I have been thinking a lot about region and ideology and what i’ve come up with is that the tendency to form these strong ideological behaviors is a feature of humanity and organized religion is a sort of evolved (perhaps in a meme more than a gene way) response to this tendency.

Essentially groups and ideas survived better when there was an organization and social rules built up around this human tendency. Left unchecked reckless nonsense ideologies spring up too easily, an organized religion gives this human trait an outlet (and often becomes an unchecked wreckless ideology itself, but... less often).

Or in another sense, the big organized religions are the winners in a centuries long evolutionary race of ideas. The nonsense ones destroy themselves eventually, the less nonsense ones survive and spread (seriously, judaism is thousands of years old and has a health code, much of which in context is decent advice).