People always create god, even if they claim not to believe in it. The rise of belief in conspiracy theories is a form of this (imagining an all powerful entity behind every random event), as is the belief in AGI. It's not a totalizing solution to all woes. It's just a way to convince oneself that the world is not random, and is therefore predictable, which makes us feel safer. That, after all, is what we are - prediction machines.
The existential dread from uncertainty is so easily exploited too, and the root cause for many of societies woes. I wonder what the antidote is, or if there is one.
It's just a scam, plain and simple. Some scams can go on for a very long time if you let the scammers run society.
Any technically superior solution needs to have a built in scam otherwise most followers will ignore it and the scammers won't have incentive to prosthelytize, e.g. rusts' safety scam.