Why Do Intelligent Human Beings Believe Literally in Myths?

I have many questions. Many others have the same questions. I have heard the questions many times... on talk radio, in books, and on the internet of course. What always seems to amaze me is the way they are answered. The purpose of this article is to provoke somebody to attempt to answer some or all of these questions... but there is a catch... you cannot use canonized scripture for your answers. Too often I hear the so called answers coming in the form of quoted scripture, but how can the answer come from the very source that's in question? The questions will focus mainly on Christianity and Judaism - the two mythologies that I suspect most readers will be familiar with. When I turn on the TV and I see a preacher yelling to an audience, "this is what God said", and "this is what Jesus meant when he said this", and I see the people nodding their heads and saying "Amen!" I am in awe. I know that these are smart people. They are doctors, lawyers, teachers, engineers, etc. But as intelligent as they are I just cannot understand how they convince themselves to believe literally in obviously ridiculous stories, and I don't think they can answer my simple questions. So who can? Actually, I can. I know all the answers to the following questions, I'm just curious to hear how others answer them.