Yep, spirituality is an emergent property with respect to imagination and a lack of omniscience; if something happens that is not explainable by an individual's knowledge they'll find it easy to come up with an imagined explanation.

This is why earlier religions explained things like the seasons, weather, earthquakes, volcanos, stars, etc through imagined gods while those same, evolved, religions don't attempt to do so anymore. We understand them scientifically now.

Is it useful to view spirituality as makeshift philosophy and psychotherapy? When I pick out the good parts of religion, I see it's not so different to what a stoic or my therapist might say. You can either pray for or visualize positive outcomes and either way it works to ease the mind. Hell, Nietzsche's work has basically a religious conception (the Eternal Return) without claiming absolute authority of reality.

I ask because my Mom focuses on this aspect of her religion rather than dogma. I hope it gives her what she needs.