There is an article over at the
Huffington Post that makes a strong declaration. Not only has President-Elect Obama's victory struck a possibly fatal blow to the Religious Right, but it has also done the same to the, and I really hate the term, New Atheist Movement (as a recent Atheist myself, even I don't see how the statement "I don't believe in God" said by me 2 years ago is so revised and new-fangled than Schopenhauer saying the same words in the 19th century).
Now that is a big claim to make, and I feel like I should give the article a much more thorough going through later, but the claims I have read in it are enough that I can make a counter-claim. This may very well have struck out the religious right, but the drive of secularism seems in no way to be undone. I should early on make it clear that Atheism is no basis for a political movement, nor has it claimed to be one. Secularism, however, is and you can be secular while also having religious beliefs. From this point on I will address the conflict as between the Religious Right and the Secular Movement since trying to pin Atheists to the right or left is like trying to pick the political party of "those that don't collect stamps".
The motives of the religious right are not just to have a spiritual/religious person in office that says nice things about religion and finds inspiration in it, they want someone that will not be afraid to come to my home and force me to my knees and to a conversion. They want someone that will make every law from the Bible a part of the American law. Not just "Thou shalt not kill" (which how many times does YHVH order that one broken with flourish), but that the death penalty should exist for adultery, apostasy, blasphemy, homosexuality, cheeking your parents (to borrow Prof. Dawkins' charming usage), and working on the Sabbath.
The mistake made in Schaeffer's article is in thinking that the secular movement wants the same thing, but from a different direction. That we want a president to come in and declare religion illegal and demand that all peoples come and worship at the altars of philosophical materialism, psychological monism, and methodological naturalism. That we are demanding that blind devotionals to great scientist be forced upon students in school at the beginning of each day ("Oh, Darwin, who art dead now, hallowed be thy theories." or "Whoever wants to be saved should above all cling to the Principia of Newton. Whoever does not guard it whole and inviolable will doubtless perish eternally.")
So what is the secular movement looking for? All we want is for reason to stand in its rightful place. Reason and rational argument are what have lead to our modern advancements and even the creation of the US government. No matter the inspiration of these ideas, such as Newton's hope to understand the hand of god in the universe by studying it or the Founder's hope to uphold rights they felt were endowed to men by a creator of some sort (they didn't specify), the works that came out of these inspirations came not from reading a scripture and declaring it inviolable, but by testing that inspired idea against the harsh winds of reality and the uncaring chisel of experimentation. Ideas had to be cast aside when they broke under these harrowing test, and a wise person should always be ready to toss away a long cherished idea if reason shows it to be naught but a dead weight.
In short, the secular movement just wants reasonable people in power, who will base decisions off of reasoned argument and not on blind faith. If that leader wishes to start action on a policy based on a proscription from the Bible, that is their personal right as guaranteed by the US Constitution and I doubt that a free thought advocate would fault a person their own thought process (Die Gedanken sind frei). However, if they wish to bring that policy to a law over people that do not find inspiration in the Bible, then they must bring it with an argument beyond "Because the Bible says it is so". The argument must be something that people of all and no religions can agree to and thus by its nature would be a secular reason for a policy inspired by a religious text. I am perfectly fine with this sort of thing. It is honestly all the secular movement is looking for in a leader... and wait... Barack Obama says just that in a
speech to a Church no less.
As for the changing of people's attitudes on religion, the secular movement could care less who is in power when it comes to doing that. We will still work on that through writing, education, debate, and argument. Add besides, the movement for secularism is not just about the USA. It's about seeing rationality used to make decisions all across the world.
As long as I have to see articles like
THIS, I can assure you, the Secular Movement and the outcry from the champions of Reason is far from over.