The internet is very good at speading propaganda.
Said Putin to tRump.

Good article about why flat earthers, and humans in general, "think" as we do: good book references:
[cleantechnica.com]

Many of the most brilliant people down through history have believed in God, and even today about half of scientists report a belief in God. If your opinion is different than someone else’s you’ll have to make a better argument than to say they’re stupid.

There is evidence. It might not be evidence that persuades YOU, but it is evidence nevertheless. There’s nature with her immutable laws, the dazzling spectacle of life, the experience of conscious awareness that frames our every experience and gives us free will. There is evidence.

I think you are talking about religious myths, and I agree that those are not believable to courageous and discriminating people. But that in no way addresses the question of the existence of God, or whatever you choose to call Ultimate Reality.

‘People’ is a bit of a broad category. To make a successful argument you will need to say which people you are referring to. The Christian theolgions, along with Jewish, Buddhist and Islamic scholars that I know are very, very clever people and certainly not stupid.

There's an awful lot of wishful thinking in religion. Combine that with an innate reluctance to admit that you don't know the answer to a question and you get magic thinking, or as it's otherwise known, religion.t

I understand your position. i would not call them stupid. Many have been indoctrinated all their lives. Many have hard lives and will hold onto hope any hope for help even when it does not come.

My response to the question "do you believe in God?"......... As a verb or a noun?

not me. i don't wonder about that at all. people can be intellectually and emotionally lazy and it is of great comfort to them to think they don't have to make their own decisions, that they can live forever, or that some imaginary being loves them and cares about their every burp and fart.

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Ironically, science explains exactly why people persist in holding fast to ideas they are emotionally invested in, regardless of whether or not they are supportable with facts, including why people cling to initial snap judgments even in the face of massive contradicting evidence.

Science also throughly explains the psychodynamics of theism, which is just one of many expressions of confirmation bias and agency inference.

The real question is: why, every third day, does someone asks some minor variant of the same exasperated question? What's really going on here? Well science explains that, too. But you probably won't like the explanation.

The reality is that only a minority (between roughly 15 and 30%) of Christians are authoritarian / fundamentalist types. These are mostly the ones who are going to confuse their beliefs with their very identity, and be deeply threatened by others disagreeing or even just not actively agreeing and affirming their beliefs. The rest, mostly, are live-and-let-live types, who can see us unbelievers as neighbors and friends with whom they disagree on a very narrow subject -- the existence of their particular god and how that should inform one's daily life, if at all. It's only that fundamentalist minority with its outsize influence (and ambition to influence) the rest of society that's the actual problem.

One way to ease the problem for ourselves is to let people be as they are and quit attempting to amaze them into abandoning their beliefs because of the brilliance and unassailability of our superior arguments. It's generally not going to happen. I prefer to plant seeds so that one day, when the pain of changing their thinking is less than the pain of not changing it, those seeds may flower and take root.

The Parable of The Sower is in fact very apropos here, although I doubt the original author ever expected it to work in reverse. That just says that ideas are cast about like seeds, some dry up and die, some fall in shallow soil, flower briefly and die, others take root and flourish when conditions are right.