I'm not saying whether this is a good or a bad thing, but religion has done a lot over the millenia to teach people how to be productive in society. Religion is first and foremost a tool to keep people in line. The fact that part of it happens to incorporate a belief in the afterlife is an implementation detail.

Sure, it might be obsolete now, but if someone is in bad enough shape (such as an alcoholic), even an obsolete religion may still be a better tool for the job than something like psychotherapy. Psychotherapy doesn't directly add any sort of community to a person's life. I had a drinking problem for some time and a big reason for that is I hated the people I was surrounded by (who were often not much different from myself at the time) and needed to tune out somehow.