Religion helps us cope with death better, well ok, coping with the inevitable is not high up on my list of priorities though.
Despite what I think about the conservative beliefs, I have seen people from these churches die in a remarkable peace, and I believe that this is the measure of piety, not how literally they take the Bible or how well they can quote it. If they fall into oblivion, it isn’t as though they will know anything … at they same time, if they have lived good lives, they have profited and helped others profit from them having lived.
Of course atheists will have lead murderous rapacious satieted lives of excess helping only themselves in an orgiastic indulgence of hedonism. Christians are always so patronising about how much better it is to be religious than not, how it means you are just a better person all round and real good egg, and then you get a happy house in the sky with the beardy fellow 'cause you are so great. It’s a pity they are only looking at it from their point of view. The more interesting religious people I have met lost faith, and probably realise how they sounded to others now, the same could be true in reverse too. It reminds me a bit of the episode of Southpark where they started by hybrids and it started causing toxic amounts of smug to build up in the atmosphere. I am sure you don’t mean to come off sounding smug, but you do.
What you have really outlined in this whole post is it makes no difference what you believe as long as it makes you happy, and you are a good person, just as my logic is good, yours for the believer is also reasonable. In essence it’s all good, believe what you want, which is probably not how you see it, but then I suspect you lack perspective of others views.