The vast majority of religions are based upon claims made by prophets. Being that evidence cannot be used to back supernatural claims (otherwise the claims would be historical or scientific), the number of believers is the only factor at work—it is what makes Jesus the "true son of god" and not Chuck Norris (who is much more likely to be the son of God).
The main point here is that people that have faith in the words of a prophet really have faith in the people that believe those words (themselves and those around them). This point is obvious because if no one had faith in a prophet's sanity/honesty then that prophet is considered to be false by default. It takes great self-confidence to have faith in prophet—in a group it is mind-numbingly easy to have all the needed confidence (confidence a person has to tell the difference between one set of supernatural claims versus the another). And of course as a lone individual it takes much more courage (or insanity).
Christians, for example, need no evidence of God to believe in him—but make a claim about humans evolving from monkeys and they become the most skeptical people on earth. It is the large numbers of believers in God which make him easy to believe in.
All prophets make supernatural claims that cannot be objectively shown to be true; therefore any person can make any sort of claim (such as rainbows are caused by unicorns taking a dump), and have that view be respected just so long as many people (the more the better) have faith in its validity. Believing in a talking snake is respectable in the United States, but believing in talking mice is not. The only difference between 'false prophets' and 'true prophets' is the amount of gullible people that believe their words.
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