Why is belief in a higher power required?

[Silver]

How we perceive that reality is all that is different.

Which makes a good point, one I am certain you have failed to realize. After all, there is a famous quote I like to mention: Happiness is ten percent reality and ninety percent perception..

One can perceive that something is real, but the likelihood of it being real is basically nonexistent. We, as humans, love to lie to ourselves for the sake of appearances and comfort.

If you are having a bad day and someone asks you how you are feeling, do you answer that you are feeling horribly? Of course not, because social constructs imply that you lie for their sake rather than your own. That is no way to live.

One should live for one's self first, because if one cannot take care of one's self, one cannot take care of anyone else.

Reality is one thing. One thing only. Perceptions are false, because that is what most people rely upon to survive. Reality insists that a god does not exist, because it is the bleakest form of existence that most people cannot accept as reality. What one cannot accept as reality, one changes so that it becomes acceptable. God is most acceptable because it provides everything reality is not.