SALMAN RUSHDIE: ...My view has been, quite simply, that religion has been one of the ways in which human beings, throughout history, have tried to codify and organize their moral sense of the world. But that's to say, I would argue, that our sense of good and evil, our sense of right and wrong, our moral sense precedes religion. It's not created by it. It is, in fact, what creates our need for religion.
...
BILL MOYERS: Moral as opposed to religious-- as a religious belief might confirm it, might condone that.

SALMAN RUSHDIE: Exactly. So my view is that morality is previous to religion. You know, and that religion is an expression of various people at various times' relationship with morality.

BILL MOYERS: What is morality?

SALMAN RUSHDIE: Well, it's as I see it, I think, something intrinsic in us, which wishes to distinguish between right and wrong. And I think we are hard-wired to it. You know, in the way that scientists now believe that language is an instinct. That we're hard-wired to develop it. You know. And I think that morality is somewhere in there in the DNA. That we are created, born as creatures who wish to know is it okay to do this or not okay to do this, you know. And we ask ourselves that question all the time. And religion is one of the answers.

but as long as we, by our words and actions, encourage the mistaken notion that we on the left are "anti-religion",

If it is a mistaken notion (and it is) then we should correct it, but not by bending over backwards  to accomodate the religious at the expense of the rest of us.  We can discuss values without their being specific religious values.  Why can't those who can't separate their faith from their lives just support causes and candidates they agree with like everyone else without constantly pounding the religious aspect of it.

Especially when you incorrectly state something as fact that is not true. A thirty second "the google" search through the Internets tubes revealed this:

The international director of Mr. Warren's Purpose Driven Church, Mark Carver, is a former investment banker who serves on the Advisory Board of the corporation created in October 2001 to develop and market this game. The creators plan to market their game using the same network marketing techniques that Mr. Warren used to turn The Purpose Driven Life into a commercial success. For example, they plan to distribute their merchandise through pastoral networks, especially mega-churches.

[Update: Mark Carver, a top aide to Mr. Warren, resigned as an adviser to Left Behind Games on June 5, 2006, and asked that the game developer remove the Purpose Driven Ministries name brand from its web site. These abrupt moves came in response to pressure from Talk to Action, as reported in the third essay in this series, "Revelation and Resignation (Part 3)". Here is a screen shot from the Left Behind Games site taken before June 5, showing Mr. Carver's name and invoking the name brand of Purpose Driven Church, which the site describes in some detail. -- JH]