> Religions maintain themselves purely through indoctrination prior to coherent thought, why not use that same hack for actual useful ends. (Hah! I'm such an optimist).

[Citation needed]

I've encountered several examples of people who were raised pure humanist/materialist and became one stripe or another of religious later in life, including

- Simone Weil (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simone_Weil)

- my father, raised by an atheist and agnostic, was an aggressive atheist until his college years when he became a deist (he further converted to evangelical Christianity while in medical school).

- Bruce Greyson, raised a pure materialist but became vaguely spiritual and inclined towards dualism after decades of studying NDEs (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Greyson)

It may not be common to start off atheist and become theistic, but it does happen.