Why do people believe in God when there is no proof that he exists?

If is because he fulfills their wishes! You have an accident and you survive it what will your family say? "Thank God" so that is why!  I personally don't care that it's proved or not! Not everything needs proving! If someone really needs to live by a totally proving world, then they should do each and everything by it - like why do you go to toilet? Is it proved you need to go to the toilet?

There's no proof that He doesn't exist either! Now, it doesn't mean you should believe, but it doesn't mean you shouldn't. It just means let people be. Why don't people believe in God when there's no proof that He doesn't exist?
There's no real, honest reason why religion has initiated so much conflict... Seriously... Differences are what makes this world the way it is - diverse, exciting, new, whatever... The mere thought that maybe, just maybe, we can live in peace despite our different beliefs, ideologies, customs, et cetera apparently hasn't crossed several minds... It never ceases to amaze me how narrow-minded people can be not only with religion, but so many other things as well.

Childhood indoctrination mostly. Fear also. The carrot and stick approach of certain religions.

Proof is for law and math, evidence is what is lacking here. Once people begin to reason things out for themselves then belief in gods drops precipitously. That is what is happening in the West. Even the US is moving in this direction. Childhoods end. 

I think some people find it comforting to think that there is a god looking out for them and maybe they agree with the morals and values of the bible/Qur'an/torah ect. And so they think that that religion must be right.

Most people do believe that the things they see are proof of God’s existence. They have looked at the order and majesty of the world around them, at the existence of man and at the Bible itself and have seen convincing arguments that God does exist.

One writer put it this way: “If we start with an open mind, ready to believe or not believe according to the evidence, it is quite probable that we shall discover that it is easier to believe in God than to decide that plants, animals and man himself, body and mind, had their origin as the product of blind, purposeless chance. It is perhaps fitting to add that many persons do not wish to believe in God. They realize that it would rebuke their past and change their future to an unpleasant degree if they did.”

What do you think about the origin of the universe itself? Was it pure chance, just an accident, a combination of many fortuitous events? Or does it bear witness to the existence of another mind that is higher, more intelligent, and that existed long before man did? Remember that the universe is not chaos, as it might well be if it were accidental, but is in order. Does this indicate to you that conscious thought is responsible for it? That it was designed by an intelligent creator?

A better question would be, why people do not believe in God. The alternative goes against everything that we see. If you stumbled up on a beautiful home in the middle of nowhere, your first impression would be, who built this. You would have to really force yourself with illogical thinking to for a minute think, that the house built itself. The same is true when it comes to the existence of God. When you look at the order in the universe  that calls for the existence of laws. Where there are laws there is a lawgiver. That matches common sense, to think otherwise calls for a real strain or an attempt to satisfy another agenda. 

Those that believe that there is a God are content with their reasons for doing so. Those that don't believe in God are content with their reasons for doing so. I guess the more important question would be then is 'why do you believe what you believe'. Both look at the same "evidence" and draw different conclusions. The evidence of God is not the question the reason for believing is a much more relative question.

I read something very interesting about the author C. S. Lewis yesterday. The author spent much of his life an atheist, later in life he reconsidered his position. He gradually felt that "belief in God was a satisfying way of looking at things." Now that thought has been speaking to me since I read it. I found those specific choice of words very interesting. I have people in my life who would give that answer as to why they believe.

Beats me. Bertrand Russell pointed out that if he claimed there was a teapot orbiting the sun we wouldn't be able to prove it wasn't there.

So it is with God. 

Our primitive ancestors, long ago, created God in their own image to explain the things that education and knowledge hadn't yet made clear. And the illusion (so often a delusion) continued.

The early gods had to be propitiated with sacrifices to appease their wrath. This is certainly mirrored in the story of Cain and Abel which is a fair pointer to what the ancients thought about the Hebrew god. It even went to the point of human sacrifice when Abraham offered to sacrifice his son.

Yet the belief persists among the religiously-inclined and children are fed the same guff that centuries of children were fed before them. Is it any wonder that so many still believe?

Who says there is no proof of the existence of a deity?  I submit there must be an INTELLIGENT deity.  Who that deity is, what its attributes are, how or even if it desires to be worshiped I have no idea, but it must exist.  My reasoning is as follows.

I worked as a clinical chemist and had to study biochemistry.  For the most simple of organisms to reproduce takes dozens of enzymes and proteins.  Many of these necessary proteins consist of millions of amino acids.  Many are actually multiple complete polypeptide chains of varying lengths all twisted together to create a specific chemical environment allowing/forcing a reaction to take place.

There are if I remember correctly 21 amino acids used in living cells.  The average protein length in the simplest of bacteria is about 250 polypeptides.  That gives the chance of creating that protein in the so-called primordial soup = 21 raised to the 250th power or about 1 in 3.5x10^330th power.  To give you some idea of the size of that number, the chance of being struck by lighting is 1 in 700,000.  Allowing a world population of maybe 8 billion people, and the world existing for 5 billion years and everyone living to the age of 1000 (bit over Methuselah), every person would be hit by lightning 4x10 to the 294th power per SECOND all their life.

Now that was the chance of a particular polypeptide chain, in the primordial soup there were supposedly all sorts of chains so that protein may indeed be created, but there are others needed some with lengths far longer (into the thousands of polypeptides and even a few into the millions of polypeptides).  Now the specific ones must somehow come together and merge into groups to form the protein (yes, some polypeptide chains are proteins by themselves).  These chains in the soup would be tight little balls with hydrophylic structures on the outside and hydrophobic structures (most of it) hidden inside.  You literally have an oil and water situation, they do not want to come in contact.  Somehow these structures opened up and allowed combination with other chains to form a protein.  Not just any other chains but specific chains such that they could become functional proteins and enzymes.

Now that we have a specific enzyme, we have to repeat a few dozen times for just the proteins and enzymes involved in the process of cell reproduction.  Now we need to duplicate the work with nucleic acids.  One DNA strand for each protein having its specific coding.

Each metabolic pathway involves dozens of enzymes and bound in similar loops.   

Now we must have these all in the exact ratios required all at the exact same instant all in the exact same location such that they can be enclosed in a set of phospholipid membranes (cell wall as well as internal membranes for separating parts from each other) to keep them together.

Now they magic of life must come into being and the chemical reactions all start.

Even knowing the ratios, the components, the exact structures, we cannot in the laboratory create life.  We make everything and put it together.  We can try and set up the correct ratios of the components but they are being changed by the enzymes even as we mix them and so we cannot get the reactions to all start at once in the cascade we call life. 

No, life is IMPOSSIBLE.  Life exists.  The only possibility is that there is a deity to make this paradox a possibility.

There is a god.

Some, sense the pending reality that not one thing in existence, has lasting benefit without the One who extends indefinite prospects for perpetual life and fulfillment.

Also, the accounts of divine intervention by Jehovah, in human affairs, are compelling.

And the recorded promises of divine rescue and restoration of the human family and its global home, are weighty and serious prospects, not to be cheaply dismissed.

If Jehovah did indeed intervene in human affairs, during the times of Noah, Moses and Jesus, then He will obviously do so again, as the Bible promises.

For those alive, today, the complete answer is pending, as it was for the Hebrews, before Jehovah intervened and astounded the world of that time.  But the answer is due to come, the limits of its promised expectations cannot continue unfulfilled, forever.

The credibility of the Bible record, itself, stands on it! 

Those who sense that its recorded events may really have happened- that they are not myth- are waiting to witness the next and final intervention in world affairs.

When- or if- this happens, the answer will have arrived; at some linear point.  Meantime, there is considerable evidence to support various views; but not necessarily confirm them.

It is a generated myth, to say there is no proof.

For the same reason we believe in "humanity" despite proof of its existence. We are taught that way when growing up. By the time we are adults "God" is a part of our core beliefs. I get that there isn't a logical reason to believe in him...but its to late for me. I'm already a Christian and its too late to change that /: The only thing I can do is continue being a Christian while trying to prevent other morons (such as the Westboro Baptists) from making the rest of us normal Christians from looking bad.