"belief is the source and solution of all problems" I believe Plato said that. I believe he also said that of alcohol. Rather than the age old "either X exists

"belief is the source and solution of all problems" I believe Plato said that. I believe he also said that of alcohol. Rather than the age old "either X exists or it doesn't" your entire thing unraveled right here: "I am not strong enough to be an atheist" Anything from that point on had a 'motivating circumstance' behind it, a bias, a solution being sought. Now, the concept of 'pray once a day' will be accepted, because a certain belief is already had: that belief is the issue, not a certain state or mode of being. A certain "strength" -- I believe you hit that on the head. There is a certain quality of person, called atheism. Some of the "best" religious people I know, while having a "faith" are what I could also call atheist, in the purest sense: not just in an ideological sense, but in an active one: did they do that "all by themselves" or were they rubbing the magic rabbit foot all the way there? When they wanted to reach out for help, did they do it? Or did they endure? The thing that is changing is a different mode of being taking root: one of operating on belief, rather than on your own. The answer when you cannot cope is not to find a mechanism to cope, a crutch, but to just endure or execute the thing. It is about strength. Sometimes it's about accepting things without a reason: what if one of your twins died? Exactly why is that "bad" per se? It feels like shit, yes, but all you can really say is that you currently do not want that. Petitioning someone for your desire is pure and simple. Making it into "I couldn't take it anymore so I felt too weak to be atheist" is just covering over the fact that you really really wanted your wife and kids to be ok. That is your religion then. It's strong enough of a source of desire that you'd reach outside yourself to manipulate the universe itself if you had to, to cause the outcome you wanted. It could be said that is what the deity concept is. It's a mutable global variable ( which is not threadsafe ) designed to circumvent your own individuality and provide a hack to route-around the system as it is, allowing you to not learn or grow, just have what you want. Confusingly, some people have a deathwish or a sense of inferiority, so they get what they want so much easier.