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Omissions (often serious) and unanswered qeuestion are invisible in CAPITALS in the article. Please removed these invisible warnings (only) after the omission has been addresses. The same warnings IN CAPITALS, but visible, are here User:Andries/Theories_of_religion.Andries (talk) 10:16, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
Functionalism vs. functional definitions
First, I'd like to applaud the entry creator for a wonderful addition to Misplaced Pages. That said, I'd like to make a suggestion. I just self-reverted an edit I made that had specified "functionalist" theories of religion as those stemming from Functionalism in the social sciences: Functionalism (sociology). The reason I self reverted and realized the issue was more complicated is because the difference between functional and substantive definitions does not conflate directly with theories of religion--and "functional" definitions are not "functionalist" definitions. The latter term is applied to functionalism, the afore mentioned social scientific paradigm. I noticed this problem, because functionalism as a theoretical orientation is certainly not a broader category within which Freudian reductionism finds itself, whether or not both essentialize religion through what it does, as opposed to what it is. On top of this proponents of substantive definitions do not need to have "substantive" theories, despite the mistake, be it uncommon, made by a few writers to use this phrase. Of course when a theorist uses a certain type of definition (substantive or functional) there are clearly implications to the broader theoretical project. I would not deny this, but the matter should be presented differently. Certain theorists work from the premise of a substantive or a functional definition, but we should not classify their theories as such, and I think it causes special problems because of existence of "functionalism" as a historically defined theoretical orientation in the social sciences, and because its relationship to the definitional enterprise is much less clear. For instance, Geertz definition of religion is functional (for third party example of this identification see Berger, Peter L. 1977. "Some Second Thoughts on Substantive versus Functional Definitions of Religion." JSSR. 13(2):125-133). However, I would never call Geertz a functionalist, although Berger (in the piece I referenced) does talk about how Geertz reflects the Durkheimian impetus in the social sciences. Anyway this is a much to long way of saying the following: Unless there are any objections I think we should not complicate the substantive, functional split between ways of defining religion with suggestions about larger theoretical projects. Any thoughts?PelleSmith (talk) 13:12, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
Pals (page 272) labels the theories by Freud, Marx, and Durkheim as "functional" or "reductionist" explanations. Kunin does not label the approach by Freud "functional" or "functionalist" as far as I can see. I had not even noticed that I (and the source) sometimes uses the word "functional" and sometimes ""functionalist" and I had not been aware of a difference in meaning. (I am not the most accurate reader, I admit. Thats is why I wrote this article mainly in user space.) Andries (talk) 07:44, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
Rodney Stark
I am not sure I see the justification of giving Rodney Stark the amount of attention he garners here. In fact the very idea of including him on the list as it is currently presented is very odd. Do we have any third party sources to substantiate this prominence, because in my mind there are several contemporary sociologists who have been much more influential than Stark. For instance, I would think Peter Berger, and Robert Bellah would deserve a mention here before Stark does. Also his general theoretical orientation vis-a-vis the sociology of religion, "rational choice theory," has never really been the dominant paradigm and is now even less popular. Sure, it did, and does, have some very vocal proponents, but a cursory glance at the current literature in the field would easily make a case against its prevalence. In fact its day in the sun came primarily by way of being presented as the most viable explanatory alternative in the wake of the obvious demise of "secularization theory." In other words people jumped on the bandwagon briefly because they knew secularization theory was wrong, or at least partially so because religion was not in decline in much of the world. My thoughts would be to include a section on the rational choice apporach and put a much smaller blurb about Stark's book within it. Any suggestions?PelleSmith (talk) 13:36, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
The main reason why I included it was because this very short on topic reputable source mentions their theory. http://hirr.hartsem.edu/ency/Theory.htm I have no problem in condensing and renaming the section to have less emphasis on the names or Stark and Bainbridge. Andries (talk) 07:51, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
I have no problem if you add Peter Berger and Robert Bellah's theories, because I believe that they are sufficiently influential and notable to be included here. They are not included in Pals' excellent book but Pals selected, only simple theories for didactic reasons, as he explictly wrote. I hope that this article will not degenerate into a List of theories of religion. Andries (talk) 12:18, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
