We are most definitely not hard wired for religion. It's a mythology that preceded the scientific era. In a thousand years or less it will be laughed off like the talking donkey nonsense. We're not hard wired at all...
Now, Marx couldn't think of politics as independent from the interests of the capitalist class. That's why he failed, as Popper described: the New Deal, Social Security, public and subsidized education, progressive taxation... all those things came and made his prophecy fail. As in hindsight was to be expected, if only because prophecies rarely become true.
Today, Kurzweil can't think of biology as the vast, incredibly complex area that it is, and so his prophecy will fail when it's clear how difficult it is to achieve immortality, or full cybernetisation of the human mind, or general AI, or whatever. I am 90% confident in that outcome.
Yeah, we are not hard wired for religion, but still it's very easy to fall for it. Scientific reasoning is not and probably never will be the norm, if simply for the fact that we're just poor dumb chimps. After all, religion didn't stop appearing after 1900. The Scientologists are proof of that.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millenarianism : a Great Event will come during which Humanity will be Judged and Reborn. Singularity just takes out the Judgement part.
[2] LOAR forgets how Moore's law, for example, was very specific and probably short-term. If Kurzweil had been born in the 19th century, he would have probably been talking about the coming Steam Engine Singularity. In the 60s, he'd be talking about scientific bases on Mars by 2000...
I agree there's little that's religious about the Singularity itself or most Singularitarians (http://www.acceleratingfuture.com/steven/?p=21), and the above poster is probably mislead about it. (I suspect he's mislead because he brought up the 2045 date and because he's confused about identity. That date I believe is only professed strongly by Kurzweil in the public mediasphere, who is at most with respect to the Singularity a predictor with some past successes and equipped with a strong argument based on accelerated returns, but he isn't working directly toward a positive (or negative) Singularity while those who are that I'm aware of hesitate to estimate date ranges.) Personally I think barring mass human extinction the stage is set for a Singularity event within this century, and I do have many justifications for it, not a religious "I have faith and faith is good" 'justification' or an apologetic one trying to extract justification by means of some shaky philosophy and an a priori sacred book (Singularity is Near? Never read it) containing no significant errors.