A good book on this subject is "The Believing Brain from Ghosts and Gods to Politics and Conspiracies". by Michael Shermer. Not to take away from the Author but an underlying theory is that first the Brain decides what it wants to believe and they goes about the process of developing proof of the belief. That is opposed to first developing proof and then deciding a belief. I think an example of this is that as children we are taught a religion and as we grow we develop support and reasons for our religion. In other words we are first given a belief and then go about proving it is the right belief. Interesting theory?
