Family and Religion

Chapter 13, titled “Families and Religion” was chosen as one of the chapters I wanted to focus on because religion is the aspect of sociology that I am interested in the most. Chapter 13 discusses many aspects of both family and religion, including the different types of families (extended, nuclear), the definition of family, and sociological theories on family and much more. As for the religion part of the text, Chapter 13 delves into the six parts of the definition of religion, the different forms of religion and different sociological theories of religion.


http://science.nationalgeographic.com/science/space/universe/origins-universe-article/

The link you, the reader, will be going to here will take you to a scholarly journal on the Big Bang Theory. In Chapter 13 there is a part on the “Defining Religion” section of the text that says “The ordinary beliefs of daily life are secular beliefs and may be institutionalized but they are specifically not religious.” Secular beliefs is a concept that has very much intrigued me. So, for representing an example of a secular belief I used the Big Bang Theory. The Big Bang Theory is a good example of a secular belief, because it is not rooted in any religious concepts. I chose this article because it gives basic knowledge of the Big Bang that shouldn't confuse anyone. The article is also from National Geographic (National Geographic, 2011) so it qualifies as a scholarly article and it is a good article for giving a basic understanding of a secular concept. 

This image is intended to represent a specific concept from Chapter 13.  The specific concept I am representing is "secular beliefs" from page 332 of the text. With this Big Bang Theory image I am trying to show a secular belief. The Big Bang Theory is not specifically religious or embedded in any religious nature and is therefore a secular concept.

The video clip I provided is a 3 minute 47 second video on the Big Bang. The video is apply titled "The Big Bang" (2008). I included this video because it helps show a secular belief that I have found very interesting.  As stated before, secular beliefs are a concept briefly discussed in Chapter 13 of the text. The Big Bang is a secular concept very interesting to me because it is one of the most popular secular beliefs out there today. The discovery of the Big Bang completely changed how we saw the origin of the universe.

Links to two Internet sites that provide information on concepts from the chapter:

                        1. http://religions.pewforum.org/reports

                 This link will take you to a site from “The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life” (Pew Forum, 2010) It will show statistics on Christian dominance in America. In Chapter 13 there is a paragraph about “The Dominance of Christianity”. The statistics provided on the linked website will help back-up what the textbook discusses. Statistics included are that among adults over 78% consider themselves "Christian" while 16% listed themselves as unaffiliated (Atheist, Agnostic, etc.), and almost 5% deemed themselves as "Others", these would include Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim and Hindu peoples.

2. http://www.divorcestatistics.org/

                 This link will take you to a site on divorce statistics. (Divorce Statistics,  n.d.) Chapter 13 has a large section of the text devoted to divorce. The section of the text that is devoted to text discusses many statistics about divorce. For instance the text says that it is a misleading statistic that one in two marriages ends in divorce. The site I have provided also says that this is a misleading statistic.

One quote that represented the feelings I had while reading the chapter:

"Family is the most important thing in the world"-Princess Diana (n.d.)

I thought of this quote while reading the section of the chapter that discussed families. While reading about extended and nuclear families I thought "no matter what situation you are in your family is such an important aspect of your life and we should cherish the time we have with our family."