The reason religion is so powerful

[The Grand Nudger]

I take it that you weren't actually unaware of the fact that human dignity isn't a religious concept, then?  You knew that the sources and explanations you asked about existed, and were too many to count, you just don't think they "work"?

I'm guessing that's going to be a genuinely novel use of the term.  Even people who pursue abortions possess a shared humanity, and.... if you asked.....you might find that they too hold to some idea of human dignity.  They're not exactly werewolves, eh?

Not exactly, I just don't debate against links. But you aren't wrong. Saying that human dignity is religious was overbroad when what I meant was that notions like dignity and human rights are normative and not empirical. So technically, yes, they can be considered to be broadly philosophical without being strictly associated with theism and, yes, I think those attempts fail in the same way that many athiests say there isnt any evidence then quibble about what does and doesnt count as evidence. I will just leave it at that.

The main issue is whether religious ideas are uniquely dangerous in political discourse and ought not be used to justify public policies. My issue is that most political discourse is not entirely based on empirical determinations. There are normative considerations based on metaphysical conceptions of human nature and it is the pretense of "humanism" that it is devoid of metaphysical assumptions.

Religion and theism aren't interchangeable terms.  There are more explanations of human dignity than religious explanations, and more religious explanations than theistic explanations.  Each category refers to an additional claim upon which a notion like human dignity is or must be (or must be correctly) premised - as asserted by an advocate.  Seeing as there are equivalent explanations for human dignity which make no claims to the sacred, let alone a personal and intervening god, I find that neither is required to make sense or justify them.  Such that, even if there were no sacred things and no theistic gods there would still be human dignity, still be shared humanity.  If there were sacred things and gods, they would still not be the explanation for human dignity.  All of this, mind you, regardless of whether there actually -is- such a thing as human dignity.

At any rate, of course political discourse isn't limited to an empirical state of affairs.  Most of the time, we engage in politics to change how things are - to make them closer to what we wish to see in the world.  This is why religious ideas are dangerous.  They exist as our most deeply held and compelling beliefs.  Things that are so true, we would make them true wherever we found that they were not.  You and I can disagree about taxes, about crime and punishment, about defense policies  There can be no disagreement about the sacred to those who hold to the concept of the sacred.  The notion of the sacred is an inherently totalitarian belief.  Theism, profoundly more so.