preservation of this trait.

Richard Dawkins pointed out that this might also be the reason why we are willing to accept ideas that come from our parents as true. This makes religion much easier to transmit to children. Most religions are aware of this and insist that children participate from as early an age as possible. It is probably the reason why most people practice the religion of their parents.

In my opinion, as useful as these might have been for our early survival, today they are mostly detrimental to anyone and maybe even to society.

Just like other traits from our evolutonary past, that have shown to be detrimental to modern life, like overeating, which might have helped our ancestors survive famine, but today it only causes obesity, irrational thinking (or lack of rational thinking) belongs to the garbage bin of history.

I think we're predisposed to look for answers and that can lead to faith-based beliefs. As a species, we're great at finding patterns, we're risk averse, etc., regardless of whether those things bear truth because there was a survival component to it. When we couldn't come up with an evidence-based answer to a question, the tendency was to speculate — and that hypothetical became the de facto answer. How did the world come to be? God. Why is there suffering? Satan and/or our own misdeeds. Too scared by death to accept it's the end? Immortal soul.

I think those researchers were religious! WAHAHAHA!