Most religions have belief systems. If you are a, say, Jew, you believe in X, and if you’re a Muslim, then you believe in Y (allow for a lot of overlap between X and Y obviously). Atheists don’t “believe in Z”.

Throughout history people have believed in thousands of different gods and belief systems. Ask any religious person today, and they’ll tell you that they don’t believe in any of those gods and any of those belief systems from history except for 1. I’m just like them, except that there’s 1 more god from history that I don’t believe in.

Put another way: Take a bunch of people and splash them randomly with paint of different colors. After the splashing is done, some will be covered in red, some will be covered in blue, some will have multiple colors of paint on them. Some lucky individuals may have escaped the paint. These individuals are simply “clean”… they are not “covered in clean”, they don’t have “clean on their clothes”.

I disagree on the prayer being nothing more than directed hoping. But I know I won’t change your mind on this particular point any more then you could change mine.

Praying is nothing but “directed hoping”.

Praying is nothing by “directed hoping”.

And by the way, I do not “believe in atheism”.

However, there’s a saying, God helps those that help themselves. So if someone prays and just sits on the couch, the probably won’t get that far.