we behave according to the rules of the religion. Meanwhile, we can
experience the sacred,that which is holy or divine, and we can see the
spiritual in the midst of our profane,or secular, everyday lives.
Science is interested in only the physical world. It concedes that a
spiritual world may exist, but it is undetectable to scientific research. No
systematic experiments have demonstrated its existence, or the existence
of spiritual beings like ghosts, or spiritual powers like ESP. The parapsy-
chologists who study such matters have had mixed, unreliable results.
Religion changes over time. There are new interpretations of the
revealed message, new emphases, or even new revelations: For over 100
years, Black men were forbidden from entering the priesthood in the LDS
(Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints)—a strident restriction,
because every adult male in the church is a priest—but in 1978, a divine
message indicated that they could. During the Civil War, the Southern
Baptists split from the American Baptists over the issue of slavery: They
believed that it was God’s will for Africans to be slaves. But you won’t
find many Southern Baptists supporting slavery today.
Science also changes over time. Scientific discoveries that are accepted
as empirically demonstrated one day may be replaced by new discover-
ies, also empirically verified. For many years, the best scientific studies
found that Mars had a relatively mild climate, water, and oxygen—every-
thing necessary for intelligent life to evolve. Then better scientific studies revealed that
Mars is much too cold and dry to support life.
However, neither religion nor science changes overnight. Neither has a smooth,
uncontroversial change from one set of beliefs to another. Instead, they advance by
dramatic breaks with accepted wisdom. In religion, these breaks generally come when
a new prophet or charismatic leaderdraws people away from established institutions,
as Martin Luther led people away from the Roman Catholic Church to become Protes-
tants, and John Wesley from the Anglican Church to become Methodists. In science,
these breaks come from scientists who challenge accepted assumptions and begin to
draw followers into newer empirical areas of scientific exploration.
Classical Theories of Religion
Religion is a cultural universal—that is, it exists in every single culture. No human
society has yet been discovered that lacks an organized, coherent system of beliefs
about a spiritual world. However, religions vary tremendously. Some have no gods,
some have many, and some have only one. Some believe in a heaven or a hell, some
in reincarnation, some in both, and some do not believe in an afterlife at all. Sociol-
ogists are less interested in debating the truth of religious doctrine than in the func-
tion of religion. Why do all societies have one? What does it do for the society?
Durkheim and Social Cohesion
For Emile Durkheim, religion served to integratesociety, to create a sense of unity
out of the enormously diverse collection of individuals. Religion provides a sort of
social glue that holds society together, binding us into a common destiny and com-
mon values.
But how? Durkheim went back to the origins of society. He surmised that primitive
cultures were so overcome by the mystery and power of nature—lightning striking a tree,
CLASSICAL THEORIES OF RELIGION 489Not only do we believe in religion and
science, but we also embrace different
elements of different religions. The vast
majority of Americans belong to Western
religions, which believe in neither ghosts
nor reincarnation. Yet 51 percent of
Americans believe in ghosts, and 27 percent
believe in reincarnation. No Western
religion teaches that there is any validity in
astrology, and some teach that it is a tool
of the devil, yet 31 percent of Americans
believe in it. And young people are more
likely to believe in astrology or ghosts
because they often select beliefs that they
find useful or meaningful, regardless of
official doctrine (Harris, 2004).Didyouknow