Do You Believe in Magic?

What does it mean to believe in something?
It has to be more than just believing that something exists for the purposes of religion. It is noted that in the Bible the devil and his demons clearly 'believe' in God. In fact, throughout the New Testament, they recognize Jesus as God incarnate while the disciples are still struggling to determine what they themselves believe.
So to just believe that God or Jesus exists can't be enough. Some would say you must also have faith, but what does that mean? Is that different from belief and how so?
If you are on a boat, it would make sense that you would believe the captain of the boat exists, but do you also believe in him in the sense that you trust he will be able to guide the ship safely on its course and deliver you to your destination? Is that what it means to 'believe' in God?
And why is that such a key thing in religion? Whether I believe in the captain of the ship or not is irrelevant to whether or not it will arrive safely at its destination.
And how do you make yourself believe something if you do not believe it already? Can you force yourself to believe something? And how do you know what it is you really believe anyway? Do you REALLY believe in God? Do you trust yourself when you say 'yes'? What if you are not sure?
And what do you mean by 'God' anyway? Maybe your concept of God is different from someone elses. Does that mean you believe in a different God? How can you be sure?
There is no way to know for sure what other people believe. They may be telling you they believe one thing when they really believe another. They may not even know themselves what they believe. It is hard enough figuring out what you yourself believe.
So how can that be the most important thing in life? And why? What is the purpose of life anyway? Why are we here? Are you telling me that God created the universe and put us here just so that we would believe he exists? What is the point of that? Or believing that Jesus is his son? It doesn't make sense that that would be the most important thing.
And as I noted in the last post, Jesus didn't say that it was the most important thing when asked that question directly. Instead, he talked about love.
So maybe that is the more important question. Do you believe in love?