Charles Stross has a very pithy version of this too, Singularity mania as 'duck-typed Evangelicalism'. It's really telling that if you go to China, Japan or even Europe there's virtually nothing of this. I don't think there's genuine atheists in America, as soon as they lose institutional religion they project the same kind of patterns onto tech or politics.
Brian Johnson is also an interesting case of this with his longevity / immortality obsession and his Mormon background who have this whole thing about genealogy and eternal families etc.
>I don't think there's genuine atheists in America, as soon as they lose institutional religion they project the same kind of patterns onto tech or politics.
Or maybe the people who do so aren't actually atheists. There are plenty of atheists out there who don't do that.