I personally have no conflict with all of us living our lives
both meaningfully and ephemerally.
I don't think we'll find life on other planets, because our definition of life was created by us after examining entities on this planet. There have been many planets before that could be like Earth... they plainly were never like enough. Either we haven't explored far enough to meet our parallels or entangled complementaries, or we're unique. And Jupiter is unique. And Alpha Centauri is unique.
The universe doesn't seem willing to repeat a trick so detailed as the precise form of Saturn and its rings, or the societies we've created (I won't say "let alone the societies..." because all I've mentioned is unique and special in itself
and in harmonious context with every other unique form,
not in competition that we're so arrogant to put ourselves on top of.) So, no, it probably wouldn't have religion as we define religion from the sample numbers on this planet because it's a different planet. That means no Christ, no Spaghetti Monster... nothing we can conceive of. Why would Jesus need to repeat his performance to prove himself right, anyway
Religion is a social construct, with qualities of social value that can't be measured and repeated.
There need not be a negative correlation between love, compassion, friendship as relates to faith in God. However, in the memeplex you refer to belief does indeed come first and foremost as a principle, and yes that does mean people picketing God Hates Fags, and blowing themselves up in public places, and swelling with pride as they point fingers at their fellow man and declare with full confidence that they know where
you're going after death... grants access to heaven, while loving compassionate friendly unbelievers get bored in limbo at best. If that system existed.
Of course, there are not only different heavens but different afterlife systems. Which one is real? Well, belief alone does not make it something true... say, a friend of mine stole my mp3 player and he swears blind that he didn't. I believe him. Doesn't make it not happen. By the same rule, disbelief will not make it real or unreal-- the real afterlife system may be something nobody's thought up yet to claim as true. The truth of the mp3-theft matter had a sort of anchor in material causality that eventually ends up in that I'm wrong, but religion has no such anchor at this point therefore religion is-- ha, ha-- in limbo. Or, well, the argument flows better to say "none of the religions are true"!
But wait-- I think I see a loophole. A couple of loopholes. (And you can skip them because unicorn said it better. 
) :
See, for whatever reason religion was first created, the people I've met now who are religious are so not because they're afraid of dying -- they haven't even been raised to be afraid of death enough to make it up themselves! It's just because their parents told them it was true and society reinforces it, they haven't
discovered God for themselves, the way each and every one of us have discovered (not
been told) the world of material causality.
But, material causality need not be the only anchor of common experience. All religions, for example, have the common
telling of another layer of reality, it's just there's no agreement of what's in it. To find the "true religion" or faith we, all of us, simply must discover it for ourselves the same way we discovered material causality for ourselves-- not as an immediate acceptance of vague impressions and the words of others, but a truth finally accepted because the returns from continued questioning have peaked, and further questioning is rapidly becoming futile compared to questioning another truth. ("Why is the sky blue?" "Why is the sea green" "Why are bubbles round?" usually eventually dies into "Why does God allow bad things to happen?" because material causality has been accepted as true while an omniscient omnipresent omnipotent
and personal God... has not.) To find the true religion we must all experience the other layer of reality ourselves, and yes it may all just be neurological bringing us back to this world with the certainty now that there is nothing beyond material causality and that death is permanent... but see first line of this post.
And, well, it would be neurological for all of us to dream... but it may well be the subtler layer of reality to be able to be in somebody else's dream, which I've done once (or today I think I did once before -- tomorrow I may believe it was just a coincidence or my friend and I just making up what we wanted to. I'm kind of wishy-washy that way.
) (And anyway, I'm just saying I did -- do it yourself if you want to believe me
)
And then there's the level of personal truth rather than the search for the universal absolute. This needs no continued questioning and proving and common experience-- it's
faith. Proof of its truth defeats some quality of faith (even if it proved the faith itself... once something's explained, it can be explained away,) and overshadows the purposes of living
as if something were true.
Yes, it may breed needlessly hateful picketers and needless martyrs and annoying or hurtfully rude proud evangelists, but as much as it fuels people with hate it can fuel people with love... as much as it's a reason to die for some people, it's a reason for some people to go on living, and as much pride and exclusivity as it causes there is modesty at the idea of something bigger and unity among families and societies as well as helping an individual to pull him/herself together. It may be untrue, the same way a placebo is that still works. Richard Dawkins said that fearing the wrath of God is no noble reason to choose right from wrong-- but without it there'd be one less reason, for better or worse.