Lord Acton explains, “It condemns, as a State within the State, every inner group and community, class or corporation, administering its own affairs; and, by proclaiming the abolition of privileges, it emancipates the subjects of every such authority in order to transfer them exclusively to its own. It recognises liberty only in the individual, because it is only in the individual that liberty can be separated from authority…”

That is why the passion for equality and the hatred of noble and clerical privileges is often so tolerant of despotism. If the supreme power is needlessly limited, the secondary powers will run riot and oppress. Its supremacy will bear no check. Napoléon was the consummation of the Revolution, not its reversal.

“No servant can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other…. You cannot serve both God and mammon.”

This style of argument suggests that no one lacks a religion; some people simply lack sufficient self-awareness to recognize their religion. When the Leo Burnett Company created the Schlitz Beer campaign “You only go around once in life so you’ve got to grab for all the gusto you can!” they were articulating a religious viewpoint — whether they acknowledged it or not.

But this creates at least three conceptual challenges. First, why should we characterize some of these perspectives as “religious” and grant them special status relative to the other perspectives?

Second, why would anyone who has access to the Truth WANT to be categorized along with a collection of other worldviews that are flawed at best – if not outright malevolent? Does it really make sense for a Roman Catholic to embrace being in the same category as Jehovah’s Witnesses, seeking to ensure that the Witnesses enjoy a privileged legal status from which to attach Catholicism?

Third, who’s the gatekeeper? Who should have the legal authority to rule on which religions count as religions, and which don’t? Who should have the legal authority to evaluate the sincerity of another man’s faith?

Given that whatever legal privilege I gain for my religion I must share with all rival religions, I have serious doubts about the practical merits of this arrangement. I’m more comfortable with equality before law. Pretty much all of these legal conundrums go away if we get government out of the business of discriminating on the basis of religion.

This seems to challenge the notion that religious opinions are somehow different.