Familiarity & Absurdity

I have become so accustomed to viewing the world without any belief in the supernatural and to interacting, mostly but not exclusively online, with people who share the same perspective, that I feel a certain amount of surprise and disappointment whenever I hear an intelligent and educated person express belief in religion. I remind myself that I used to believe quite sincerely and I cannot expect the entire world to have adopted as skeptical an outlook as I have in just the last three years. Even so, it seems so strange that someone living in the twenty-first century in a first-world country can believe that an omnimax deity is watching over us as we slaughter each other and suffer other innumerable tragedies, that unbelievers will be punished forever for honest doubt, that you can magically obtain what you desire by talking to yourself, or any of the other absurdities taught by traditional religion. I will probably always view such belief as irrational and ridiculous, but like everything else in life, it can only seem truly bizarre if one only rarely encounters it.