Fandom makes no claim about what is true, and that is what a religion is for

The argument

Opponents of the comparison argue that it mistakes the furniture of religion for the thing itself. What distinguishes a religion from the other practices that gather people, give them songs and set places aside is that it asserts something about reality: that there is an order beyond the visible one, that persons stand in some particular relation to it, and that this holds whether or not anyone finds it comforting. Everything else, the calendar, the ritual, the costume, follows from the claim and exists to carry it. Fandom asserts nothing of the sort, and its participants know it. No supporter holds that the club brought the world into being, that it hears them, that it will judge them, or that it continues after their death. Ask a supporter whether any of that is true and they will say plainly that it is not, and the saying costs them nothing, because the commitment never rested on it. A believer asked the equivalent question is being asked whether their religion is false, which is a different kind of question and cannot be answered in the negative while the practice goes on unchanged. This asymmetry, the argument runs, is decisive rather than incidental. A practice that survives the frank admission that none of its claims are true is not an unusual religion; it is something else that has taken up religion's shapes because those shapes are good at organising crowds and feeling. The comparison is a useful metaphor, and metaphor is all it is: the word religion does work in the sentence that the practice itself does not do.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Proponents of the comparison reply that this sets the bar by one family of religions and then finds everything else wanting. Traditions exist in which practice comes first and belief is thin or unexamined, and in which asking a participant whether the claims are literally true misunderstands what they are doing. If a religion can consist largely in performing the ritual alongside others, then a supporter's cheerful admission that the club did not make the world settles far less than this argument needs it to.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] This makes assertion the essence of religion, which fits some traditions and distorts others in which practice, inheritance and belonging come first and doctrine is thin, contested, or beside the point for most participants. [Rejecting P2] Ritual and calendar are at least as often prior to doctrine as expressive of it, with the explanations arriving later to account for what a community was already doing together. [Rejecting C] Even granting the distinction, taking up the forms is not what fandom does. It generates them continually and from within, which is what one expects of a practice of the same kind rather than an imitation of one.