In the Industrial Era? Was John Roebling hired by a Protestant church to build the Brooklyn Bridge? Did Albert Einstein's receive a stipend from a Buddhist temple?
I get your point, but, if anything, that would justify buying Great Persons in pre-Industrial Eras. The fact is, this is a game mechanic devised to give some utility to late-game faith. Is it over-powered? Yeah, pretty much. Does it accurately reflect post-Industrial ways of generating Great Admirals, Great Scientists, Great Engineers, Great Merchants (OK, I will acknowledge an exception for those unaccountably popular televangelists who seem to be able to line their own pockets like no one before or since, but I wouldn't celebrate that phenomenon), etc.? I think not so much.
The fact that many industrial / modern / atomic / information era great persons were inspired by faith is without debate. Here are just a few examples (FAR from a complete list) from each "great person" category in real history post-industrial, most of which were off the top of my head (the rest from minimal research).
Great Writers:
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Eastern Orthodoxy) - "The whole law of human existence consists of making it possible for man to bow down before what is infinitely great. If man were to be deprived of the infinitely great, he would refuse to go on living, and die of despair." (
Demons)
Anne Frank (Judaism) - "The best remedy for those who are frightened, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be alone with the sky, nature and God. For only then can you feel that everything is as it should be and that God wants people to be happy amid nature’s beauty and simplicity." (
The Diary of Anne Frank)
C.S. Lewis (Protestantism) - "“My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?” (
Mere Christianity)
Mohandas Gandhi (Hinduism) - "Hinduism as I know it entirely satisfies my soul, fills my whole being." (
Young India)
Flannery O'Connor (Catholicism) - "Well, toward morning the conversation turned on the Eucharist, which I, being the Catholic, was obviously supposed to defend. Mrs. Broadwater said ... she thought of it as a symbol and implied that it was a pretty good one. I then said, in a very shaky voice, 'Well, if it’s a symbol, to hell with it.' That was all the defense I was capable of but I realize now that this is all I will ever be able to say about it, outside of a story, except that it is the center of existence for me; all the rest of life is expendable." (
The Habit of Being)
Great Artists:
Salvador Dalí (Catholicism) - fiercely anti-clerical during his early life, but converted to Catholicism before painting the
Crucifixion (Corpus Hypercubus),
The Discovery of America, and
The Madonna of Port Lligat
Tenzing Rigdol (Buddhism) - modern Tibetan artist and activist:
Avalokiteshvara
Jean-François Millet (Catholicism) - painted
The Angelus, depicting two peasants in prayer
Great Musicians:
Sergei Rachmaninov (Eastern Orthodoxy) - composed plenty of liturgical pieces, such as the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom
Bob Dylan (Judaism, Protestantism) - he was born Jewish, and his songs always reflected a thoughtful, religious (albeit sometimes implicit) sentiment, but after converting to Christianity he wrote songs like Gotta Serve Somebody which were more explicit
Andrea Bocelli (Catholicism) - modern day classical tenor, his Sacred Arias is the biggest selling classical album by any solo artist in history
Bono (Protestantism) - if you don't know how much U2 has been inspired by faith, read the lyrics to I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For, Where the Streets Have No Name, or Pride (In the Name of Love)
Great Generals:
Francisco Franco (Catholicism) - for better or worse, he made it his mission to protect the Catholic Church from the mass killings and persecutions of the communists in the Spanish Civil War (which he unfortunately did by persecuting them likewise)
Osama bin Laden (Islam) - I hesitate to claim that he's inspired by faith, more like by an ideology, but there's an argument to be made here... one that I would refute
Great Admirals:
Togo Heihachiro (Shinto) - Japanese admiral who won the Battle of Tsushima Straits; "the Horatio Nelson of the East"; a Shinto shrine was dedicated to him in Tokyo, and he was nearly elevated to a Shinto kami
Don Juan of Austria (Catholicism) - the Holy League, under his guidance and that of Our Lady of the Rosary, won the Battle of Lepanto; this is very much a stretch to put into the Industrial Era, but you could argue post-Renaissance
Matome Ugaki (Shinto) - another Japanese admiral, launched the first wave of
kamikaze attacks against the US fleets;
kamikaze means "divine wind", recalling the divine intervention that saved Japan in the 13th century with a typhoon that destroyed an invading Mongol fleet
Great Merchants:
John D. Rockefeller (Protestantism) - the founder of Standard Oil was a teetotaling Baptist and funded a number of church-based institutions
Jean Henri Dunant (Protestantism) - Swiss businessman who founded the International Red Cross / Red Crescent
Sakichi Toyoda (Buddhism) - founded Toyota on the Toyoda precepts, which were based on the doctrines of Nichiren Buddhism
Great Engineers:
Heitor da Silva Costa (Catholicism) - designer of the Cristo Redentor... well, it's in the game, so I guess I had to include him
Mahmoud Bodo Rasch (Islam) - designed the main tower of the
Abraj Al Bait, whose prominent features include the text "God is great" and a clock to signal the five daily prayer times for pilgrims to Mecca
Guglielmo Marconi (Catholicism) - one of the actual great engineers in the game for inventing the radio, he personally introduced the first radio broadcast of the Pope
Fariborz Sahba (Bah'ai) - designer of the
Lotus Temple
Antoni Gaudí (Catholicism) - designer of
La Sagrada Familia, which happens to be my favorite building in the world
Great Scientists:
Georges LeMaitre (Catholicism) - the Belgian Catholic priest who discovered Hubble's Law before Hubble did, he also first proposed the big bang theory (I don't mean the TV show), which was initially rejected by many "secular" scientists because they saw it as some lame Catholic justification for a "beginning" of the universe that they didn't like because of the Creation implications
Michael Faraday (Protestantism) - discovered Faraday's Law which unified electricity and magnetism, refused knighthood because of his religious beliefs against accumulating worldly fame and riches
Albert Einstein (Judaism) - Einstein didn't make a show of religious practice, but his very interest in science was religiously motivated: "I want to know how God created this world, I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know His thoughts, the rest are details."
Werner Heisenberg (Protestantism) - a pioneer in quantum mechanics and its foundational principle, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, he stated, "What these internal relations show in all their mathematic abstraction, an incredible degree of simplicity, is a gift that we can only accept with humility. Not even Plato could have believed that it would be so beautiful. In fact these relations cannot have been invented: they have existed since the creation of the world."
Max Planck (Protestantism) - another key figure in quantum mechanics who stated, "All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all matter."
Gregor Mendel (Catholicism) - Augustinian friar and the father of genetics; arguably as important a figure in the field as Charles Darwin himself, he did all his research from his monastery
I put extra emphasis on religious great scientists just because of sixty4half's willingness to concede the point on that particular subject. Great persons all throughout history have been inspired by faith, and the modern era is no exception. This functionality within Civ V has every basis in history.