Here is an interesting read about the psychology of religion.
A reason to believe
In 2009, Grafman published an fMRI study showing that religious thoughts activate the area of the brain involved in deciphering other people’s emotions and intentions — the ability known as theory of mind. In the study of 40 people, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (Vol. 106, No. 12), Grafman and his colleagues found that when they heard phrases such as “God’s will guides my acts” and “God protects one’s life,” areas of the brain involved in theory of mind lit up. In a study published in 2009 in Social Cognitive Affective Neuroscience (Vol. 4, No. 2), a Danish team saw the same brain areas activate when religious participants prayed.
These results suggest that when people think about God, it’s similar to thinking about any special authority figure, such as one’s mother or father, says Grafman. In addition, he says, contemplation is not limited to religious thought, although certain traditions like prayer or meditation may require selective kinds of thinking processes. In general, he believes, the brain uses the same circuits to think about and experience religion as it does to think about and handle any other thoughts or beliefs.