These are all cults and for-profit businesses, some are just significantly more accepted than others, and we refer to the accepted ones as “religions.”
It offers people several things - moral guidance, a mechanism to cope with hardships such as death of loved ones, and lastly and perhaps subconsciously most importantly, a sense of self-importance and purpose in this grand universe. Understandably, hardly anyone wants to hear or accept that they're no different than animals in the wild, or microscopic parasites; humans just have the ability to think intelligently, just as a bird has the ability to fly or a fish has the ability to breathe underwater. So naturally, humans believe they're more important than anything in this universe, and that there is something much more grand-scale going on specifically for them.
To each his own. Whatever helps you sleep better.