an imaginary friend in a fairy story

We created God especially for that very purpose -because we needed something greater than we were - greater indeed than nature - a literal All Mighty Father Figure so we might feel cared for, and that our otherwise meaningless lives and deaths had an ultimate purpose.

That they DO have a purpose is something we're only just beginning to figure out in terms of a more existential / empirical understanding of the cosmos, but we're barely scratching the surface here. The human adventure is quite literally only just beginning. Whether one accepts Homocentricity or not (and it's certainly implied in Carl Sagan's star stuff) the fact is we each reside at the centre of our own universe, which begins at birth and ends at death and around which everything else is relative.

We are but subjects of a greater objectivity. In the light of that, it's easy to see why we've given it an all too human face (created, naturally, in our own image) and why the idea - the folklore of the thing - persists into these more enlightened times.