Half a dozen years or ago, I had a Facebook page at the insistence of female friends, who told me I had to have a Facebook page. It did not last long as my life is not interesting and the lives of my friends are not interesting either. What killed the idea for me was that I kept seeing posts for “I Fucking Love Science!” and they were always from people with no math or science. The posts themselves were never really about science either. Instead, they were usually about confirming some belief bubbling up on the Left.

In other words, they were just using science as a placeholder for a transcendent authority that allegedly validated their preferences. Instead of claiming that God commands us to put more women and blacks into STEM fields, we’re to believe science is happier if we put more women and blacks into STEM fields, because, science!  I dropped Facebook a long time ago so I have no idea if it is still a thing, but I see there is a website for it now. By the looks of it, it is the same act.

For as long as I can remember, the Left has been claiming that science confirms their beliefs and preferences. Not that long ago they use to claim that socialism was based in science. Today it is multiculturalism. At least once a week, someone, not knowing the difference between statistics and science, makes a claim that science demands we fling open our borders to the gathering hordes. You see? Science says open borders is good, so only a science denier would oppose wholesale immigration and those people can be dismissed.

Science is not the only stand in for God that we have today. Libertarian economists worship at the altar of Castor and Pollux, or as they call them, Efficiency and Productivity. No matter the policy, they demand it be sent off to the druids of the local economics department so they can read the goat entrails and then forecast the policy’s impact on efficiency and productivity. For instance, clamping down on immigration is a bad thing because it lowers worker productivity and that makes the gods cross. Handing off trade policy to global planners is a good thing because it pleases efficiency.

The most stunningly absurd manifestation of this came from the libertarian economist Alex Tabbarok, who claimed the mystery cult of economics demanded open borders. He argued that your preferences are invalid unless you can please his gods and he was the guy who would decide if the gods were pleased. This is Bronze Age oogily-boogily and it exposes a truth about the Left in the modern era. While they may appear to have abandoned the Christian concept of God as a moral authority, in reality they just gave him some new names. They still point to the heavens and demand you submit.

That’s the thing you see with all of these sects within the Progressive hive. They maintain that old Puritan instinct where they assume to have special insights into the desires of the heavens and therefore they have a right to push everyone around. This is clear when you look at the campus war on whites. When the nutters demand the blanco check his privilege, they are claiming to speak for some mystical force that has decided that the honky hegemony must be eradicated. They assume the gods are on their side and the accused must justify his actions or else.

It’s not just a mysterious supernatural authority that animates their morality. They have a list of demons and sub-demons they believe are at war with the forces of light. Racism used to be a white guy refusing to hire a black guy. Now, it is this thing called “institutional racism” which you can’t actually see or describe. It’s this dark force that results in the IT department being staffed with pale penis people, rather than looking like the multicultural paradise we all know is the natural destiny of man. We must fight institutional racism!

Feminist have also conjured a monster, the opposition to which has become their rallying cry. Campus Rape Culture™ is not a real thing in the sense that it exists. Instead, it is a metaphysical concept that causes all sorts of bad things. The result is we have a line of hungover coeds at the rape counseling center blaming the campus rape culture for why they woke up with their underwear on their head. The rarity of actual rape on campus is held up as proof of the insidiousness of Campus Rape Culture™.

Eric Hoffer said, “Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a devil.” This is true, but the latter always results in the creation of the former. Once the great evil has been identified and described, there has to be a moral code in response to it and that requires a transcendent authority to animate. Otherwise, the moral code is just a list of preferences that can be disputed or discarded. If those preferences have the color of authority, one beyond the reach of man, then it has power.

That’s what we see with the various utopian tribes in the modern age. Modern Progressive have “the right side of history” as their spirit god. Libertarians have Efficiency and Productivity. The open borders crazies have “it’s who we are” and Buckley Conservatives have “conservative principles.” All of which serve as a supernatural authority whose word trumps any argument made by men in opposition. It also gives the adherents license to use any means necessary to impose their morality on the rest of us.