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What the heck does that actually mean? Can we just admit that these statements are religious, but wrapped in non-religious language?

It's actually the reverse. The religious view is God gave us the Earth as a kind of fruit to be plucked. Since we go on to live in Heaven for eternity the stewardship of the Earth is sorta in the hands of the Aethists and non-believers...

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That's an extremely narrow, Judaeo-Christian view of religion.

You're right. But I wanted to reply on the same level as the OP.

I thought the OP's point was that phrases like "taking control over our stewardship of the planet" was a religious statement in that the only reason the concepts in it have any grounding is through the faith of the person saying them. That's not religion-specific.

I don't follow you on the jump from unfounded to religious. Not every statement which does not include a scientific footnote is religious in nature.

We're drifting into semantics here, but it boils down to whether you have to take something on faith or not. Taking anything without a "scientific footnote" as true relies on belief, because it cannot rely on proof. That makes it an article of faith, which is a synonym for religion in the sense I believe the OP used it.

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