Believing in people isn't religious discourse like believing in God is, or more generally "believing in the coming of superhuman entity," and I think there's no denying that AI safety circles are somewhat similar in structure to 60s, and then later 80s doomsday cult-craze. The setting is different every time, i.e. it doesn't have to be a church-like organisation, it could also be nuclear cold-war, or ecological catastrophe kind of thing; a network of sparse, but also surprisingly well-connected groups, primarily occupied with religious discourse, petty in-group politics of psychosis, all of it contributes to institutional syndrome of sorts.

Sam is very transparent in his self-interest, it's the "patriots" you should beware.