Because, unlike computers, we have to deal with things that do not make rational sense when we find them, and we cannot wait to have them analyzed before we deal with them. When you read people like Joseph Campbell (hero with a Thousand faces) or James Frazer (the Golden bough) you see that religions, despite the protests of their priests, resemble each other, and part of the reason is why that is our human experience is common. We all live, work , love, die and because not everything in life can be laid out on a table like a math problem, we use myth, story and art to deal with certain things. Granted, Social Sciences are taking over a lot of what used to be relegated to the shamans and vicars, but they are still in their infancy, as far as human history goes.
You could wipe out memory of every religion tomorrow, not one temple, mosque, church, left, and human being would make new religions because Myth is a human need. When you see Che Guevara on a T-Shirt, or hear Rush Limbaugh on the radio, you are seeing this same myth building process at work. Part of the problem comes in when we do not acknowledge that we are telling stories, because instead of us making a narrative, we become controlled by it.
Part of the problem we are dealing with in the 21st century is that we cannot admit that a lot of the "facts" we believe are myths we told ourselves, myths that might have been useful before, but are not now. You can look at anything from Gun Control, to Pollution, to economics, and part of the problem is there is a religion we made up around certain things, and that religion is what destroys any ability to think or act clear. Yes, Economics may have some facts in it, just as religion may have some history in it, but facts and history are by products, because the goal of any economic theory is to SELL A MYTH. Marx and Ayn Rand may have both insisted they were not trying to form a religion, but any conversation with a devout Marxist or Objectivist will clear that up.
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