I'd like to know. Really. This is absolutely driving me insane.
So an ordinary person decides to believe that someone or something created the world greater than themself. They then proceed to worship said deity out of thankfulness, and hope in return that they will receive their creator's blessing. They hope to live a life that will best exemplify the good traits of the human being, and believe they can overcome the bad traits.
When they are hurt, they believe all isn't lost. When someone dies, they believe they are in a better place. When someone commits a wrong, they can be forgiven.
It's a healthy thing, when utilized correctly. It's something to fall back on when the rational mode of life can't help you.
Is that truly a terrible thing to have? I know it can promote ignorance, but that's the fault of the individual practicing the faith, not the faith itself. I just want an explanation. Thank you.
I take issue with the kind of religiosity which you describe, you might be able to argue pragmatically that this is, on some average utilitarian scale, a healthy default position to aid in keeping a basic level of social stability: I don't think this is a credible position in the realm of theological issues, its just a utilitarian preference, which as far it relates to 'other people', might end up being a morally neutral preference, unless it impacts your actions in your immediate interpersonal relations or style of interaction.
The premise of your question, involves something like a consideration for 'the little people', or the little cogs in the great machine that we all depend on functioning; this is ironically, a rather Gods eye view of the narrative that you then furnish us with. You are correct to be concerned that there might be something wrong with this worldly picture: it might satisfy the heathen, the pagan, or the pantheistic believer, but it is utterly dehumanizing, and fundamentally concerned foremost with human happiness, which at the very least, does not encompass the the form of joy espoused in the Christian doctrine.
The core of your questions deals with a sophisticated issue, which can be addressed in a various number of ways as its quite abstract and philosophical, I will try to do my best at directly attending to your question, but it rests on a number of spiritual issues which are voluminous and complex topics: so instead I will try to jot down a basic stream of thoughts which paint an alternative way of being; to be curt.
Living within a narrative is synonymous to idolatry; it removes the spiritual development of understanding and judgement, aka discerning. The framework of fatalism, is indistinguishable from any other form of Pagan worship, however many Christian labels are sprinkled onto the story, and into your worldly identity. Everyone is born into the narrative, the work of salvation is to disabuse yourself from being purchased by it; this is an internal process of actualization, and leads into its own freedom of the soul, in union with the truth: this doesn't mean anything beyond the context of the introspective searching, which can be well aided through a communion with other members who, in particular, have the same aim and complimentary gifts to share, so that these things can be broken down and refined, the bread, is a symbol of the fleshly understanding, being broken and consumed, over and over.
Although slightly obtuse to what I've just written, there is a secular philosophical treatise that lays out the intellectual basis upon which, in my view, all proper religion rests upon, and in any case, upon which all intellectual schema's must depend upon.
I will post a link or attach it my post.
(PDF) Roodt, V 2018. Living with nihilism. In C Bremmers, A Smith, J-P Wils (eds), Beyond Nihilism? Germany: Traugott Bautz GmbH, 71-83.
To elaborate on the text for a moment: There is a basic level of humility which is the ground floor to all knowledge and morality claims, nothing can be certain, it is a faith-based framework, and that framework is never not subject to potential revision: this makes choice part of life, and life into an ongoing and endless negotiation, which means also, that the only authority that exists, is one which is actively contended into being, made by free will and potentially free-wills (plural in agreement), which can be considered to be free by so choosing to consider your will chosen— to be of that condition (ie. recourse to your own accounting as a witness, evidenced by your recording which then epistemology belongs foremost to the truth), which then becomes your basic character, not an impenetrable character to be certain in, but that can still be contended with certainty, while also freely admitting, that you might be wrong (ie. open to persuasive challenge): there is no incoherence in such a position, but there are many fractured skeptical minds which are craven only for external sources of authority to bestow dignity to their empty, brittle belief in ordered-certainty. There is an economy of compelling and persuasive factors that under-gird the field of uncertain-order [aka what a real understanding is like] (which persists to contend an active-semblance of order, by its subjective account, vulnerable to emulation of finer subjective-accounting schemas as they are uncovered), this can be called the mystery of life, and it can be understood as its own set of issues, all these issues are not claims of certainty, they are closer to technae of contextual wisdom, depending on tracking the transactional nature of metaphysical features that appear to permeate some element of the mystery: this ordering of the mystery into an understanding, is not a narrative, its technically tentative, and in the absolute sense, its all context specific and tenuous in the extent that it rests squarely as individual responsibility for conducting yourself accordingly thereto: if it is communicated, its either clearly transmitted and understood, compelling or persuasive, or it isn't, there are of course dangerous interactions in which spiritual responsibility appears to be intended to migrate externally (this is dangerous because it offers confusion to the observation of the spiritual paradigm, which is also only capable of being viewed through a spiritual vision to begin with: many of these things can be gated by confusion and false teachings, or from deprivation of enough complimentary spiritual organs within a communion, thus seek is the first and prime spiritual command... anyway, I will end my rambling discourse.)