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So did communism and socialism and many other ideologies.
The key distinction is how they treat axioms. For all that they try to avoid talking about it, non-religious (the kind where you don't find someone espousing belief in deities or supernatural entities) ideologies cannot refuse the charge that their axioms are ultimately arbitrary. You can debate a communist and in theory, persuade them to some other view.
Religions, however, do not admit or accept this. As far as they are concerned, there is an objective moral standard and everyone is obligated to follow it. Here, you can only convince someone they are wrong about their beliefs to the extent they are either misinformed or inconsistent about their own ideology.
Here on Earth, the costs to a person to disavow their former ideology or religion are identical: social pariahdom from former friends, psychological pain caused by having to completely reassess very deeply-held views, etc. and people tend to grasp this quickly. Sometimes this is after they change their views and then run back because they can't bear the costs. But the cost to the religious believer is much higher, because religions often carry explicit warnings that if you turn from the faith, you will be subject to divine punishment in the form of Hell or something else. In the former's case, you're talking about infinite punishment.
This is why religion is a protected class and ideology/political beliefs are not. The former cannot be reasonably changed if you are a sincere believer, but political views can be.
There may be value in saying that political ideologies should be treated like a religion. But it would be another brick in the foundation which treats a man as not a rational human capable of making his own decisions. I don't think people necessarily want to lay that brick. It supports more than you assume.
You think Wokism doesn't have this feature?
As I said, it and other non-religious ideologies try to dodge the question, but they are ultimately relying on an axiom or axioms somewhere, and all of them are humanly chosen. I think they may try to hide the fact that human-chosen axioms require the bearer to be more humble about how certain they are, but a rational believer would recognize this and adjust accordingly. I don't think religion requires the same humility. Why would it, most of them tell you that you and everyone who agrees with you is correct on one of the most important questions of all time.
They can absolutely do this. The whole reason postmodernism and critical theory were invented was to get around having to defend anything properly. Wokism posits that blacks are holy. Push them on why this should be and you will eventually get an answer roughly equivalent to "God said so," plus they will be very upset.
No, it doesn’t. They will be very upset because you’re strawmanning.
Can you give any examples?
Yes!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Black_Lives_Matter_street_murals
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/okay-to-be-white-halifax-1.4887174
I promise this is not meant to be a low effort sneer. The treatment of these two slogans only makes sense if they are religious icons and heresy, respectively.
We make public statements, even murals, for things other than religious icons. Is New Deal art religious? Is everything funded by the National Endowment for the Arts?? I could see a case for the Lincoln memorial bordering on religious, but what about the Washington monument? The Capitol proper? These are big artistic projects explicitly symbolizing our culture—but they remain firmly in the realm of the secular.
The same applies for unappealing speech. It’s a much broader category than heresy. You could replace those posters with pornography, slander, even proselytizing and see a similar article. Offending/intriguing the public enough to get a news article does not require a religious schism.
Yeah, but ignoring the ideological significance of art for a second, people do not get nearly as upset when regular art (especially low effort stuff) is besmirched or even vandalized. Can you imagine the police investigating some tire marks on a crosswalk, were it not a religious symbol? The same thing has happened with BLM logos as well.
Consider that the slogan "black lives matter," was painted by the government (or sanctioned) in huge letters on countless prominent streets in America. Then consider that the nearly identical but less assertive "it's ok to be white" on 8x11 sheets of paper launched police investigations and news articles about how racists are among us.
Yes, there is a double standard, and I'm not trying to argue that people feel the same about black and white identity politics. What's that got to do with the religious character of a belief?
Look, if you swapped out the 8x11s for glossy photos of someone's asshole, regardless of race, I'd expect people to get upset, launch investigations and write news articles. Does that make obscene pictures religious? There are perfectly secular reasons to notice and be concerned about them. In the case of the "ok to be white" posters, maybe those reasons are dumb/inconsistent. It doesn't mean they're religious.
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