I assume that we're not talking about belief as in 'hope' but about 'adherence to a belief system.'
Not particularly. One can keep an open mind and investigate the merits of all sorts of ideas, and not be a staunch adherent to a particular belief--but still be smart or discerning enough to not fall for terrible, misleading, evil, maligned, or counterproductive beliefs.
Belief systems can take many forms--religion, arrogance (believing oneself to know all the answers), political parties, etc.
Life is a hell of a lot easier if I have a belief system that tells me what I ought to do, but that's not the
only way to navigate life. In fact, I would argue that it's an incomplete way to navigate life--but, to each their own.
Granted, that is not the same as developing inner-directed, self-guided, general
principles by which to navigate life. In my estimation,
those are pretty cool. And perhaps the 'discernment' that I describe above is similar to 'belief in something.'
Long and short, I think we can hold beliefs for good reasons, and we can hold them for bad reasons. My point is that holding a belief, especially if it hasn't been investigated internally and checked against reality, isn't in and of itself a good thing.
A religious adherent who knows of the existence of nothing outside the bounds of his own religion and hasn't 'spot-checked' his beliefs won't 'fall for' a lot, sure, but there are worse sins than that.
Related to [MENTION=6508]Blank[/MENTION]'s post above, our own moral stances are more than mere practicality and rationality. We make many moral decisions based upon emotions--rationality is far from the entire picture.
We are pattern perceiving animals. And we prefer any pattern to no pattern.
[...]
Also magical thinking induces a trance state where wishes become promises and promises become reality.
We all love magic and magic, so we believe, will get us what we want.
This. We love to seek out patterns. We love things that validate
our patterns. It gives us a rush when things validate the way we believe the world to be. It's elegant and self-serving. Our beliefs tend to enforce themselves--and not for good reasons.