Faith does do a really good job at perpetuating itself. Humans need comfort in the face of pain and suffering just as a child with a sprained ankle seeks the comfort of their mother. It works. Substitute a sprained ankle for existential dread, what more do we have to turn than to either embrace the supernatural or to accept life's innate meaninglessness? A belief in God gives you purpose, and that purpose is to serve him, and by serving him, God gives you purpose. It cycles into itself.

I'm not pretending to know all the answers either. All I have to go on is much of what reality determines to be correct and from there I can make a few inferences. If God is real he's either malicious, incompetent, or apathetic. I'm really unsure as to which scenario is the most terrifying, but the simplest answer is that he probably doesn't exist at all.

The divine and supernatural, if it exists, cannot be articulated solely from the words of man. The Bible, Torah, Quran, Mahabharata, and every other religious text were written by people. And just like people, they are imperfect, deceptive, and often times ignorant. If the spiritual realm exists it will look nothing like anything we can possibly conceive of here on earth. God didn't make us in his image, we made him in ours.