Definition

It’s worth reiterating that these studies were conducted in the US, where most religious people are adherents of Abrahamic monotheisms (Judaism, Christianity and Islam). Things might look very different in other cultures. But, if these findings are correct – at least in this Western context, where being religious typically means believing in a creator God – they raise the question of whether secular Western society is in a position to reproduce the existential benefits of religion.
Michael M Prinzing "Religion gives life meaning. Can anything else take its place?"

Fair enough, I suppose. But, what are "existential benefits of religion?" From what I could glean from the article, the answer seemed to be "existential comfort." Not that "existential comfort" was clearly defined.

Like a lot of popular philosophy articles on "meaning in life," this one presupposes that having some sort of meaning in life, even if it goes no farther than a person's self-perception that "At present, I find my life very meaningful," is better than not having it. But no mechanism as to why this should be the case is offered. I am one of those people who is of the opinion that life is meaningless; life need not make sense (it doesn't need to form a coherent and satisfying narrative), it doesn't need to be independently valuable (so the statement "this person's life is worthless" is not truth-apt in any way) and it doesn't need to have any form of significance (the fact that, at some point in the future, no-one will either know or care that I ever existed is not a bad thing in itself). And people tell me all the time that I have adopted the wrong stance on such things. Yet, they are always at a loss when I ask them, "why?"

It's possible to make the point that certain things about life are better for people who understand themselves to have found some meaning in life, but I'm not sure how important that is. It's something like  avoiding tobacco and alcohol. There is clear evidence that people who don't smoke and don't drink live longer than people who don't. Both those are averages - it's not like the longest possible healthy lifespan of someone who smokes and drinks is shorter than the shortest possible healthy lifespan of someone who does neither. There are simply too many other risk factors in play for that sort of causal relationship to exist.

But with something like meaning in life, there is another possibility in play; the simple idea that it's possible to believe that having meaning in life is better than not having it is independent of whether there is any such thing as meaning in life, and that any despair brought about by a lack of meaning is a result of being told that one should despair. I think of it as being similar to the idea that one should be sad when confronted with the death of a family member. But there are any number of reasons why it may make sense to be something other than sad. These tend to be ignored in favor of a social consensus that dictates sadness in most circumstances. And one might not even understand that the main driver of sadness in a given situation is the expectation that one will be sad.

I have a suspicion that the same is true with the quest for meaning. Enough repetition of the idea that a meaningless life is not worth living, and it makes sense that people will internalize that idea. Every so often, I'll have a conversation with someone who insists that whether I know it or not, I'm miserable and suffering because I don't feel that life is meaningful. "Don't you realize you're desperately unhappy?" I have been asked. Eventually, I started answering: "No. Do you want me to be?" They would tend to answer no, but then insist that I had to be. "Only if I listen to you," I would reply. A few people I have said this to responded as if it had never occurred to them that a sense of despair over life's meaninglessness could be something other than an objective, effectively physiological, response. And this despite the fact that the sort of meaning that Abrahamic monotheism posits is nothing close to universal.

And if it's possible that the way left-leaning media and political figures talk about current events contributes to depression(https://www.slowboring.com/p/why-are-young-liberals-so-depressed) among young liberals, it's possible that the way Western society talks about lack of meaning could do the same. So perhaps the "existential benefits of religion" are simply a matter of people being told that they exist, and responding accordingly.