I guess I wasn't entirely clear on this, but I meant that YEC is an example of cargo cult science in the sense described by the GP.

Generally religions have some justification for practicing revolving around what happens after you die

Isn’t that the same thing as a cargo cult? The key shared similarity is that neither religious people nor cargo cultists understand how their desired goal works (a good afterlife or cargo respectively). Both groups believe they can obtain their desired goal, despite having no knowledge of its mechanism of action, if they blindly carry out their respective rituals.