Can a person be religious and not believe in deities?
-sf-
Everyone believes in God.
Maybe everyone in your sandbox. All rational people stopped believing in fairytales by the time they turned 7 or 8.
Some people still believe in flying horses or reindeers.
Actually, it is around age 7 or 8 that many people START believing in fairy tales. That's when they hear about things like evolution theory, big bang theory, black hole theory. Without having an understanding of what the word "theory" means, they simply believe in these fairy tales.
At least science is still honorable and truthful enough that they don't relegate these and other theories to the status of fact, when they know that they are not fact. However, science is stretching its credibility by allowing these particular theories to even remain as theories. For example, even if it is somehow proven that the universe could have come about by a big bang, there will never be any way that anyone could tell that this is the way that it DID come about.
Regarding evolution theory... simple probability math shows us that evolution could not have happened. When you look for flaws in evolution in searches on the Internet, you will be able to find all kinds of things that show that evolution is impossible. For example,
http://humansarefree.com/2013/12/9-scienctific-facts-prove-theory-of.html. Even if these and other proofs against evolution seem to be rebutted at times, there is still so much question about evolution that it will NEVER be proven, and should even be dropped as a theory.
While black hole theory might have a little more strength than big bang theory and evolution theory, it still might take hundreds of years before we can actually go out there and examine black holes to see what they really are. Yet, people all over the place believe in this theory, without giving the fact that it is only a theory, a second thought.
Multitudes of science fiction books have been written regarding multitudes of scientific theories. The authors of these books are so compelling in their discussions of all this make-believe science, that their readers often believe in spite of themselves, and then pass their pseudo-faith on to their children. Not only does this make society base their life on a lie, but it embeds scientific fairy tales into children as though they were really fact.
While many people believe in science fairy tales, few people believe in flying horses or reindeer.
EDIT: Thank you for giving me the opportunity, and the prompting, to show people that they are believing in fairy tales when they believe that science theory is fact.