I wonder if this idea that certain beliefs are only held because the believers are too weak-willed to face 'things as they are' isn't Nietzsche's. If we judge by what theists say of themselves, the main reason they believe in a Supreme Being is the excellent design of the Universe. While this argument has been around for quite a while, and has often come under fire from various positions, it is at least a rational argument.
Moreover, to claim that people find comfort in religion is true but incomplete and misleading. It is, to use modern cant, ethnocentric. The Christian faith, the Buddhist, and the wishy-washy spiritualism now common, all provide a kind of comfort. The Aztec religion did not. The Greeks found their gods disturbing at times: willful, inscrutable, and malevolent. The Hindoo tradition of the juggernaut is not a pleasant one (although those who have visions of Kali, with her necklace of skulls and entrails, describe her as "motherly"). The sacrifices of the pagans, the monstrosities the Egyptians worshipped, the hideous flautists of Azazoth: none particularly nice.
The disciples of Nietzsche have split into two opposing camps. One of them, whom I'll lump as "post-modernists", have (presumably) passed 'Beyond Good and Evil', and found the truth: there is no truth. There is only the will-to-power expressing itself. And so, one view is no more or less valid than another. They're self-refuting enough to be ignored.
The others have such will-to-power as cannot be satisfied by such a cowardly decision: it leaves them without a battleground to defend or attack, which is the only way their will can be fulfilled. They pass beyond good and evil into absolutes; and for them, the finaly absolute is Nature. Things as they are, in all their confusion, complexity, amorality, and mortality, are the touchstone of this second group, as the only thing near enough to eternal (and, of course, once that's gone, who'll be around to know?) to be worth struggling to know, overcome, and utilize.
Naturally, both groups being predicated on the will-to-power, they view those who will not accept their conclusions as weaker than they, less able to 'steer their craft', as Nietzsche puts it. For those of us who take another view, not that the ideas we hold are decided by our capacity, but by our education, our reason, and our predelictions, this is rather irritating.
