Airplane prayer.

Belief of faith have always a reason for it, sometimes tradition but often and maybe in some cases caused by tradition, the reasons are despair, helplessness, illness, aimlessness e.t.c.

The same way even most rigid atheist will appeal to higher powers in a falling airplane, there are many religious people in prisons, poor neighbourhoods and other dire conditions.

Whenever you loose control in your life, belief and faith start creeping in, less you are able to change the situation, more you believe it the higher powers controlling your life.

Faith is not necessary belief in Almighty good god, it can come in many forms, one can believe in almighty state(s) that will eventually sort it all out for them, usually combined with a strong leader without whom everything will be lost, and as such states usually don't fare very well, the faith in the leader is paradoxically increased, because there are problems, but he will take them to the bright future.

Feeling the age and decreased physical abilities one might start strongly believing in different kinds of food therapies, and diets.

But faith comes in many forms, and instead of trying to reach for the good, one might have faith in the devil, that is intentionally is making life difficult for you.

This devil can,  beside the classical variety, can also be expressed in different ways, it might once again be the state, but usually a foreign one, and today usually it is the USA, which represents all the reason for your problems.

This completes the state faith, your state has big problems because of USA, you believe and support your great leader yo stand up to that, and are prepared to live in bad conditions for that cause, the great leader for some reason, despite all his greatness is able to build new tanks, but not feed the people, therefore the living conditions and ability to change anything decrease, and faith in the leader increases.

Other negative personalities popular in modern religions are illuminate, Bilderberg group or any other group you pick as the reason for all your problems, as we have seen this group can be as large as a whole race of people.

Or obviously if you are on the dietary faith, everything you for some reason decide not to it is the enemy which is the cause for your health problems, most common is probably meat.

One can think of many more examples, but all of them has one thing in common, reach for the good, blame it on the bad. It is sometimes difficult to see the faith in the things people do, but whenever a person viciously defends or promotes one point of view, and is unwilling to hear any arguments against, that is a clear sign of faith.

Any person getting emotional, angry, irrational when talking about his faith clearly has issues in his life. Because otherwise talking about it would't be personal. Because faith by its nature is not personal, it's intellectual, you have a set of ideas which you hold true, and unless those ideas help or identify you on a personal level, any doubt expressed towards those ideas creates no friction, unless that criticism undermines your own personality that needs those ideas to function properly, i.e. sign of an issue.

Let say you are white, middle aged, highly educated, employed, man in good health, having lived an average life and maybe even having a steady relationship, you won't have any existential issues, life will be rather easy, for the most part there is no crisis, and you have no reason to pray, and will probably consider yourself atheist, or be interested in religions on a pure intellectual level, or more probably interested in philosophy.

This will be true as long as conditions for comfortable living are true, when the job is lost, belief in the all mighty illuminati ruling the world is strengthened, when the society falls apart, faith is placed in the state and the great leader, when you gain some weight and health become worse with age, 5-2 diet got to be the solution, and falling in an airplane one prays and hopes for the mortal soul and an afterlife and good god to take care of you.

But until that point, while the airplane is still flying, health is good, life is comfortable there is time to explore the world, try different things, ideas, confirm some, dismiss others, learn, teach.

Because praying in a falling plane makes sense, praying in an well functioning plane instead of flying it will make it fall.

In any case both planes will end up on the ground but the piloted ones will land while the the others will crash.

Not everyone get the chance to pilot their plane, some are forced to prepare for the crash from the birth, some are unable some are able but incapable and yet others are capable but unwilling. But those who succeed and land will take the humanity forward, and live on in the generations to come.

Footnote:

Faith is not the only way people handle the falling plane, alcohol and panic, inability to do anything ore some of the other things one can be occupied with.