“The Main Function Of Religion Is To Provide Peopl

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“The main function of religion is to provide people with a code of behavior which regulates personal and social life”. Assess the extent to which sociological arguments and evidence supports this view of religion in modern society. (33 marks) Functionalists view religion as a central role in institutions like the family and the economy, in creating and maintaining value consensus, order and solidarity. The first functionalist to widen this thought was Durkheim. Durkheim believed that social order and stability only existed if people were integrated into society by value consensus. He saw religion as an important part as it provided a set of beliefs and practices which connected people together to attain this. For Durkheim the main quality of religion was not a belief in gods or the supernatural but a primary difference between the sacred and the profane which originates in all religions. The sacred are things that are regarded as special, set apart and forbidden such as the holly Qur’an which holds meaning, whilst the profane are the ordinary, everyday, non-sacred things such as going to work which holds no meaning. Durkheim underlines that the sacred does not need to have a god or other supernatural things but can be anything that people regard as sacred such as an animal which was shown in his study of the Arunta tribe, where family members come together occasionally to perform rituals which involved worshiping a sacred totem (is a sacred object having symbolic importance to a group) such as an animal which signified the clans identity. He believed that when worshipping the totem, people are really worshiping society. As well as Durkheim’s view on sacred symbols represented society’s collective conscience which is the shared norms and values, beliefs and knowledge that makes social life between individuals possible. He believed that participating in regular
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