What I think you're not reckoning with is the sociological, Durkheimian sense of religion. Religiosity ends up being an aspect of tribalism. That is, religion is the pomp and circumstance surrounding the choice of our ultimate values and our taking of something to be sacred or worth living for.
This kind of irrational religiosity/tribalism does indeed appear in secular societies. For example, Lee Smolin makes the case, in The Trouble With Physics, that string theory turned into a cult.
The universality of religion in large societies, in that sociological sense isn't fully explained by positing the cynical moves of the power elites. The tribal defense of our ultimate values (in Paul Tillich's sense) looks more like a primitive fear of enlightenment, of living without illusions.
In so far as atheism represents that kind of enlightenment, the death not just of God but of all delusory protections of our ultimate values, the question is what secular values survive this hyperskeptical scrutiny. Can humans evolve into the kind of animal that doesn't need religion or idols (false gods), or will we always retreat to dubious stand-ins for theistic religion?
My article is largely hypothetical, but there are relatively secular societies. China is one, and some European countries are others. Some countries like the US claim to be Christian, but they're functionally secular. And what we find is that secular irrationalities replace the old theistic ones. In China there's worship of the state. In the US, there are lots of idols, from money to the free market, to the US Constitution, to celebrities, and so on.
But China is perhaps the most consistently atheistic country in that it's also the most unapologetically pragmatic and amoral one. So the question would be whether a robotic secular nation, with no firm convictions or ultimate values would be progressive. I write about this aspect of China elsewhere:
