The current ongoing moaning by religious people that stopping them using public meetings for prayer meetings, shows that they cannot tell the difference between rights and privileges. The moaners are complaining that they are being treated in the same way as those oppressed by dictatorships.
The situation is somewhat different the various Christian churches have, in not too distant history, been the dictators, when the established church got too lax they left to set up their own country where they could oppress whoever they wanted.
Over the years civil authority has gradually replaced the church, but for the majority of that time the people in power were members of the Church who felt that they could still exert power behind the scenes. Now, finally civil power is largely disconnected from the Church and the religious are getting nervous. They have over thousands of years never accepted that humanity rules itself. They have imagined a Sky Daddy to lay down the laws for them and so remove from them the responsibility of oppressing people, as they just claim to be doing what they are told.
Now that position doesn't wash, simply claiming the Sky Daddy wants a rule enforced doesn't work and gradually the privileges that were granted to religious, to get their way whilst others pay, are being removed and they claim this is persecution. Persecution would involve the removal of rights and that isn't happening, what is happening is the removal of privileges. They are being reduced to the level of the rest of us, oh and how it hurts, that others don't recognise the authority you claim and that your invisible friend is not a source of authority any more.
There is a price to pay for this though, and that is the rise of conspiracy theories. These are needed to explain why the world isn't perfect, before it could be the work of the devil now it must be the work of people and it cannot be an accident.
Society has moved from pre enlightenment times to Newtonian and the expectation of a clockwork universe, we are going to have to wait another few hundred years before society has got up to the quantum level of understanding complete with chaos and emergence.
The situation is somewhat different the various Christian churches have, in not too distant history, been the dictators, when the established church got too lax they left to set up their own country where they could oppress whoever they wanted.
Over the years civil authority has gradually replaced the church, but for the majority of that time the people in power were members of the Church who felt that they could still exert power behind the scenes. Now, finally civil power is largely disconnected from the Church and the religious are getting nervous. They have over thousands of years never accepted that humanity rules itself. They have imagined a Sky Daddy to lay down the laws for them and so remove from them the responsibility of oppressing people, as they just claim to be doing what they are told.
Now that position doesn't wash, simply claiming the Sky Daddy wants a rule enforced doesn't work and gradually the privileges that were granted to religious, to get their way whilst others pay, are being removed and they claim this is persecution. Persecution would involve the removal of rights and that isn't happening, what is happening is the removal of privileges. They are being reduced to the level of the rest of us, oh and how it hurts, that others don't recognise the authority you claim and that your invisible friend is not a source of authority any more.
There is a price to pay for this though, and that is the rise of conspiracy theories. These are needed to explain why the world isn't perfect, before it could be the work of the devil now it must be the work of people and it cannot be an accident.
Society has moved from pre enlightenment times to Newtonian and the expectation of a clockwork universe, we are going to have to wait another few hundred years before society has got up to the quantum level of understanding complete with chaos and emergence.
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