February 13th, 2013 Samantha Hauca Overgrowth or Undergrowth? Recently, it has become widely accepted that our earth is becoming over populated. Countries have been trying to keep their birth rates down with their one-child policy. In the essay, “Health Canada Inadvertently Discloses Facts Planned Parenthood Would Like to Suppress”, Ted Byfield tries to persuade the audience that the world is actually in a serious population decline rather than population explosion, like the government is trying to convince us. Regrettably, Byfield doesn’t give a sturdy case, and with misled facts and statistics, it’s hard to be influenced.
Yet others would argue that even the media still supports nuclear families and is socializing the next generation into thinking that it is right for example ‘The Simpsons’, so despite the increase in divorce and feminism the nuclear family will remain popular in British society. The third argument as to why the nuclear family is no longer the norm is that many religions support the nuclear family and do not agree with other types such as lone-parent. However secularization is causing less and less religious people so
Assess the view that secularisation has been a feature only of modern European societies (33) Secularisation is a concept in which there are deep and controversial debates about what it is and how it can be measured. Wilson identified secularisation into three aspects which are: religious beliefs, religious practice and religious institutions. Religious beliefs are referred to as the influence of religion on people’s values and beliefs. Religious practice are the things that people do to carry out their religious commitment and religious institutions is to what extent religious institutions have maintained their social influence in wider society. Secularisation is the decline in the influence of religion but there are a lot of other ways that it can be defined also.
In recent times, religion has been the most dominant belief system but science has challenged religion which has led to secularisation. Replaced by religion? Many sociologists have argued that both religion and science are ideological. Ideology is a set of ideas or beliefs that support the interests of a dominant group by legitimating their social position. Religious belief systems have been challenged by scientific belief systems which emergenced during the period known as enlightenment.
Therefore this tells us that secularisation has developed in other societies across the world not just in Europe. However sociologist Davie suggests that in modern society, especially across Northern Europe, people ‘believe without belonging’. Davie sees religion as taking a privatised form, and although churchgoing has declined, it does not reflect the religious beliefs, as she believes we now have people believing without belonging, where people hold religious beliefs but do not attend church. Davie believes that believing without belonging is a result of change in commitment regarding religion as attendance is now a matter of choice, rather than compulsory, people are adapting religion to suit them, Davie notes that
In most circumstances the society or the government would sought the advice of their most prominent religion in matters of ethics and even the authorisation of policy making. However in a increasingly secular society the role of religion is diminishing and it no longer holds much relevance that it once did. Most of us are guilty of celebrating another’s religious festival without truly understanding the significance of the celebration. For example, my family celebrates Christmas every year despite being born Hindus. We do this by decorating the Christmas tree and exchanging gifts with one another.
The only difference since 1999 is that England has seen an increase in migration due to joining the EU, Scotland believe that this is ruining the Scottish culture. The power of a separate government would allow Scotland to leave the EU as most of the migration is from England meaning they can restore their Scottish culture. The issue that is caused is the fact that their culture is at risk and that they believe their people are worse off due a non-separate government. This causes pressure on England to allow them to leave but England and the remaining of the UK see Scotland as a key asset to the United Kingdom. Another reason that causes separatists pressures are differences in religion, culture or language to surrounding areas, for example Basque.
Max Weber’s proposal that ‘science and rationality would eclipse religion’ (Hunt, 2002a; 15) was core to the original secularisation theory, which Peter Berger succinctly summarised as the concept that ‘modernity inevitably produced a decline in religion’ (Thuswaldner, 2014). While modernity has given rise to religious pluralism and science has undermined certain religious beliefs, it has not caused a universal rejection of religion predicted by Weber (Hunt, 2002a). Scientific and religious beliefs do coexist - there are living Nobel Prize winning scientists who define themselves as religious. Many theorists note that a loss of religion is not a necessary
Compassionate reasons where one of the underlying reasons many historians argue upon the realise of the report on poverty from booth and rowntree in their study of the English town York , a town not normally associated with extreme poverty they found 29% of the population were well below the poverty line. Another reason was the very real fear workers were discouraged by the poor conditions and governments and may later turn against the government and form mass strikes or in serious cases rebellion or join the communist groups within Britain. Political self interest was high on the liberal’s agenda many historians argue. The franchise was being extended to the average man slowly and the liberals realised the average man did not benefit much from the government’s approach to peoples life’s and with the rise of the labour party and other parties many historians argue that it was out of desire to be re-elected that the liberals slowly brought about this change in reform. They didn’t get a majority government in 1910 like they did in 1906 which led them to think that social reform was the way to gain votes.
Secularisation means the decline of the importance / influence of religion in society. Due to science becoming more influential in a modern society, religion is no longer necessarily seen as such an important contributor. As marriage is a religious concept, it might also now be seen as somewhat less significant in society and many might not perceive it to be as valuable or important as it once was. Divorce could be the result of this as the decline of the value of marriage might lead people to believe it is not long term. A third reason for changes in the divorce rate is the changes in women’s expectations surrounding marriage.