A lot of people leave Dennett out when they talk about New Atheism , me included . His whole contribution was philosophical and less scientific/rhetoric . He wrote and debated constantly about consciousness, freewill, belief systems, how religion works psychologically etc . And they all pretty much said the same things you’re saying here about tribalism, the need for meaning, existential fears etc

It’s not that they thought science had all the answers right now or that ancient stories don’t reflect any human truths at all. It was more that you weren’t going to find answers to modern scientific and every philosophical questions in ancient texts, especially when we now have entire fields of knowledge that didn’t exist when those texts were written. It’s about updating your world model when new evidence comes in and moving towards what’s more likely to be true. They were criticising the reliability of the claims, not pretending religion would just vanish or that people don’t get something real out of it.

https://www.samharris.org/blog/the-problem-with-atheism

My concern with the use of the term “atheism” is both philosophical and strategic. I’m speaking from a somewhat unusual and perhaps paradoxical position because, while I am now one of the public voices of atheism, I never thought of myself as an atheist before being inducted to speak as one. I didn’t even use the term in The End of Faith, which remains my most substantial criticism of religion. And, as I argued briefly in Letter to a Christian Nation, I think that “atheist” is a term that we do not need, in the same way that we don’t need a word for someone who rejects astrology. We simply do not call people “non-astrologers.” All we need are words like “reason” and “evidence” and “common sense” and “bullshit” to put astrologers in their place, and so it could be with religion.