Quote Originally Posted by prospector
and are often content to believe unusual things on the basis of faith and faith alone.
That's because most religions are concerned mainly about things like the afterlife and God. You really can't investigate on your own about those things, like you can about more human sciences, for obvious reasons, i.e. unless you've died and come back to life, etc. So faith is really the only option about such topics.

You really can't investigate on your own about them to find out for yourself if they're true or not, even if you have the time and don't have to work for a living like most people around the world, so people rely on what religious figures have to say about those things, like the founders of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, etc, who claim to have in some way had an experience of the afterlife or claim to have spoken to God, like Jesus, Moses, etc.