As an atheist, I fully agree. We all like to think of ourselves as rational thinkers, but together in large groups without some coherent narrative, we are anything but.

I like to tell myself hopeful stories about some "greater purpose" for humanity like reaching for the stars. Maybe that's as you say wanting to become god—but I simultaneously see the vastness of the universe and our minuscule scale as an insignificant bacterium on an insignificant mote of dust. It is definitely not arrogance or hubris.

Your point about drugs is an interesting one: there are some people who are "seekers" in psychedelic drugs, and they think deeply about their experiences in ways that provide a similar sense of scale and wonder. Even historically, psycheledics have been an important foundation of religious experience, sometimes as a facilitator of deep meditation or rituals like mass prayer. It is dangerous and needs to be kept in perspective as a tool for opening the mind: don't let it fall out.

I personally believe in secular values, many of which I recognize as synthesized from various religions: the golden rule for example. It does not help us to deny the thousands of years of history and the stories that helped us organize ourselves into (mostly) cooperative tribes of millions.

What humans absolutely need is some kind of greater vision and leadership beyond any one of ourselves (because we can't be trusted), and a way to feel connected to the whole of us. Religion provides that in a way that crosses generations and keeps a constant guiding star to move towards, never quite reaching it.

Jordan Peterson had an interesting interpretation on this point, if I can recall and paraphrase slightly:

Everybody has a void that gets filled by something like a religion, even when we don't call it that. Now the question is whether you want that to be something you choose to adopt (or at least can name as such), or else something that other untrained minds have loaded into you because you haven't chosen any guiding principles of your own.