Part 6: Another Test

This paper by Jonathan Jong discusses two classic tests for religious definitions: 

1. the football test and 
2. the (atheistic Theravada) Buddhist test.

The football test analyzes whether hyper-zealous football fanatics, who are extremely tribal, get incorrectly classified as a religion.  This is a false positive test.  The atheistic Theravada Buddhist test analyzes whether a clearly religious group which lacks supernatural appeals is incorrectly missed as a religion.  This is a false negative test. 

Jong, and others, step around these issues by promoting a multi-factored cognitive science phenomenological approach to religious definitions. James Lindsay has done much the same thing.  Here is a rather long quote from Jong (2015)

CSR (cognitive science of religion) deals in specific hypotheses about specific features that often occur across religions traditionally conceived, but also elsewhere, in the secular world as it were. us, such phenomena as the belief in supernatural agents, ecstatic experiences, participation in causally opaque action sequences, formation of socially cohesive non- kin groups, obedience to moral codes, and so forth may contingently co-occur in different ways under different circumstances, in both ostensibly religious and nonreligious contexts. Furthermore, they are all products of different psychological mechanisms or cultural strategies, which themselves emerged to solve different evolutionary problems. Indeed, the causal relations between and among these phenomena are demonstrably variable and contingent.

This approach to religion entails that some previously apparently intractable research problems turn out to be meaningless because they were predicated on a mistaken reification of religion. Does religion lead to moral behaviour? Is religion an evolutionary adaptation? These questions imply that there is such a coherent, identifiable thing as religion, such that it can lead to moral behaviour (or not), and be an evolutionary adaptation or a spandrel or an exaptation. 

FOOTBALL FANATICS TEST

So let’s test if our original multi-factored behavioural definition of religion, which was determined to have a religious threshold value of 16 or 17 out of 27 passes the football fanatic test…

Football Fanatics

	High  (3)	Moderate (2)	Low  (1)	Non-existent (0)
Moral Big Brother		x	x
Moral Big Brother’s embodiment level			x
Sacred values (volume)		x	x
Sacred values (significance lvl)		x
Common ritual (combo of significance & frequency)	x
Costly commitments		x
Clean hand actions			x
Avg degree of member’s identity fusion	x
Steepness of In-group out-group gradient	x	x

Sum = 18.5/27

Here’s my thinking

Moral Big Brother - Is supporting another team fundamentally wrong? For everyone? Does it make them evil? No. But there are actions that fans can take that might be wrong on a transcendent level.  Disloyalty is the main example.

Moral Big Brother’s embodiment level - Is there a group agent that is somewhat embodied? No. There is the team’s historical essence. Alignment to that history and its moral values plays some role in fans actions, and a large role in their football related actions. But, this historical essence, isn’t overly embodied. It is sensed, but minimally personified.

Sacred values (volume) - There are certain taboos that can’t be broken with respect to football. Wearing the wrong color. Cheering for the wrong team. Not being a mate. etc.

Sacred values (significance lvl) - What would happen if someone wore the opposing team’s colours to an event? They wouldn’t be killed, but they may be disfellowed.

Costly commitments - Travelling to other countries to watch and support matches is costly.

Clean hand actions - I couldn’t think of much here. The only obvious thing I could think about was having a weakly loyal fan carry in the group's historically significant banner.

Avg degree of member’s identity fusion - Their life and identity revolves around their team.

Steepness of in-group out-group gradient - Once you’re in the group, switching to another team would prevent future fellowship. But do football fanatics refuse to interact with agnostics? No. Do they refuse to interact with people who are ostensibly on the opposing team’s side but who minimally interested? A bit, but their degree of reservation probably falls off quite quickly with distance from a football event. The gradient is most steep for opposing team fans. Then it is high; probably as high as modern pluralistic religions, but not as high as medieval and older religions.

Conclusion

Football fanatics meet my threshold for religion. They are about as religious as more radicalized versions of Proud Boys are. Indeed, the two groups seem to have very similar dynamics. Football fanatics are higher on sacred values, while Proud Boys are higher on moral big brothers. It is interesting to note which religious features come out with each group. Proud boys have stronger Moral Big Brothers. Footballers have stronger sacred values. Holistically, I think radical Proud Boys would be more religious than football fanatics? Why? The moral big brother issue strikes me as more significant than the sacred values issue. Moral narratives matter. Sacred values can get teased together with loyalty issues. 

So, in general, I think my rating scale works fine with the Football test. I would consider them quasi-religious. It’s just that their religiosity gets turned on and off depending upon the social situation. I don’t have a problem with that. I think turning on and off religion based upon context is a very interesting “religious” innovation. It makes for a very neat pluralistic solution.

Whitehouse’s imagistic versus doctrinal categorization of religion is probably highly relevant to football fanatic and Theravada Buddhism tests. He proposes that imagistic incarnations of religion make up for ritual frequency via rarer episodes with correspondingly large emotive depth.

ANTIFA TEST

Where would Antifa fit?

Antifa

	High  (3)	Moderate (2)	Low  (1)	Non-existent (0)
Moral Big Brother		x
Moral Big Brother’s embodiment level		x
Sacred values (volume)	x	x
Sacred values (significance lvl)	x	x
Common ritual (combo of significance & frequency)	x
Costly commitments	x
Clean hand actions	x	x
Avg degree of member’s identity fusion	x
Steepness of In-group out-group gradient	x	x

Sum = 23/27

Anita is clearly very religious. It is on par with most traditional religions. My rating scale does not seem able to reflect cult-like dynamics.  I would guess there it needs a non-linear weighting for extreme measures. For instance, Antifa’s cult-like social dynamics may be so extreme that the “steepness of in-group out-group gradient” may need an “extreme” column with a value of 6. But, as with the football case, it is hard to tease out what effect acceptance of casual associations have on group gradients. Footballers and Antifa seem fine with casual interactions with “unbelievers”. Many cultists are not. Such interactions stain.

ATHEISTIC THERAVADA BUDDHISM TEST

I admit to not knowing a lot about Buddhism or its Theravada branch. But, based on a few hours on online reading and a two month trip to Thailand….

Theravada Buddhism

	High  (3)	Moderate (2)	Low  (1)	Non-existent (0)
Moral Big Brother		x	x
Moral Big Brother’s embodiment level	x	x
Sacred values (volume)		x
Sacred values (significance lvl)		x
Common ritual (combo of significance & frequency)		x
Costly commitments	x
Clean hand actions		?
Avg degree of member’s identity fusion	x
Steepness of In-group out-group gradient		x	x

Sum = 19.5/27

Moral Big Brother - There is a moral group agent, but it is not embodied. The moral big brother is more the inferred superpositions of this belief system’s various positions.

Moral Big Brother’s embodiment level - There are no supernatural agents. There is a historical Buddha.

Sacred values (volume) - Theravada Buddhism certainly has sacred values. Have you tried going to monastery in shorts or without a shirt? Just because people think one’s actions will produce its own consequences doesn’t mean that in practice things are operationalized in terms of taboos and sacred values. It’s just highly pluralized.

Sacred values (significance lvl) - What would happen if someone wore the opposing team’s colours to an event? They wouldn’t be killed, but they may be excommunicated.

Costly commitments - Travelling to other countries to watch and support matches.

Clean hand actions - I couldn’t think of much here. Perhaps the only act would be carrying in a banner by someone who is weakly loyal.

Avg degree of member’s identity fusion - Buddhists seem tied to a cultural group and tradition.

Steepness of in-group out-group gradient - I'm not sure on this one. I get the sense they are fairly pluralistic. But normal cultural affinities can't be denied.

Conclusion

Theravistic Buddhism is on the edge between quasi-religiosity and classic religiosity.  Its atheistic character does not result in a false negative reading. My amateurish model catches it as it should.

Part 5: Grand Conclusions

• Part 1: Trajectories of new religious movements
• Part 2: Social Justice sects
• Part 3: Social Justice sect coherence
• Part 4: Do social justice sects match new religious counterparts
• Part 5: Grand conclusions
• Part 6: Further validation testing

SERIES CONCLUSIONS

Social Justice has a lot of moving parts. Viewing it as a single entity unified by intersectional or Marxist ideology is an unsatisfactorily coarse a unit of analysis. Social Justice is composed of many different types of groups. Many of these groups have some, but not all of the characteristics of biologically adaptive groups or the sub-set of biologically adaptive groups we call religion. When you take a broad definition of religion it is hard not to see parallels between religion and radical activist social justice.

In exploring social justice sects from a religious lens, I have to conclude that social justice can be religious. But, any single sect on its own (other than Antifa cults) has a hard time at it. But, when moderately coupled, a number of sects can resonate a net religious like experience and belief system.

Analysis of this belief system is likely stymied by its unique component based formation. No single piece (other than Antifa cults) appears overly religious. Certainly radically zealous individuals within each sect can be religious, but one is hard pressed to say any group as an entity is fully religious. Many sects certainly signal religiosity, but I suspect no one will have an easy time winning an argument this way.

I’m led to believe that the uniqueness of Social Justice faith is not just as James Lindsay suggest, the re-invention of religion from within a secular modern paradigm, but also via an unique formulation of a full adaptive religious experience via a series of different components (sects) that are only weakly to moderately coupled.

This significantly aids the ability to co-opt state structures. No component (sect) on its own is overly threatening. But, state co-option fuels the fitness requirements adaptive group stability requires.  There are no hidden hierarchies at work. There are simply disparate groups of people each trying to “be on the right side of history” by helping disadvantaged groups. But each of these groups (sects) is highly likely to confer fitness advantages to its weakly coupled compatriots. 

That this fits with Peter Turchin’s structural demographic theory of intra-elite competition and quasi-elite filtering is an unexpected avenue of support.

Part 4: Do Social Justice Sects Match New Religious Movements

The first post in this series dealt with the behavioural categorization of new religious movements.  This was then validated against a multi-factored behavioural definition of religion based on Scott Atran’s work from “In God’s We Trust”. This satisfied me that there is a rough change point where things become religious. Classical religions are highly refined new religious movements which are optimized for a specific gene-cultural cognitive landscape. As James Lindsay has said, this landscape has changed as of late. Supernaturalism is now counter-fit (in the biological sense). Memes are optimized via slightly counter-intuitiveness (mixed with some behavioural and adaptive group factors). Supernaturalism is just too unbelievable now. Social Justice seems, at first blush, to fit a religious categorization, and has stumbled upon ways to optimize its memetic fitness within a modern landscape.

The second post in this series looked at Social Justice sects. Not all sects were equally as viable (as determined by adaptive group biology).  Access to resources really determined long term sect viability. The only fully adaptive group were Antifa-like protest cults. Other sects which showed near adaptiveness had one or two adaptive issues to fix.  Interestingly enough, some mutualistic support between sects solved most of the viable sect’s adaptive issues.

The third post explored Social Justice Sect Co-orindation. Co-option of state institutions via some sort of pyramid scheme was a possible solution to the challenge of group-provided benefits. This group-benefit solution enables sects to remain loosely-coupled via a vague underling ideological thread but with mutually supportive roles. A ritualized “coming of age” phase was an easy, and empirically validateable, solution to the mutualism issue.

This fourth post gets back comparing the sect types new religious movements usually operate within to those I’ve inferred occur within activist social justice.

Posts in this series

• Part 1: Trajectories of new religious movements
• Part 2: Social Justice sects
• Part 3: Social Justice sect coherence
• Part 4: Do social justice sects match new religious counterparts
• Part 5: Grand conclusions
• Part 6: Further validation testing

Part 4: Do Social Justice Sects Match New Religious Movements

Here are the sect categorizations my armchair theorizing produced

New Religious Movements

• Millennial
• Luddites
• Cults
• Evangelicals
• Gnostics/Mystics
• Revelatory

Activist Social Justice

• Theorists
• Protestors
• Online mobsters
• Puritans
• Activist organizers
• Structuralists
• Equity at any cost’ers
• Chosen people
• Allies

Here is the pairing

Activist Social Justice Sect	Closest Religious Sect Equivalent	Degree of Fit
Theorists	Evangelicals	moderate  but varies based upon zealousness
(antifa-like) Protestors	Cults	strong
Online Mobsters	Cults or Evangelicals	weak
Puritans	Luddites	extremely weak
Activist Organizers	Millenials Cult (of personality)	weak Activists aren’t ushering in a utopia, but they are adjusting the environment to produce more utopian-like pockets They aren’t based around any single cult of personality
Structuralists	none
Equity at any Cost’ers	Luddites	strong in theory, weak in practice Few equity at any cost’ers are extreme enough or articulate enough in their theory to even approach a Luddite behavioural transition
Chosen People	Revelatory Gnostics/Mystics Millenial	moderate fit is slightly stronger when taken together
Allies	Gnostics/Mystics Revelatory	moderate

ANALYSIS

After I had finished detailing religious sect categorization while writing the first post in this series, I expected the millennial categorization to most closely match Social Justice. Looks like I was wrong. It has the worst fit.

Cultish sects have the best fit. Clearly antifa-like protest groups are cult like. But that is low hanging fruit. Social Justice is not characterized by its most extreme affiliates. Antifa is also a negative not positive based organization (i.e. in theory it's based on a rejection of things rather than the support of things...)

Ludditism has a good theoretical fit but poor actual fit. I’d guess it is a potential avenue some radicals could take but most won’t. There are major scale issues. How can you get a group of people to reproduce nation state level organizations? You can’t. This pairing seems practically impossible (even though I am still really intrigued by the parallels!!!)

Let’s compare the rest of the sects to their previously inferred adaptiveness over time (see part 3)

Activist Social Justice Sect	Closest Religious Sect Equivalent	Degree of Fit	Social Justice Adaptiveness Over Time
Theorists	Evangelicals	moderate	strong potential Missing: sacred values, common ritual, and costly commitments
Online Mobsters	Cults or Evangelicals	weak	Weak Missing: freeloader detection & punishment, costly commitments and steep in-group out-group gradients.
Activist Organizers	Millenial Cult of personality	weak	Strong Missing: Freeloader detection & punishment
Chosen People	Revelatory Gnostics/Mystics Millenial	moderate	Strong
Allies	Gnostics/Mystics Revelatory	moderate	Lots of potential, but weak in practice

Activist Organizers represent the most interesting row of information. 

• Millennialism tends to work as a short-term solution for new religious movements, but not as a long-term solution.  
• Activist Organizing is strongly adaptive over time, but has no equivalent religious solution. 
• Activist Organizing isn’t based on millenialistic principles.
• It is based on a unique formulation of personality cults. Rather than being based on single personalities, it is based on a system of personalities generated by formal post-secondary departments and quasi-religious political organizations. In this sense it is very much like non-denominational Evangelical landscape where people support preachers based upon their appeal.  This is a robust solution which is not characteristic of New Religious Movements (it induces too much splitting)

The alignment between Theorists and Evangelicals seems sensical. 

The Gnostic / Revelatory thread between Chosen People and Allies is also interesting. Are the intersectional insights various “People of Colour” produce sufficiently mystical to sustain orientation toward them? I doubt it, but this might explain why we’re seeing moves to ever finer grained and more obtuse identity celebrations. Is this an implicit response to psychological resonances toward certain level of quasi-factual /mysteriousness? Is it a way of signalling diversity’s (unfathomable) epistemological depth? I’m not sure. But, it’s an intriguing thought.

The strong potential adaptiveness of Chosen People and Allies suggest these groups have the potential to provide fitness enhancing benefits to their members. The rough religious connection suggests this might involve specialized knowledge (or specialized/hard-to-fake in-group signalling). Could this come about with resume filtering diversity statements? Via mystic probing "are you also in awe of native spirituality's amazing insights"? I’m not sure. I suspect so.

CONCLUSION

Matching Social Justice sects with New Religious Movement sects suggests there are a number of moderate fits between the two. This weakly supports the possibility that Social Justice is a modern incarnation of religion, or that it is a major evolutionary transition in religion itself. Social Justice can be considered a non-supernatural religion via multi-factored behaviour/dynamical analysis.

Sect matching also helps reveal which Social Justice sects have growth potential and which don’t.  While it may be coincidental, it seems like the Social Justice sects with the greatest growth potential (via adaptive group analysis) are those which also largely reside or are generated by post-secondary institutions. This includes

• Theorist sects
• Activist organizer sects
• Chosen people sects
• Ally sects

This certainly doesn’t hinder mutualism between these sects. This weakly supports the conclusions of the third post in this series - that social justice sects can mutually support each other via some “coming of age” protest ritual which then supports a pyramid like advancements and expansions within the overall movement itself.