I think any ideology can function psychologically as a religion. That includes political ideologies, mysticism, pseudoscience — whatever.
***I agree. You also point out earlier that “It’s something of a relief to hear that the official position of FR is that science is not a religion.” These two thoughts seem to be opposed. Why would you find it such a relief if you also know that such “idealogies can function as a religion”?
It's sarcasm. Regardless of what a particular moderator might say, science is continually labeled a religion on science threads.
Evolution is so labeled because its findings are inconvenient to some believers. Evolution sprang out of geology, so geology is also tarred with the same brush. Geology bases its ages on physics, so physics is tarred with the same brush. Trigonometry finds a minimum age for the universe to be 168,000 years, so mathematics is inconvenient to religion. There is no branch of science that has mot been thrown under the bus.