However it got started, I just thrive in theocratic cultism. Knowledge and skill revered, the things of it kept in the temple and the best of ones works done for the glory of the God and in imitation.
If aliens needed gold slaves 12,000 years ago and thats why people try to get something in the sky to come back, it translated into the sanctuary of knowledge and preservation in an outrageously uncooperative and beastly world. Writing, medicine, history, the sciences all came from the temple and it it is likely the temple will preserve them again.
Beyond ones own divinity, if thats what it is, beyond others ideas of divinity, when they are even attempting to be honest, the tools of civilization, the pitfalls of it and its methods give religion real and practical value that is only temporarily assumed by societies. It is a well the upreaching seek to drink from.