I found in half my Deity games, maybe more. Your characterization of the odds is not correct.
Why you purposely take that quote out of context, leave the other half out? That is borderline just being rude. You've read my other posts, you know I specifically was talking about putting religion aside for aggressive play with fast universities.
Cherry picking for whatever reason without looking at the bigger picture.
My first post in this thread was specifically in response to the statement of little opportunity cost and significant benefits.
There is opportunity cost, the opportunity cost is map control. Sitting in the corner of the map playing Sim City with 4 cities and hoping the AI doesn't attack isn't map control. Hoping to beat out AI cheat bonuses before they launch isn't map control. Being able to limit a runaway, to control where and how war plays out is map control.
Is religion and map control mutually exclusive? Of course not. Nobody said it was, replying about it is a waste of my time to read.
However, map control does need quick timings and hefty resources. You may be building a single shrine, but you aren't mass building shrines and you certainly aren't building temples, not without giving up map control. The difference of waiting 10 turns to build temples could be the difference of Washington starting to spam minutemen and never being able to break him early on.
A competitive time to enter industrial is around 150. You aren't likely to invest much further into religion after that point. If you found on turn 80, that leaves you with 70 turns to work with. Let us consider another 300 faith to enhance, 1,200 minimum for 6 pagoda purchases, and another 200-500 to help the initial spread. You aren't getting that in 70 turns off of a single shrine and a couple stone circle quarries.
Alternatively, you could build the single shrine and get a pantheon. Or not. Then ignore religion, use any acquired faith through various sources to just purchase any cheap religious buildings from adopted religions, and focus on getting map control. At that point who cares what the religious landscape looks like? You are already swimming in gold from number of city connections, you still get some happiness from various religions, and more importantly you have all the time in the world to finish any victory you want, because you've got artillery spammed across the map.
It is just a different approach to the game. I've already stated I understand a lot of people don't play this way, but that is the trade-off. It is absolutely pointless to suggest the trade-off doesn't exist if you don't play that way and utilize the same trade-off. If you do play that way and insist religious dominance with map control by turn 150 is "ezpz 80% of my games I play", then by all means, post those screenies.