As others sort-of said, there is the religion as ideology, and religion as communal practice. The former is what the most objections are against, the latter is what many people here are actually trying to recreate, without any religious overtones (like the annual Winter Solstice thing). People are extremely vulnerable to ideological hacking, and frowning upon overtly political and overtly religious advocacy helps somewhat to guard against the two most common attack vectors.
That said, there is definitely a cultish feeling that this site gives to the outsiders, with a cluster of beliefs that one might consider religion-like. I am not saying they are necessarily inaccurate, but that they are out there enough, that doubting them explicitly here is likely to elicit a strong and negative reaction. This is not unexpected, and there is a friendly push back against it, by those who prefer to call themselves “post-rationalists”. But that’s another story.
Any cluster of beliefs can be and often is considered religion-like, simply because it is a cluster of beliefs. Science, for example. Or even Buffy fandom.
I don’t know any, what could one call them, scientistists? “Scientism” seems to be just a boo word for scientists who point out the vanity of religion and woo.
Science is not a collection of dogma but there are some people that really try to approach it that way.
There are some people that name drop big scientist with reverence while demonstarting misunderstandings of their theories (personality of scientist as idol)
For some “belief in science” takes the form of appeal to authority of big scientific organizations such as universities (trying to mimic the role of bible or pope). One of the semi-big points about empirical methods is that looking at the world is given big weight and who says what is of lesser importance. (There is trickyness as someone might give authority to universities because of their epistemelogical competence). In that way there is a big difference in “believing in evolution” and “understanding evolution”. Evolution requires 0 faith so believing it in like you would believe in a god is improper. Likewise somebody might be “raised catholic” but you can’t be “raised as scientific”. A person might or might not have access to tetriary education but science is not a world view so its not a denomination. Science is about facts so it can’t substitute for an opinion.
That was the point I was aiming at. There are people who will call a cluster of beliefs “like a religion”, “like a cult”, and so on, just because it is a cluster of beliefs. What do they even mean? Nothing beyond trying to associate the thing with the name of something else that may have nothing to do with the thing.
As others sort-of said, there is the religion as ideology, and religion as communal practice. The former is what the most objections are against, the latter is what many people here are actually trying to recreate, without any religious overtones (like the annual Winter Solstice thing). People are extremely vulnerable to ideological hacking, and frowning upon overtly political and overtly religious advocacy helps somewhat to guard against the two most common attack vectors.
That said, there is definitely a cultish feeling that this site gives to the outsiders, with a cluster of beliefs that one might consider religion-like. I am not saying they are necessarily inaccurate, but that they are out there enough, that doubting them explicitly here is likely to elicit a strong and negative reaction. This is not unexpected, and there is a friendly push back against it, by those who prefer to call themselves “post-rationalists”. But that’s another story.
Any cluster of beliefs can be and often is considered religion-like, simply because it is a cluster of beliefs. Science, for example. Or even Buffy fandom.
One can hold any belief religiously but not all clusters of beliefs or believers are religion-like.
There is a subset of Buffy fandom that is religious and a subset that isn’t and drawing that line isn’t especially challenging.
Science doesn’t need to be or contain scientism. Religion of science might be a real thing but that doesn’t make science a religion.
I don’t know any, what could one call them, scientistists? “Scientism” seems to be just a boo word for scientists who point out the vanity of religion and woo.
Science is not a collection of dogma but there are some people that really try to approach it that way.
There are some people that name drop big scientist with reverence while demonstarting misunderstandings of their theories (personality of scientist as idol)
For some “belief in science” takes the form of appeal to authority of big scientific organizations such as universities (trying to mimic the role of bible or pope). One of the semi-big points about empirical methods is that looking at the world is given big weight and who says what is of lesser importance. (There is trickyness as someone might give authority to universities because of their epistemelogical competence). In that way there is a big difference in “believing in evolution” and “understanding evolution”. Evolution requires 0 faith so believing it in like you would believe in a god is improper. Likewise somebody might be “raised catholic” but you can’t be “raised as scientific”. A person might or might not have access to tetriary education but science is not a world view so its not a denomination. Science is about facts so it can’t substitute for an opinion.
This argument proves too much, doesn’t it?
That was the point I was aiming at. There are people who will call a cluster of beliefs “like a religion”, “like a cult”, and so on, just because it is a cluster of beliefs. What do they even mean? Nothing beyond trying to associate the thing with the name of something else that may have nothing to do with the thing.
What is a religion if not a cluster of beliefs? (The Buffy fandom doesn’t sound like a cluster of beliefs.)
Every religion is a cluster of beliefs (and practices), but clusters of beliefs and practices covers far more than just religion.
It seems like a fandom would be defined by
valuing or appreciating a work.
watching/etc. the work as applicable.
These don’t seem like beliefs.