I think this claim would be more credible if there were the any other characteristics of a religion present. Namely: Doctrine, rituals, totems, prayer, and above all it would require that there is some credulity to a higher power/state such as heaven/nirvana that will never be seen by humans.

I'd be interested to see some of those as I haven't yet and I've been in the community for a while.

What I will grant is that, there are those who speak in the same structure as religious people. "In the future there will be no poverty because machines will make everything we need for free" sounds a little too close to "In heaven, you can eat all you want and never get full!"

However similar they sound though, they have radically different theoretical roots.

In fact though there is plenty of hard evidence for progress on all of the accounts you mentioned:

AGI: https://arxiv.org/abs/1701.08734

Immortality: http://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-have-successfully-rev...

mind uploading: Not sure about Whole Brain Emulation progress right off the top of my head.

genetic enhancement: http://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-reverse-sickle-cell-d...

Are they solved? Not by a long shot. Do we know when they will be? Of course not. There is progress though.

As far as I know, nobody is making hard progress on when Jesus is coming back.