-Removed-Yet you suggested that holding a given belief may be 'difficult'. Surely that implies that one must exert deliberate effort towards a desired goal - which to me implies deliberate self delusion.
I on the other hand have always maintained belief based on the evidence available. Thus there has never been any difficulty in maintaining my beliefs, whatever they are. If contrary evidence becomes available, my beliefs may change. I will not strive to hold on to them.
-Removed-You clearly live in a country where atheism is not as minority a view as you paint it. Or is everyone else Muslim or Hindu where you live?
Where I come from, (Zambia) the vast majority of people are Christian and it is atheists who are made to feel uncomfortable. Oddly enough Christians will often readily accept other faiths, even if they are vastly different or even totally contradict their own, yet when it comes to atheists they can be very unaccepting. You often see on these forums people saying atheists are denying God, choose to be atheist, or are otherwise closet theists, yet you never see such sentiments about Muslims or Hindus being closet Christians or having chosen Islam over Christianity.
Here in Cape Town we have a wider mix of religion. At a guess, a quarter Muslim, a quarter Christian and the a few smaller groups and the rest nonreligious (though many would probably not say atheist). I certainly feel a lot less pressure to hide my beliefs - or more accurately, it rarely ever comes up in conversation.
But all of this is irrelevant to what you said earlier about the difficulty of maintaining your faith. If you believe something is true, then how hard it is to stand up and tell other people about it, should only affect how difficult it is to tell other people about it, and you should not describe that as a difficulty in maintaining your belief. If you choose to lie to other people or simply keep silent regarding your beliefs, that wont change your beliefs will it?
I don't always tell people I am atheist due to the social issues that might result, but that doesn't in any way make me doubt my lack of belief in the existence of God.
You said:
...that believing in God is a harder mental position to hold than not believing
Which certainly seems to imply difficulty in justifying your belief to yourself and nothing to do with social pressure.
-Removed-Take a prophylactic eg maloprim or an equivalent. Sleep under a mosquito net. If you do get feverish, get tested immediately and treated if the test is positive. Malaria is a killer but almost always because of failure to treat it.
Also the advent of mosquito nets has significantly reduced the frequency of malaria so its not nearly as bad as it was in the past.
Enjoy your time in Zambia.
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-Removed-The path of least resistance is believing what the majority of the people around you believe in. This is why religions are distributed geographically around the world. Most people just accept what they are fed (theist, atheist, deist, whatever).
If you believe the religion of your parents and the most common one in your country/city, then you should worry whether you didn't take that path because of it being the path of least resistance. Same for politics. If you are of the same party as your parents and friends, then you should think hard why that is so.
