Do you see any benefits to religious faith?

[Mudhammam]

Most of us are familiar with the ills of faith, whether one speaks of the narrow-mindedness it often creates, or its pseudo-solutions to difficult problems, the discouragement of curiosity it entails when overlapping with matters of speculation (metaphysics, ethics, physical anomalies, etc.); the zeal, sometimes dogmatical and violent, that pervade the holy texts and which people inevitably interpret in accordance with their temperament; the bloody theological wars that are waged, and so on.  Many of us have felt the harm of indoctrination and religious intolerance at one point or another in our personal lives, and I cannot conceive that anybody, believer or infidel, could dispute that many faiths bring more harm than good into the world -- a problem that strikes at the center of this notion of religious faith.  Not to set aside the harm, but are there any benefits to religious faith that are unique to its exercise, and do any of them offset the costs in such a way as to justify faith even to the extent of accepting certain of its propositions as "noble lies," that is, claims that are probably false but beneficial to society?  I do not have in mind mere charity or the promulgation of a particular ethic, or a magnificent work of art, for these are wholly distinct from the mythologies that comprise my conception of religious faith (wherein one confuses these mythologies with factual knowledge).  I rather mean possible benefits such as the optimism it bestows upon one's view of the world, that all injustices will at some time be made right, that death is the not permanent annihilation of everything that has ever been good or lovable about life, that each individual has an integral role which they are under obligation to fulfill given the circumstances in which they have been placed, and that the endless humiliations that some wretched souls have been subjected to carry some sort of merit.  These are ideas that don't much register on my worldview, or if they do it is in a context that largely changes their import, but I can certainly conceive of scenarios in which it might be nice to believe that they did.  Is there any form of genuine piety that is rational given the existential situation in which human beings find themselves, or is there an underlying irrationality to our existence that at least makes religious faith justifiable?   It seems that any analysis must weigh the pros against the cons.  I'm inclined to think that -- and it appears that recorded history confirms this at the turn of every century -- the costs outweigh the benefits, and moreover, that the redemption promised to the faithful is in some sense based on an erroneous idea that our beliefs about otherwordly events determines the facticity of said events.  Suppose the benefits I suggested are all true; or even that the ideas from which the benefits are derived contain something of the truth; can my doubts about them change that? If I die and find out that I was wrong about some metaphysical claim, is it reasonable to suspect that my life or future life is liable to suffer because of such doubt, even if at the moment I feel more sincere and generally more content given my suspension of belief?

The follow-up question is this: Is it better to live as if the fundamental concepts of religion are true or false, irrespective of whether they actually are true or false?

Thoughts?