Honestly, I think part of it is that having an entire community of people suffering depressive symptoms becomes a depressing environment.
I’m sure I heard this in a Brene Brown video, but in order to be able to help someone else, you need to be in the right place yourself. Two empty glasses can’t help fill each other. And most people can’t help an entire community of struggling people, one glass can’t help fill fifty, it’s futile and self damaging to try. It’s why we have professionals that do one on one therapy.
And, this might be unpopular, but I think historically this is why we have priests too. I’m not religious, but I think that community offers that to some people.
Sometimes people need to vent, and some people aren’t lucky enough to be in a position where they can vent to anybody, but I don’t know if diving into a community where you expose yourself to everyone else’s problems too is the solution. Things like addictions counseling are controlled, with professionals at the helm, and often in small spaces, with a prescribed meeting time and an end.
Eh, I don’t think it’s fair to erase all nuance between spirituality and religion.
Heaven/Hell are these ordered places where some sentient divine being is supposed to judge you at death and sort you into. Whether it’s Anubis or God or whatever. It places a sort of human sense of control over the natural world.
Thinking there might be some sort of spiritual something or other, at least on my end, is thinking that well, we’ve got energy in our bodies that dissipates as we die. That energy ends up recycled in some way, first law of thermodynamics and all that. I don’t know if that energy can linger around as ghosts, or act as some new “soul” in some reincarnation cycle, or if it just gets dispersed or what, but you don’t need to believe in religion to consider it.
Though there’s definitely some overlap.