The wall between church and state, once a peaceful and tolerant place, has become a battle zone. On one side the proponents of secular government fight for a secular public sphere. On the other side religious conservatives struggle to preserve remnants of this nation's undeniable Christian history. When Thomas Jefferson first described the wall between church and state it was in the context of a very Christian, very masculine nation. The wall did more to prevent bias toward a particular denomination of Christianity than to protect the rights of the unreligious. However, in past decades the wall has become a rallying point for anti-religious sentiment. Secular liberals have conveniently assumed the role of Wall Security; bound and determined to purge the government of religious influence. However righteous they may feel, the left only campaigns for their own values and traditions, values and traditions that are easily analogous to any religious faith.
Wikipedia's definition of religion is "a system of human thought which usually includes a set of narratives, symbols, beliefs and practices that give meaning to the practitioner's experiences of life through reference to a higher power, deity or deities, or ultimate truth," The American left is ripe with symbols, narratives and practices that give meaning to life. Peace signs, iconic images of Obama, and even the color green are now symbols of the left's guiding dogma: peace on earth, social equality, and sustainability. And we've all heard the liberal narrative; under- privileged at birth, overcome adversity and succeeding in government, non-profit business, or social activism. This narrative propelled Obama into the White House and Congressional Democrats loved it so much they completely ignored Justice Sonya Sotomayor's twisted vision of the judicial system.
In the eyes of the secular left, religious dogma is the parasite of human existence,the enemy of reason. Those on the left often stereotype religious conservatives as backward, non-scientific and stubborn. So confident are the secular leftists in government-based solutions, they fail to empathize with, or even tolerate, dissent from their own opinions. In their quest to rid the public sphere of religious influence, secular leftists believe they are enforcing an orthodox constitutional standard. However, freedom of religion, and not freedom from religion, is the real constitutional standard. Freedom from religion is just the first ideal of the secular left.
The religious dogma of the left is derived from many sources: Hollywood, philosophers, lobbyists and politicians, but always implemented through the state. Though the secular left vehemently deny the validity of Christianity, they see fit to use the machinery of the state to promote their own religious agenda. Ironically, the agenda is simply a hijacked version of Christian values: charity, benevolence and truth. Whereas Christians place a higher value on charity freely given, secular liberals make no distinction between a charitable donation and taxes. Although the welfare system worshipped by the left serves a necessary economic function, it has numbed the charitable impulse of society and devalued self-sufficiency.
America's generous foreign aid is a prime example of forced charity. The hopey-changers may delight in providing mosquito nets to needy Africans, but the aid policy has only fostered a culture of dependence. Alas, action through free volition holds a certain dignity which coerced action does not.
The honest observer must acknowledge that the efforts of scientists to derive truth through empirical analysis and reason certainly deserve credit. So do the secular leftists, for their efforts to promote science over superstition have fostered a stronger, more prosperous nation. We know the world is older then 5,000 years, we can reasonably accept the theory of evolution, and we can even believe with great certainty that the universe sprang into existence through the big bang. But despite the expanse of darkness now illuminated by science, some aspects of human existence remain concealed in shadow.
How did life begin? Why are we here? What is our purpose in life? For thousands of years great thinkers have toiled to elucidate life's ultimate truth and for thousands of years they have failed to provide an adequate explanation. So long as the existential questions of life go unanswered, faith will remain fundamental to the human condition.
While religious folk believe that the ultimate truth cannot be discovered through empirical inquiry alone, the atheist trusts that scientists can come up with the solution to the vexing problem of our existence. I won't argue for God, but I will warn against placing absolute faith in science. While the scientific community has certainly enlightened mankind in some regards, the men and women that compose it are far from infallible. As the recent controversy, popularly known as ClimateGate, makes clear, the scientific community is just as likely to deceive as religious.
A few weeks ago, an anonymous hacker published thousands of e-mails exchanged between prominent scientists in the field of climate research. Two of the scientists involved, Phil Jones and Michael Mann (father of the infamous hockey-stick graph), have been fierce proponents of the theory of anthropogenic global warming. In the e-mails, Mann, Jones, and others discuss ways to manipulate data to support their theory and how to silence other climate scientists who are skeptical of AGW. It's just a couple of scientists, nothing compared to the huge consensus, right? Wrong. The individuals who have been exposed authored reports for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that are now ubiquitous in climatic research. Not only have select members of the scientific community conspired to pull the wool over the eyes of the world, their doomsday prediction drained world GDP's and irreversibly damaged the reputation of science.
First, the left adopted a mutant form of Christian values and developed their own religious dogma. With symbols to rival "The DaVinci Code," heart-wrenching quasi-scriptural narratives, and a doomsday day prediction, liberal secularism shares many of the characteristics of organized religion. And now they are falling over themselves to emulate the intellect stifling practices of the medieval Catholic Church. You ask, can liberal secularism really be considered a religion? Well, if it walks like a duck, it looks like duck, and it quacks like a duck, it's probably a duck.