Engdahl_Research_Abstract

= Research Paper Abstract =


 * Thesis:** The faith based nature of religions is what has allowed it to adapt and remain a major part in society for hundreds of years.

 When Jordan Paganelli got sick I couldn’t think about anything else. He was always on my mind. When we were given this research paper assignment I realized that I needed to pick something that I could relate to him. A normal person would research caner, but cancer isn’t controversial, therefore it doesn’t lend itself to a good thesis. So I started thinking about other things that had been on my mind, one of which was religion. Religion is an incredibly controversial topic and a huge part of death.

After I decided my topic I needed to do some research to narrow down my ideas. I stumbled across Emile Durkheim’s theories about religion. Emile Durkheim is considered to be the father of sociology, and his theory is that religion is innately social. This theory actually makes a lot of sense if you think about it; in order to prove a religion you get a group of people together and show that since all these people believe in your religion it must be true, whereas it only takes on person to prove a scientific fact. This social nature allowed kings and other leaders throughout history to manipulate people. As supporting evidence for this I researched peer pressure. There have been numerous social experiments on peer pressure, all showing that peer pressure is an effective tool for manipulation.

The interesting thing, then is that although we have separated church and state, religion still plays the same role it did in early times. We cling to religion when there is nothing else left to believe in. It is used to explain the unexplained, therefore is a major part of death. From a logical perspective religion makes people behave irrationally. The one thing I learned from this paper is that no matter what religion is so influential that it will never completely disappear.