Five Purposes Of Religion Functions On Society

Decent Essays
There are five major purposes that religion serves on society. Religion provides social unity and stability. That religion gives people meaning and purpose of life. Religion is an agent of social control. With religion comes higher psychological and physical being. Lastly religion is a way to motivate people to try to work for a positive social change. (Boundless, 2015) By religion providing social unity and stability it provides a common set of beliefs for people as well as gives people a place to worship that brings them together physically, gives them social interaction and helps make social bonds stronger. By religion giving meaning and purpose of life it helps a lot of people make more sense of the things that happen in life that cannot …show more content…
Felt as though religion was also the sign of all oppressed creature. He felt the abolishment of religion was the misleading happiness of people is needed from them to really be happy. He said that religion was meant to give misleading fantasies to the poor. Since the way the economy relations were prevented them from being happy, but religion states that one will find true happiness in the afterlife. He compares how people in distress seek religion to an injured person seeks relief from opiate-based drugs. He says that religion does not fix the problem just helps one forget about it causing them to look at a false future where the problems are gone. (Cline, A, 2015) Religion can exert social control over its believers because of the promises of the afterlife. Marx said religion kept order back in his day because it kept the lower class of people from rising up against the bourgeoisie to get control of the production and gaining the riches of this life. Religion teaches us the right and wrongs on how to live in the way of God so one day we will have a good afterlife. The most famous set of morals that we learn from religion is the Ten Commandments which give use the rule of to live by. (Boundless, 2015) (Barkan, S,

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    This analysis follows Durkheim’s theory that religion has three major functions. These functions are that of religion promotes social cohesion by uniting people together, religion promotes conformity by encouraging people to obey cultural norms, and religion gives meaning to purpose an life. For Reza in Iran, the social norm was to follow islamic beliefs and be muslim. But in order to escape war, Reza and his family immigrated to the United States. This geographical move introduced a different culture and social norms causing Reza to back away from his culture, ethnicity, and religion.…

    • 594 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Therefore, many people would follow religion over even government. Priests became powerful, and religion thrived. It united groups of people, separated groups of people, and even caused wars between groups of people. But arguably the most important contribution of religion is the morals it instills in mankind. They preach kindness, compassion, and helpfulness, but also to have certain views towards certain situations, one of these being same-sex marriage.…

    • 983 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Values within behavior of religion is associated with the help of moral rules, and when social morality that is based upon religion is practiced, it will become a way of life. An example of this dimension would be the Ten Commandments…

    • 939 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Religion is everything Have you ever wondered how everyone gets along? For example, the whole world does not hate each other, we have good relationships. Well, the answer to that is religion. Religion gives us something to look up to and something to have hope for at the end of every day. First, the main 6 religions have so many things in common.…

    • 292 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Religion is the belief in and worship of a superhuman being controlling power, especially a personal God or gods. At the present time, there are about more than four thousand religions in the world. Each of them has a different set of mores and idiosyncrasies to follow. But, sometimes these conventions don’t exactly assure the person’s wants or needs. Religion sometimes get in the way of people’s civil rights because the majority of religions have a strict code of conduct that will prevent you from doing things you’ll want to do, many religions may pressure you to conform, and nearly all, might take advantage of your credibility to make you think things are alright when they’re actually not.…

    • 987 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Essential Questions: How does having a belief (in something or someone) help us to conquer fear and keep hope alive? Having belief helps us to never give up and look on the bright side of things. Without having a belief in something then we don’t stand for anything and it helps to build character. For example, if someone believes in a religion it helps them to build and strengthen their morals by putting it to practice everyday.…

    • 827 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    The Sacred Canopy Analysis

    • 1333 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Individuals want to have meaning, so religion plays that specific role by creating and preserving that for individuals in society. What Berger focuses on as important in the first part of the book is that humans need to have meaning and order. He also discusses the ways that humans function with religion as a way to shield themselves. In the second part of the book Peter Berger examines, the process of secularization and how it can have an impact on religious traditions involving individuals within society.…

    • 1333 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Religion is a way to respond to the sometimes unanswerable questions in life. Religion is used to look for the ultimate meaning, and the purpose to these questions, when answered they can give a peace of mind to people. In our society today there are five main religions practiced in the world, these are; Judaism, Hinduism, Islam, Christianity and Buddhism. The eight characteristics of a religion include cultic practices or rituals, beliefs, sacred stories, social structure, sacred texts, sacred symbols, religious ethics and religious experiences. Out of the 5 major religions I have chosen Buddhism.…

    • 1129 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Mesopotamian Religion

    • 384 Words
    • 2 Pages

    The ancient Near Eastern societies revolved around religion. Hebrews played a large role in the foundations of western civilizations. The Hebrews were different from other societies we know about today. It is said that religion was the main impact in these first civilizations. The foundation of Mesopotamian civilization was also based on religion.…

    • 384 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    He believes that religion is just something people turn to in order to fill empty voids in their lives. In other words, human beings find religion when they’re searching for something they don’t have. Human beings can find what they’re looking for in religion, whether its companionship, loneliness, a sense of community, and a general happiness or wellbeing. Karl Marx mentions that this illusion of happiness is only temporary, and that it will disappear. Marx compares religion to multiple analogies to show when humans are desperate to fill the void of emptiness, and hopelessness: “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of spiritless conditions.…

    • 736 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Individuality Vs Religion

    • 1523 Words
    • 7 Pages

    Extreme religious people, clouded with judgment, misunderstood the true meaning of religion. The religion is a mere tool of connecting oneself to stories bigger than individuals, and there are variety of ways of finding connection. The rules are one of the most important aspects of society because enables large society to exist without creating complete chaos.…

    • 1523 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Religions create a common moral understanding for all participants to be able to coexist. Emile Durkheim and Jonathan Haidt theorize how religion operates as a society and the consequence of intergroup conflict. To maintain a unified group, individuals must lose their self reasoning and work only for the benefit of the group which leads to decisions that an individual would not make. Durkheim explains how religious beliefs and practices function to foster societies. Although the idea of a society is solely inside the individual’s mind, there’s a…

    • 1337 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Many people often believe that in the United States that there is a right to freedom of religious. It is often that we see some individuals that are constantly claiming what their religious freedoms are. These same individuals are also denied their freedom of religious because of the many different laws. The First Amendment of the constitution gives us our religious of freedom over and beyond all laws that are created. Does this mean that all laws should abide be created to abide by First Amendment?…

    • 808 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Religion plays a huge role in our daily lives. Rather your religious practice is Judaism, Christianity, Amish, Buddhism, Hinduism, atheism, etc., religion seems to shape minds and have a part of every society. “Over the past 100,000 years, no group of people anywhere on earth have been found that did not practice some type of religion (Haviland, 2011)” In researching religion, I’ve found that most religions work towards positive change within its members, in return brings positive change in society.…

    • 870 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Religion has a great impact and deeply defines a person. This is regardless of whether the individual admits it and accepts it as a religious belief. It is not always evident if those religious beliefs have a positive or negative impact in a person’s life. A person has at least once encountered someone’s testimony about one’s powerful belief and questioned whether it could be that impactful to one’s life. It is very difficult to define who and what a person defines to be a religion and to clearly see what aspects of religion will motivate a person since all individuals have different levels of persuasion.…

    • 793 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays