Most have been told since early childhood that if they don't, they're gonna be roasted for all eternity in a lake of fire.

Because it's the only book that children are told that if they don't believe, they'll burn in hell, that threat doesn't come with Winnie The Pooh or Lord Of The Rings. Indoctrinated children is the reason people believe in bollocks.

Overly aggressive "missionaries" who have spent over 1000 years force feeding that crap on the world at gun point and no other reason.

I think the number of people who say they believe in the bible is MUCH greater than the nr of people who have actually read it.

Let's narrow down this number of books in question. How many books of the millions of books out there are claiming to be true? Only those not claiming to be fiction. So of those that are not claiming to be fiction, how many are backed by verifiable facts, thus earning the title "nonfiction"? We would like to think all of them, but for the sake of argument let's assume only those that haven't been debunked by those pesky skeptics. So that narrows it down just a tiny bit more. So of these books seeking believers, how many are left? This is the number of books that should be considered in the question. Of those books, how many of them were advertised by missionaries? How many were touted as The Absolute Truth by those who happened to take over the world? Every religion has their heyday. Today has a biggest religion, and you live today. This isn't a mind-blowing observation.

Fear. Plain and simple. Preachers and missionaries have been telling people for centuries that they will roast in eternal torment for all of eternity, unless they take the bible at its word.

I would say a lot of bible readers do not believe in the entire bible from what I can remember in discussions when I was a young Christian person. People accept the wisdom and morale teachings except for stuff that is not acceptable as reality. A lot of Christians are not even sure if their belief in God is real but they are good at kidding themselves; the pastors like to play on Christians' fear of 'unbelief' so they can use Satan as a fear/control feature to help keep 'em in subservience.

If someone is raised to believe in the Bible, often it never occurs to them to question the veracity of it. And for some of those who do feel uneasy in their acceptance, it would create too much disruption and upheaval in their lives to question it.

Which Bible? http://www.bible.ca/b-many-versions.htm

Most people have weak minds. Likewise the only thing that pisses me off more than a smart dogmatic Christian that can rationalize his claims is a stupid atheist that doesn't know what he's talking about.

It was the manifesto of the Roman Catholic Church, the only authority, be it ecclesiastical, military, or political governing Europe during the lowest, darkest point the culture ever endured. It's the most accepted book in Europe and some of the rest of the world because, for nearly two thousand years, one religion was allowed to fester in an unbridled, unchallenged monopoly of power - and you believed them and that manifesto, or you just weren't, anymore. When, so hopped up on their power, narcissism and self-aggrandizement, they thought they not only ruled the world, but OWNED the world, they spread their manifesto as quickly and savagely and efficiently as they could: Live by the book or die by the blade. The Christ manifesto has the blood of <i>civilizations</i> on its hands. The Holy Bible is stained with more blood, fear, hate, suppression, sin, tyranny, hypocrisy, and despair than any other manifesto or religious text in all of history, and if the Roman Catholic Church had never been born, I am sure that we would not now only just be re-learning what was once common knowledge in the Antique pagan societies of Europe, before the coming of the darkness of Christ.

Because it is the only one which is allowed to threaten you with pain and torture if you don't say you believe in it. Anuyone else who tried this would be prosecuted but due to the age old deal between governments and christianity to support each other the christian control freaks get away with it.

Because it is the religious book associated with the most powerful culture on the planet.

Mass ignorance.

Yes....why is that? We're athiests, we don't waste our energy thinking about these things.

Because they haven't actually read it - and if they have, they read it with a preconceived idea of what it actually said, and they failed to grasp the utter absurdity and inconsistency of the work.

Missionaries.

Dunno. Maybe. But then there is the Koran... and Hindu holy books...