This is a painfully true observation.

I think the first time I really realized it was when I was drifting away from my religion of birth, and actually started to listen to atheist people around me. I soon discovered that the only difference between most of them and the religious people I know was the value of $religion variable. For one group it was "God", for the other it was "no God". The thought patterns were exactly the same. Neither of them could actually justify their beliefs.