How did this devolve into a discussion about religion? ... This reminds me of my last Civ5 game and how ideology/faith points had no impact on my happiness, gold, resource, or productivity levels.
Because government and religion are synonymous with collective dependence, psychological control, and thus enabling corruption by those are
handed the power by these collectivized paradigms.
Summarizing my prior post upthread, the Bible and the government are both centralized paradigms, where the collective depends on each other. We need decentralized paradigms where the individual is empowered.
Gold is not a decentralized paradigm.