Lecture 8: Religion

• Belief in God or Gods


  A form of ontology
• Humans create belief systems to understand the world. This world may or may not have been created by a God.
• Sociologists don't care if there is a God or which religion is correct. They study social institutions that humans make.
• Paleolithic Religion


  • Animal gods (animism), animal worship, nature, stone worship
• Neolithic Religion (10000-2000 BC)


  • Stone, the main object of devotion in the Paleolithic, was replaced by earth
  • Polytheism – worship of multiple human-form gods
• Premodern-modern religion


  • From about 1000bce, more singular god worship emerged
  • Origins of our modern religions appeared
  • Religion began to be used to justify political leaders; leaders (including religious) were paid out of surplus
  • Leaders tended to be men
• Current religious landscape


  • 19 major world religions
  • 270 large religious groups
  • Large religions have many groups that often do not affiliate. 3400 Christian groups for example
• Meaning


  • A sense that life is not random
  • A sense that you are part of and contributing to something bigger than yourself
• Religion: An evolutionary trait acquired to provide meaning and purpose in a world that might otherwise seem meaningless and cruel
• Humans who believe their lives have meaning are more likely to reproduce
• Those who have a sense of meaning are healthier. Happiness doesn't have an equally strong effect on health
• Sense of Control


  Coping with unpredictable and uncontrollable realities
• Religion is the common human response to the fact that we all stand "at the edge of an abyss"
• In traditional societies, religious rituals tend to occur related to difficult and unpredictable tasks (like deep sea fishery) and not simple, easy, predictable ones (like off shore fishing where fish are plentiful)
• Sense of control reduces anxiety, making us perform better and even healthier
• Social cohesion (collective consciousness)

  Religion creates common sentiments that cement society
• Rules


  Religion provides common rules of behaviour rules that order the world
• Explanation

  Humans wonder where we come from, why storms happen, why disease happens etc. Religion provided answers (especially pre-science)
• Sacred


  The transcendent world of religion, good, ordered
• Profane


  The secular, mundane, chaotic, bad, everyday world
• Totems

  Certain objects are designated to represent the sacred
• Rituals


  We invent practices to connect us with the sacred
• Collective effervescence


  Exciting us and uniting us – making us feel like part of something larger than us
• Denominations


  Pluralist subgroups allow churches to keep their appeal while allowing different streams of belief
• Sects


  Typically formed by breaking away from the larger group. Fundamentally disagreements exist
• Collective effervescence

  • Hockey in Canada
• Totem


  Objects that represent the sacred
• In the United States, the suicide rate dips in the days surrounding the Super Bowl and the World Series
• In Quebec, the suicide rate is higher when the Montreal Canadians are not in the playoffs
• Toronto is the least happy city in Canada
• Why we follow sports

  • It makes us unhappy
  • Our team will eventually lose
  • Researchers have found that the day that our team wins, we become 3-5% happier, but losing makes us 6.5-10% less happy
  • If our team is not expected to win we get less of a loss impact and more of a happy
  • If our team is expected to win, we get less happiness with a win, more unhappiness with a loss
• When added up, we all generally lose happiness (and time) by following sports
• But we are not rational in following sports
• Conflict Theory and Religion

  • Religion does not always just increase social cohesion
  • It incites social conflict and reinforces social inequality, even when it may not begin with this purpose
• Jesus, Moses, Muhammad, Buddha, all promoted equality and freedom
• Routinization of charisma


  Religions often become less responsive to the needs of ordinary people
• Marx called religion the "opium of the people"
• The Vatican is the wealthiest institution on Earth $15b
• Jesus preached the sharing of wealth
• The Bible says "The meek shall inherit the Earth"