The functionalism of religion
September 30, 2014 at 7:33 am
(This post was last modified: September 30, 2014 at 8:00 am by MusicLovingAtheist.)
I want you guys to help me fill in some of my ambiguity of thoughts here. I do have a couple of my own ideas here too.
Sociology class has been opening my mind to new questions about the world, if not teaching me anything. We've been learning about functionalist perspective. A sociological perspective is that "each aspect of society is interdependent and contributes to society's stability and functioning as a whole." Not sure if I would put it any other way than cliffnotes put it, but that is the definition.
So according to a functionalist perspective, religion is functional for society. I want to know exactly how religion actually serves society in any productive ways. I am going to give some examples and explain how I feel that religion is unnecessary. I think it is unnecessary all together. Some examples I have heard for why religion is functional to society is that it's a community function. It's true that people do get together to congregate at churches. But couldn't there also be other community functions that could be equally as beneficial? I digress, moving on to more examples; some people say that religion provides morality. This is one argument that I have attacked vigorously, and am still adamantly opposed to. It's an argument that suggests that religion provides the basis for morality.
I'll try to dive a little deeper dichotomy of this argument. To a religious person, they suppose that without fear of god, people can't be moral. They even go as far to say that without religious morality, morals are just the mechanical functions of a biological machine. Maybe I'm misinterpreting something here, but it seems like an irrational fear of the unknown to me; it simply shows that a religious person fears a human without god. They see them as cold, calculating, living meaningless lives. To any human atheist (we are all human, they haven't created artificial intelligence yet), I think I speak for everyone when I say that that is a tacitly absurd statement, to say that we live emotionless and meaningless lives. It's downright insulting.
So what roles does religion play to support the function of society? Some would say that it provides comfort in times of stress. I feel that religion provides a crutch to which people use instead of facing reality. As an atheist myself, I can distinguish the difference between the way I deal with things, and the way religious people deal with things. To me, faith is to hide from the truth "The way to see by faith, is to shut the eye of reason." -Benjamin Franklin. To a religious person, the concept of non existence is replaced with the concept of the spirit. It stresses me when a person dies, but interestingly, it would seem that my emotional response to the death of a loved one is the same as a religious person. Again, they're so afraid of the unknown that they feel they should replace real answers with fake ones. In reality, if they didn't do that, they wouldn't be any worse for wear.
All of these things have been discussed to death. I believe that there are no truly original thoughts, and the ones that are original are the ones that win Nobel prizes. No one is winning a Nobel prize for trying to reject religion. There's too many conservatives who are afraid of changes in society for that to happen. It seems to me that religion is dysfunctional. From my atheist perspective, it seems we're outgrowing it. As the world becomes more efficient and intellectual, the more I see religion on the decline. The more liberal, ideologically and socially I see religion becoming. I don't think anyone follows their religion to a T. Things that are emerging in society today would have been unthinkable just a century ago. We have free immediately accessible porn, woman's rights, gay rights, African american rights, a surge of rock and roll and new music, widespread social media. Some would say that we're on a decline. That seems tacitly absurd to me. It seems we're on the rise. We're breaking free from out immature and ineffective past, and becoming a better and smarter culture. Religion is just a conservative mindset. It annoys me when people say it has a place in our world.
I wonder if we're even even going to question whether or not religion is functional in our sociology class.
Sociology class has been opening my mind to new questions about the world, if not teaching me anything. We've been learning about functionalist perspective. A sociological perspective is that "each aspect of society is interdependent and contributes to society's stability and functioning as a whole." Not sure if I would put it any other way than cliffnotes put it, but that is the definition.
So according to a functionalist perspective, religion is functional for society. I want to know exactly how religion actually serves society in any productive ways. I am going to give some examples and explain how I feel that religion is unnecessary. I think it is unnecessary all together. Some examples I have heard for why religion is functional to society is that it's a community function. It's true that people do get together to congregate at churches. But couldn't there also be other community functions that could be equally as beneficial? I digress, moving on to more examples; some people say that religion provides morality. This is one argument that I have attacked vigorously, and am still adamantly opposed to. It's an argument that suggests that religion provides the basis for morality.
I'll try to dive a little deeper dichotomy of this argument. To a religious person, they suppose that without fear of god, people can't be moral. They even go as far to say that without religious morality, morals are just the mechanical functions of a biological machine. Maybe I'm misinterpreting something here, but it seems like an irrational fear of the unknown to me; it simply shows that a religious person fears a human without god. They see them as cold, calculating, living meaningless lives. To any human atheist (we are all human, they haven't created artificial intelligence yet), I think I speak for everyone when I say that that is a tacitly absurd statement, to say that we live emotionless and meaningless lives. It's downright insulting.
So what roles does religion play to support the function of society? Some would say that it provides comfort in times of stress. I feel that religion provides a crutch to which people use instead of facing reality. As an atheist myself, I can distinguish the difference between the way I deal with things, and the way religious people deal with things. To me, faith is to hide from the truth "The way to see by faith, is to shut the eye of reason." -Benjamin Franklin. To a religious person, the concept of non existence is replaced with the concept of the spirit. It stresses me when a person dies, but interestingly, it would seem that my emotional response to the death of a loved one is the same as a religious person. Again, they're so afraid of the unknown that they feel they should replace real answers with fake ones. In reality, if they didn't do that, they wouldn't be any worse for wear.
All of these things have been discussed to death. I believe that there are no truly original thoughts, and the ones that are original are the ones that win Nobel prizes. No one is winning a Nobel prize for trying to reject religion. There's too many conservatives who are afraid of changes in society for that to happen. It seems to me that religion is dysfunctional. From my atheist perspective, it seems we're outgrowing it. As the world becomes more efficient and intellectual, the more I see religion on the decline. The more liberal, ideologically and socially I see religion becoming. I don't think anyone follows their religion to a T. Things that are emerging in society today would have been unthinkable just a century ago. We have free immediately accessible porn, woman's rights, gay rights, African american rights, a surge of rock and roll and new music, widespread social media. Some would say that we're on a decline. That seems tacitly absurd to me. It seems we're on the rise. We're breaking free from out immature and ineffective past, and becoming a better and smarter culture. Religion is just a conservative mindset. It annoys me when people say it has a place in our world.
I wonder if we're even even going to question whether or not religion is functional in our sociology class.
