I also found that point very off-putting for the same reason. If, for a more technical audience, we replace "algorithm" with "ranking heuristic", then I think

I also found that point very off-putting for the same reason. If, for a more technical audience, we replace "algorithm" with "ranking heuristic", then I think the religious comparison makes more sense. All of the "algorithms" that he references in the article are of this form, and the comments do not apply to more generalized algorithms; nobody is going to claim that "the QuickSort God is a fast sorting God" (though that does have a certain poetry). Really, though, these heuristics and people's reaction to them harks back to earlier roots than religion in the modern sense; things like shamanism and magic (or "cargo-cult science"): the leap from "there are more birds in the sky before it rains" to "you there -- go into the forest to scare some birds, we need rain".