What Is Religion In A Sociological Perspective?

Question

Religion is a social institution inolving beliefs and practices based on recognizing the sacred.

Sacred - set apart as extraordinary inspiring awe and recerence.

Profane - An ordinaryu element of everyday life.

Faith - belief based on conviction rather than scientific evidence.

My teacher assigned me religion as my topic to present in my sociology class. I do not understand ANY of the information coming from my textbook and I am not religious at all..may somebody please break it down in SIMPLER TERMS so a group of six graders can understand and that my whole class would know what I am talking about instead of just reading off the paper...if you can also give me an example for each one, that would be nice. thank you for your time

Remember...I need to use EACH TERM into REAL LIIFE examples..so please helpp

Answer 1

You don't need to be religious to answer this. Actually it helps a lot if you're not because It's not a question about god.

What you need to ask yourself is, why would society need religion? What is it for? Does it serve a purpose? You can answer by yourself but I'll give you a hint.

Imagine a time (prehistoric) when everything is profane. Food, s*x, life, property. The value of things is based on it's usefulness to me. Your life has no value in itself, so if it isn't useful to me it has no value. Why shouldn't I kill you?

But say I believe there is a higher being. I have faith that god has a purpose for me and for you. That he assigns a value to us. You are part of his creation. So your life is not profane anymore. It is sacred because it belongs to god. It has a value in itself. I cannot kill you without destroying something sacred.

Now think about the other examples. Saying grace (a practice) before eating might seem silly if you don't have faith, but if you do then your food is something sacred, not just a dead bird or cow. Then the family gathers to thank god instead of stuffing profane food while watching TV.

Now if you understand the importance for your health of nutrition and having proper meals at given moments, then you might not need to make food sacred. If you have laws that will mean a punishment if you take someones life, then you don't need to believe that life is sacred. It might be enough to know that police is effective. But at the beginning of times it was necessary to have religion because it gave you and strengthened shared values.

Do you think it is still useful or not?

Answer 2

I would say religion is the belief of where you are going to spend eternity in your afterlife and how to get to that place spiritually. Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

Answer 3

u must know your teacher very well.  if s/he is a devout religous person perhaps a christian, its best to slant your writing to that angle.  u dont wanna lose marks.  

if s/he is liberal - then u can give various perspective.  including an agnostic version of religion.  

the world religion comes fr the latin word relegare - to bind to unite.  it presupposes certain sacredness in the worship of a supreme being to whom we seek guidance and live our life according to a conscience and a sense of spirituality that tames the savage beast within us.  Sacredness doesnt relate to miracles, hocus pocus and magic shows.  scaredness is the reverence we give to our higher being to lead a good, just, truthful  life.  

faith is not empirical or related to hard sciences.  its kinda related to the soft sciences - psychology, human behavior, social life.  its not necessarily blind but an inner thingy that makes us brave enough to face the world when we wake up.

we cannot touch or see it.  when we walk out of our house, go to school and expect to go home without any injury or trouble - thats faith.  its the confidence in us that makes us take the next step.   we can compare to those who suffer inferiority issues, low self esteem,  some psychological inadequacies.   opposite of all these negatives is our faith. our faith in relig is based on grounding fr childhood [for those who r still religious] - some form of brainwashing.  

this leads to conformity to the norms of society and community.  religion brings some form of unity and oneness to our lives for man is a social being.  

when we lose our interest in relig 'cos of dogmas and rituals and when we are labelled sinners from birth, some of us will develop certain anguish, hatred toward religion.  we go to extremes and express it with profanity - develop a hatred to religion.  such profanity merely divides society further and religion loses its original purpose of unity and love.  

so we go on saying -my relig is better than yours.  u will go to h**l.  all these r profanities for its baseless and not in any relig scriptures too.  its devised by the clergy, interpreting the holy words to make us subservience and obedient to the doctrines.  it works in certain societies, maybe in certain parts of usa, europe.  this is where relig has lost its sociological perspective.  it creates complacency and divides pple.  

religion must hv relevance to society and the community.  it must help unite and serving humanity without reservations would make it fulfill its sociological perspective.  eg some churches refuse aid to those who dont attend service or donate to the church.  they use force and fear to frighten pple to worship the supreme being in a way they want it done.  

u can add that relig needs to find its true purpose again and unite humanity. it shld not depend on rituals/ dogmas. it shld go out and serve humanity.  it shld show that all relig comes from the same single source and different relig suits different epochs / eras in societies.  relig must be dynamic to fit into the new demands / needs of the community.  to say that abortion is unreservedly not allowed is not practical for there will be instances where it cannot be carried to full term.  it shld not be used as a form of contraception.