Does Order's science edge over Freedom justify the difference between using gold vs GE's for a build?
In terms of a quick spaceship I don't think anything really compares to buying the parts via freedom. Order has other good advantages though, two free techs is great and its other policies can be better for surviving until the information era. GEs on spaceship parts is actually really weak in my experience
I don't see how you could be arguing so vehemently now, when as far as I remember, this belief has been unchanged for ages. You are also a relatively poor barometer, because your play is strong enough to make WoT OP for you.
It has been changed recently. The belief for a very long time did not include food or production. I tried to casually suggest it was too strong, but it seems unless there is disagreement, discussion tends to get overlooked. The thread about this had several people supporting a nerf with no one offering a counter opinion.
Lets math this out, Council of Elders that converts 10 cities per era yields 300 science, and 300 production. Making it drastically worse than Way of T, as it would be 300 faith, culture, gold, food, and GAP behind. You would need to convert 30 cities before Medieval to match raw yields with WoT's first bonus (not including GAP). Early on its very possible to hit more than 10 cities, but 30 would be really exceptional, and you aren't going to able to keep that up. WoT's long term is actually better than many beliefs, and its short term is better, its just stronger overall, the yields it provides are much larger than its competition's
So it seems to me that either WoT is far too strong, or Elders is far too weak. And I don't think Elders is weak, I would say its towards the top of the spreader bonus beliefs. As for your playing with it and not finding it that strong, did you play tall? Did you rush towards the next era ASAP? Did you take cooperation? If its too strong when played optimally, but balanced when played without maximizing its potential, its still too strong.