When people tell you it's important to believe in "something", do they ever specify what that something is or why it's good?

I keep hitting walls with those kinds of questions, which I feel compelled to ask when I hear people sing the praises of belief - not gods, just belief - and how important it is to imprint that onto children.
It makes me angry because this is one of those subtle ways of showing bigotry and encouraging a divide, believers may not even be aware of doing, and when asked for merits; they just shrug.

While they leave the "something" conveniently vague, the one idea the child almost certainly will walk away from this education with, is their parents belief that it is very important to believe in "something". Leading to the notion that people who do not are lacking; that there is a part of us missing or broken.