I'm not sure I see the religious aspect. It's more of an inevitable consequence (over an unknown timeline, granted) of the assumption that human intelligence i

I'm not sure I see the religious aspect. It's more of an inevitable consequence (over an unknown timeline, granted) of the assumption that human intelligence is not some kind of absolute limit, and can be reproduced in a non-biological system. I admit that is still an assumption, but the opposite seems harder to support to me, though we're all admittedly guessing here. Once you make that assumption, then yes of course it follows that the 'beyond human intelligence' would be able to do all of the things that human intelligence is already doing. Namely, science, mathematics, developing AI systems etc.