By Lewis Loflin
Communism’s collapse by 1991 left the Left without a unifying vision. Paul Kurtz, in Humanism Today, wrote: “The short-range predictions of building a better world were shown, by comparison with capitalist… societies, to be at a disadvantage… workers in non-Marxist lands achieved a better standard of living.” He asked, “Where does atheism now stand?” One response: a secular faith blending environmental pantheism—Nature as deity—with socialist economics, redistributing wealth to “have-nots,” often racialized victims of capitalist technology, despite the global benefits of Western innovation.
Science and technology are not cure-alls or religions. They are tools—powerful, transformative, but neutral—offering no inherent morality or utopia. Their value lies in application, not reverence, a distinction the Left’s pantheistic faith often blurs.
Marxism’s utopian promise faded, leaving a spiritual gap. Michael Crichton, in his 2003 speech “Environmentalism as Religion,” called environmentalism “the religion of choice for urban atheists,” with Nature as Eden, industry as sin, and green policies as salvation. The Left extends this, deifying Nature as wronged by Western progress—science, tech, capitalism—favoring a moral stance over rational assessment.
Lacking Marxism’s state control, the Left uses environmentalism to revive socialist goals. Regulations (carbon caps), taxes (wealth levies), and redistribution (green jobs) target capitalism’s “haves” while uplifting “have-nots.” Yet green tech—solar panels, windmills—relies on mining rare materials like Congo’s cobalt, with overlooked pollution and damage, suggesting ideology trumps practical outcomes.
The “have-nots” are often racialized—framed as victims of capitalist tech, such as pollution in minority areas. Wealth transfer becomes atonement, merging eco-justice with identity politics. This secular redemption—paying for Western “sins”—replaces Marxism’s class war with Nature and racial victims as the wronged, recasting science and tech as oppressors rather than liberators.
This faith distorts history. Colonialism, though flawed, delivered science, technology, and modern farming to the Third World—feeding billions, with medicine saving millions. Latin America’s nations stem from Spain and Portugal; tens of millions of indigenous descendants survive, countering extermination claims. Abuses—slavery, exploitation—don’t erase these gains, which outstrip precolonial ills like human sacrifice in Mexico. The Left’s pantheism vilifies this progress as colonial sin.
By 1800, Europe led in science and tech, centuries ahead of most regions. Today, China’s industrial rise, India’s railways, and Japan’s Meiji-era leap rest on European and American innovations—often blended with local law and culture, like India’s British legal framework or Japan’s hybrid system. These nations adapted Western tools, lifting billions from poverty. The Left’s faith, deifying Nature over tech, frames this progress as oppression rather than a shared global gain.
Post-communism, the Left crafts a faith: environmental pantheism as spiritual core, socialist economics as tool, racial victimhood as cause—set against colonialism’s benefits and Western tech’s global reach. Ignoring green tech’s costs or history’s lessons, it’s not about climate but damning progress. Anti-Christian by rejecting reason’s legacy, it swaps Marxism’s coherence for a fragmented crusade. Kurtz saw the void; Crichton saw the religion; this fusion reveals a Left seeking redemption in Nature’s name over reality’s gains.
Further reading:
Acknowledgment: I’d like to thank Grok, an AI by xAI, for helping me draft and refine this article, and Paul Kurtz and Michael Crichton for their insights. The final edits and perspective are my own.
