”Emile Durkheim proposed that religion has three major functions in society: it provides social cohesion to help maintain social solidarity through shared rituals and beliefs, social control to enforce religious-based morals and norms to help maintain conformity and control in society, and it offers meaning and purpose to answer any existential questions.”
Phil Zuckerman, an American sociologist, has stated that countries such as Denmark and Sweden who are not as vocal or entrapped in their religion have cultivated healthy and prosperous societies compared to countries where religion is a very expressed matter and even factors in to government.
Religion has always been a major element in humanity as a whole. From the ancient world to present day the concept - and practice - of religion has persisted. Wether or not religion has wholly done good or bad has always been a hot point of debate.
QUESTIONS I POSE;
•Do you think religion has ultimately done more good or bad for humanity through time? Explain, please.
•Does humanity need religion to be moral and “good”? Does it help at all if it isn’t “needed” per se? Why or why not.
•If humanity never turned to religion would the world be more wholly advanced scientifically, socially, and so forth?
•Does very existence itself seem to be meaningless and hollow without a higher power and a “life after” to believe in? Why or why not? (I ask this mostly as a means of garnering an address to the pro-religion point of “without God there is nothing”.)