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Frankly, Wuf, I think much of this comes down to a fundamental belief regarding human nature. Your arguments, to my interpretation, are predicated on a belief that humans are weak-minded and need ethical frameworks like religion in order that they don't eat each other alive. In my opinion, this is a major underlying assumption of the conservative ideology.
I, on the other hand, think humans are incredibly advanced creatures who continue to iterate on the foundations built over time through shared knowledge and understanding that evolves into wisdom. This wisdom continues to evolve and iterate over time. We're still working on some of the bugs (the fight or flight mechanism, for example) that leads to some of our uglier outcomes.
That's roughly accurate. The way I've seen it described, and I agree with it, is that one side thinks humans are basically good and that institutions corrupt; whereas the other side thinks that humans are not basically good and that institutions reform. I tend to lean more towards the latter. In politics, this whole thing is a mess due to very weird marriages of ideas and galvanizing people. For example, an evolutionary biologist should probably think in terms of the latter, yet today it seems many of them think in terms of the former.