Religion is to church like the stone is to stone soup, including the part where dirt on the stone can mess up the soup.
I strongly disagree with this statement. While I am quite involved in my church now, and think that's great. A belief in God (independent of a congregation, and at times, in spite of the congregation) has kept me sane at the worst points in my life.
I get that you do not see the value in this -- that is your right of course. However, please do not project your feelings on religious people.
As a formerly very devoutly religious person, I have to say I agree with the parent comment that religion is the worst part of organized religion. I have been much happier (and to your point, "saner") since I stopped believing. One of the things I definitely understand but don't miss is the defensiveness that comes out when someone says they are better off without religious belief.
Returning to the main topic of loneliness/community, I think we can have a sense of shared purpose without needing a sense of higher purpose. I hope we can find a way as a society to rebuild the carrot of strong communities without needing the threat of loss of salvation as stick.
The "defensiveness" wasn't in response to an expression of personal experience as you claim.
The pull out quote was characterizing a diverse group of people, including scientists, scholars, and former atheists, as somehow oblivious. I think patronizing hand-waving about defensiveness is unfair.
I think it is laughable when non-believers deny the value of belief, as it just seems so obvious to me. That said, I choose not to believe and gain those benefits because I believe a God, as we normally conceive of, does not exist. I think of belief in God like many other concepts and ideas. Love, for instance, does not seem to exist. It is, in a way, an app you choose to run on your brain, and it comes with certain features and costs. Then again, I work in software, which I also believe does not exist, so I have a bias in that I think things do not have to exist to be powerful.
Edit: I guess I think of belief in God as a sort of 'local maxima', where it has benefits, but I'm holding out for some sort of greater maxima that can be found with a philosophy and belief system without God.
I believe in God, but it's because of things I've felt that seem as real to me as having seen something. Other than the fact that I can't so easily just show that to another person, the scientific method applies. Faith is then whether or not I choose to trust that and nurture that feeling and build on it or not. It's not just blind hope because it would be nice if it were true. It seems as silly to me as someone who, instead of saying "I see no evidence for God therefore I will proceed as though one doesn't exist", presumes that if there's a supreme being, they've obviously outsmarted it and spotted all the holes in their plan, thus disproving it's existence.
Of course, your perception of the universalism of rational thought is due to the globalization of Western philosophy as the de facto truth -- a sort of conversion of the entire world, so to speak.
Fwiw, I'm not western in origin, and have spend much of my life in non-western countries. I'm not sure what you are referring to in terms 'western' vs 'eastern' philosophy, but I'm not ignorant of the various perspectives brought forward by Suffism, Jainism, Sikism, the various forms Buddhism.
If anything, the commonality of bigotry and human nature that I've witnessed living in multiple places around the globe is what makes me uncomfortable with religion. I'm not comfortable with people playing pretend. It does too much damage.