[gvedem]

I rather admire Scott Alexander--but this strikes me as a very weak argument that boils down to "if you are willing to distort anything enough, it appears to be a religion".

Rationalism does not require that kind of distortion. The parallels are strikingly obvious; I don't have to torture Yudkowsky into a prophet, or the Sequences into scripture. Yud literally predicts the future and tells you to give him money to make it better. When rationalists write litanies and gather for solstice celebrations about how great rationality is, I'm not sure comparing them to a religion requires quite that stretch.

Or, to take a more conciliatory tone: Maybe he's right! But either way there's probably a spectrum, and rationalism is way closer to being a religion than, e.g. fans of the New England Patriots--who can only have a minor apocalypse on an annual basis, and lack scripture entirely--and further away from it than Scientologists.