Advantages and disadvantages of religion definition Essay

Identify and Briefly explain one and only(a) advantage and two disadvantages of Functional interpretations of Religion. (9 marks). One disadvantage of Functionalism in formation holiness is that Conservative force states that its difficult to see how organized religion can be functioning to socialise societys members into morality and social integration if only a minority of people hang church on a regular bases. Durkheim used the idea of Totems universe able to bring clans together and that the society used this totem as a way of worshipping togetherness. However, only a small amount of aboriginal groups were used, so it could be invalid and misleading to use this to generalise all aborigines permit alone Religion as a whole. An advantage of functional definitions of religion is through the example of collective worship within a earth of civil religion to show that there is still collective worship. For example, the Statess new collection of beliefs, rituals and symbols wit h respect to things esablished within Americans society, its not opposed to Christianily and in fact shares a bunch in common with it but is not in any outcome Christian.This allows the bringing together of nations and allows the symbolisation of the nation as the people, so therefore people in America worsip Americanism. Anotheer criticism of functional definition of religion is that it ignores dysfunctional aspects and gives little consideration to hostility between distinct religious groups. For example, Northan Ireland and Bosnia. These religious diversions have caused social disruption and date quite than promoting social order which Durkheim says is maintained by the teaching of moral norms and value and creating a collective conscience where everyone sticks together. Therefore this is proven false on the aspect of it being relevant to all religions due to the religious conflict in Ireland and Bosnia.