Blog 3

Durkheim’s views on religion were very interesting to say the least. I believe that some of his ideas hold true today, but others have fallen through the cracks. He defined religion as the belief in one God. While this is true for some religions such as Christianity and Islam, it is not true for a lot of other like Hinduism or Greek mythology. Today, there are so many different religions that are practiced around the world and they are all so different that it would be impossible for anyone to put just 1 basic definition to what religion is. This is where I think Durkheim could have gone wrong, since he left out so many religions in the definition, he was only thinking of religions that were the most predominant at the time.

Durkheim also puts out this idea of sacred versus profane. He says that something sacred, “is something added to and above the real (73).” Profane, on the contrary, is something that doesn’t have any special or spiritual magical power to it. He says that something becomes sacred through interactions between individuals within a church or other place of worship. We can attach meaning to anything to make it sacred. An example given in class was the cross. Someone could look at it as just two pieces of wood put together while others may see it as something that stands for the taking away of our sins. In the picture that I chose for this blog, there is a bunch of crosses that all look different. I thought that this stood for how, even though, they are all crosses, they look very different, and each person interprets the meaning of a cross in a different way.

I believe that Durkheim had some good ideas about what religion is and why people practice the way that they do. He did leave some religions out but I think this is mainly because of the time period that he was in. The world was not as diverse back then, so the majority of people did practice religions in which the belief in one God was common.