'Social Justice" As Religion

B.J. Campbell has an interesting, if incomplete, essay at Medium about the ways in which "social justice" resembles religion. Summarizing a YouTube talk by Helen Pluckrose, James Lindsey, and others, he writes:

Defining religion is tough, because there’s no explicit quality that defines them, but they share a broad range of features which bind them conceptually. They are meaning making structures, which help us make sense of things we find chaotic or don’t understand. Religious communities are organized around adoption and promulgation of certain moral principles. They have scripture, which conveys doctrines and ideology. They focus on moral purity, they focus on the in-group, they demonize the out-group, and they demonize and excommunicate blasphemers. They impart a sense of control, if not actual control, over uncontrollable circumstances.

Social Justice has all this stuff.

There are many important additional parallels. Religions have a tendency to identify everything good with God, so when a religious person hears an atheist say they don’t believe in God, the religious person has a tendency to hear that to mean they don’t believe in Good. Social Justice followers react the same way. When someone questions their equity driven approach to “equality,” that’s “hate speech.”

Religious thinkers invent their own epistemologies, in such a manner that their religious teachings become unfalsifiable. The Social Justice approach to this is called “standpoint epistemology,” and finds its roots in cultural postmodernism. If you and I disagree, then that’s because we come from different standpoints, therefore you cannot falsify my claim because you lack my standpoint. This is the Social Justice adaptation of “God put the dinosaur bones there.”

I would argue that a better way to express this is, religious teachings explain the natural world with unfalsifiable first principles, which is what distinguishes them from empiricism. This, in fact, forms the primary reason "social justice", as currently understood, is a kind of religion. If you claim that patriarchy is a myth, that "male privilege" is easily disproved by looking at males in shabby conditions, you directly attack a first principle, and thus have exposed yourself a heretic, as James Damore. Scott Aaronson saw through this some long while back with his brilliant dismissal of "patriarchy".

More, to excuse themselves of acts they accuse others of, social justice advocates play dictionary games. Racism, as Campbell elsewhere writes, redefines the word to exclude academics engaging racist arguments — such as "white privilege". The problem this seeks to elide is that of preferring lazy generalization to taking into consideration specific circumstances, i.e. of having to actually think.

But back to religion, Campbell starts to wrap up:

We could easily take this realization that Social Justice is a religion and use it to bludgeon and troll its proponents, who generally proport themselves be anti-religion, but in my opinion that would be sloppy and unconstructive and generally not very nice.

Given its proponents repeatedly "bludgeon and troll" everyone outside academia, expecting them to kowtow to their benighted mob, "generally not very nice" describes the social justice pitchfork wielders. Theirs is an expansionist, totalitarian ideology, hostile to science. Grievance studies programs therefore rightly need to be chased out of public universities, on the same grounds that we do not have seminaries at Iowa State. If people wish to pursue women's studies, they may do so alongside the Yalies getting divinity degrees.