The religion chosing can not be turned off and will require the player to pick something out of the a possible number-->in My case i was at day 158 and I finally reached the first religion level which was already chosen by the (humankind difficulty) AIs and the game won't let me ignore the chose option even so all the paths/options are rendered to the AIs whos are chosen them in conclusion as you already guessed after reading the title the game just gets stuck.

If it's can be turned off then it doesn't works when you do it in existing games after the "error" occured

I have tried to reload a save from earlier (still does not work)