Questions of Religious Thought 1.

The sociological perspective is an immensely important lens with which to view various occurrences, phenomena, conceptualizations, and ideas. Essentially, it is a way of analyzing all of these factors and others in regards to their effect upon society. The sociological perspective is concerned with assessing the social repercussions of something, as well as its origination, in terms of how it impacts society. This perspective can acknowledge other facets of whatever it happens to be focused upon (such as religion), yet is predominantly concerned with the sociological roots of a particular concept and how it affects society.

The sociological perspective affects the way religion is studied in that it focuses on the social aspects of religion. Specifically, the sociological perspective tends to concentrate on certain behavioral aspects of religion. Writers such as Durkheim believe that there are other elements of religion other than just how it shapes the social order. However, he believes that the most significant facet of religion is the way it helps to reinforce—if not outright define—the social order itself (Durkheim, 1915). This notion of his is perhaps the quintessential expression of the sociological perspective in relation to religion. This perspective seeks to identify what exactly religion is doing to the social order, which has a lot to do with submission to authority.

The sociological perspective is considerably distinct from non-social scientific approaches to the study of religion such as philosophical or theological approaches, largely in that they consider social aspects of religion from a secondary or tertiary viewpoint. Religion’s social reverberations are always central to the sociological perspective. For example, theological perspectives stress the role of the creator or of a divinity much more than the sociological perspective does. The latter is aware of that role, yet subverts it—and most other things—to how society is impacted by religion

The sociological perspective is different from other social scientific approaches in that it is less focused on the individual, and the notion of individuality, as other approaches such as psychology and anthropology....

The sociological lens is always one which is rooted in collectivism—the collective causes and effects of whatever is being studied, such as religion. This perspective considers religion (and most other things) in terms of social institutions. Non-social scientific perspectives are less focused on the collective social order, and more on individuality.
2.

At its most rudimentary level, religion is a social construct. This construct is largely comprised of codes, norms, rituals, and beliefs about how to function in accord with the predominant social values in a particular society. However, there is a strong spiritual aspect of religion, which is usually used as a means of interpreting the desires of some higher power or divinity. It is a fairly common conception that religion actually stems from the desires of that divinity to express his or her volition about how people should behave. However, a number of salient Western thinkers, including Durkheim, Marx and the Rational Choice theorists propound the notion that religion actually is a man-made social construct, and therefore actually comes from men.

Marx is particularly explicit in his espousal of this doctrine. He writes about the subject of religion indirectly in his work of literature entitled A Critique of the German Ideology. The preface of this tome contains a parable in which someone poses the notion that men are drowning because they are contemplating gravity, and if “they were to knock this notion out of their heads, say by stating it to be a superstition, a religious concept” (Marx, 2000) they could get rid of this idea. This quotation is not important because of the parable or the tenet of gravity, but rather because it reveals Marx’s true thoughts about religion. In this passage superstition is equated to a “religious concept”. Thus, Marx makes it clear that religion is little more than superstition. Superstition, of course, is a man made notion about rituals and practices which bring about some desired result. By choosing to compare religion to superstition in this passage, Marx is indicating that religion is both created by men (as is superstition), and is just a similar set of practices and rules for men to follow.

There is a…