Hi KiA, long time lurker here, but i guess i should contribute something eventually...

So the background to this thought is that i was having a discussion with a Young Earth Creationist Homophobe that i work with - who is not actually a bad guy to work with, since he keeps his beliefs to himself and recognizes he can't demand that other people believe the same thing.

Of course i'm a liberal atheist, and was, as always, trying to argue him out of his beliefs (he likes to debate, no really). But i was struck by how similar his line of reasoning to that of SJWs i have debated with. See, as far as he is concerned, the bible provides evidence for the proof of God, and for the age of the Earth etc, and the scientists who disagree have been corrupted and their evidence and experiments are flawed. However, the bible lays down a model of how people should behave, and if we accept this into our governments and our hearts we will all be much happier as we live on Earth.

Wikipedia defines religion in an interesting way:

A religion is an organized collection of beliefs, cultural systems, and world views that relate humanity to an order of existence.[note 1] Many religions have narratives, symbols, and sacred histories that aim to explain the meaning of life, the origin of life, or the Universe. From their beliefs about the cosmos and human nature, people may derive morality, ethics, religious laws or a preferred lifestyle.

Note 1: While religion is difficult to define, one standard model of religion, used in religious studies courses, was proposed by Clifford Geertz, who simply called it a "cultural system" (Clifford Geertz, Religion as a Cultural System, 1973). A critique of Geertz's model by Talal Asad categorized religion as "an anthropological category".

Also:

The sociologist Durkheim, in his seminal book The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, defined religion as a "unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things".[29] By sacred things he meant things "set apart and forbidden—beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them". Sacred things are not, however, limited to gods or spirits.

Note 2: That is how, according to Durkheim, Buddhism is a religion. "In default of gods, Buddhism admits the existence of sacred things, namely, the four noble truths and the practices derived from them"

So the theory here is that you don't need a God or spiritual beliefs to call something a religion. You simply need 'sacred things', and i think Social Justice has plenty of those. What if we examine how much Social Justice looks like a Buddhism-style religion:

1) They have sacred truths which cannot be refuted by science, regardless of how much evidence there is: Human beings are all absolutely equal and there are no biological differences between men/women's brains, or between races. Transgenderism, or any sexuality, has no biological basis. Capitalism is evil, straight sexuality is evil (most of the time), basic human psychological needs, like the male sex drive, or the desire to have babies, are not biological etc.

2) They believe in the existence of actual entities which cannot be concretely defined, or proven, but which nevertheless control the world: The Patriarchy, The Male Gaze, White Privilege, and Rape Culture.

3) They have a rigid hierarchy of social status and political power(the progressive stack), and a strongly defined cultural system that revolves around which specific artists/writers/game developers are acceptable and which are not. They have clearly outlined practices and rules to follow if you don't want to be condemned (trigger warnings, check your privilege)

4) They have sacred texts which they will never question (Critical Theory core texts like Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, or Horkheimer's Dialectic of Enlightenment). In fact, to explain further, these texts are buried so deeply in the academic fields of research that have founded social justice, that most SJWs probably have never heard of them. However, if you debate a sociologist or critical race theorist, these texts will come up as you cut to the core of their belief structures. These texts deal with the nature of truth, the human spirit, and the irrelevance of 'hard science', and are highly pseudo-scientific in their arguments. They have been used as the basis for huge chunks of liberal ideology, from marxism, to anarchism, to radical feminism.

5) They believe in a tightly defined morality, that is created by a quasi-spiritual entitiy (pure equality for all beings), but is threatened by another quasi-spiritual entity (culture)

I think it would be really interesting to start responding to SJW arguments in a way that makes clear that they have beliefs, and those beliefs have no right to be privileged over the beliefs of any other religion. If they want to make extraordinary claims they have to provide extraordinary evidence, or accept that not everybody shares their beliefs, and they need to respect that.

TLDR: Everyone gives too much respect to the authority of Social Justice and Feminism because they have 'academic' backing. However, this is a quasi religious belief system, so the next time someone asks you if you are a feminist, you should say "I don't believe in Feminism, because you have not convinced me that your fundamental beliefs are true"