Do you think that society, and/or the world, is secularizing or not?

I think in some aspects that a majority of our world is secular, but I also believe that religion still plays a large role in other areas. If you define religion as the worship of a higher being, and/or a sense of spirituality, living a life or morality, I would say the world has fallen far away from that.

On one hand, you have the world of entertainment, where television and movies say and do things that would have never been allowed years ago. They show things that never should be shown, use cuss words like they are everyday words, and show violence so extreme, that you cannot eat while watching it. I call that secular. Nobody wants to support a religious movie as a box office hit anymore. Kids can’t pray in secular schools anymore, and most places consider “Merry Christmas” to be a “religious” term, and are required to say Happy Holidays. Last Christmas, I even heard an employee at Wal-Mart complain that they were not allowed to say “Merry Christmas”. That was shocking, considering Wal-Mart wants you to believe they are a family friendly store.

With that being said, I would also say that I see religion as a part of society as well. It is not often that you find people running around cursing the name of God, and most people will express some sort of belief in a higher being. Even they don’t go to church on a regular basis, they recognize that a majority of their blessing come from the God they worship. We have God’s name on our money, it’s the principals that our country is founded on, and is included in such documents as our Declaration of Independence. When tragedy strikes our communities, you find people praying together in public, and people finding God again, even if for a short time. When people get sent to prison, they will often claim to have “found God” while inside. So I don’t think we are totally secular, but I think the scales lean toward a secular world.

The text says that the disagreement between non-secular supports, and secular supports, is that for those support secularization; see religion as not so important anymore. Those who support secularization, say that religion is a major part of society. I think that religion is an important part of society; I just think human nature has required more sexual, and violent films because we have become used to minor action, and want more to get our emotions going. Because of that, I think that we are becoming more and more into the world, and less and less into God.

I do think the text brings up a valid point. That in the old days religion had a huge influence over our society and government, but as we have separated church and state, religion has had a lesser influence over government, and because of that, government has become more and more powerful. I think this is because government has not had to answer to a higher power in a long time. Seeing what society has become, I think that we should rethink how much of God we have taken out of our society, schools, government, and world in general.

In looking at the web explorations on world religions, I was really shocked to see so many religions, many I had not heard of. There were millions of followers for many of the religions, which also tells me that people must be more religious than we realize. Maybe they are afraid to bring it into their every day lives, and wear their religion on their sleeve.

I had suspected that Christianity would be the largest part; I just did not realize that so many religions fell under Christianity. I was sad to see that there were so many who don’t believe in anything. Besides religious beliefs, I guess it is sad for me, because I think believing in something makes life better. (At least for me.) I thought there would have been more people following the Chinese traditional religion. It was interesting learning about some the religions I had never heard of, such as Rastafarianism, Zoroastrianism, and Cao Dai.

Overall I thought this weeks readings were very interesting. It has motivated me to learn more about other religions, so I at least will know what someone is talking about when they say they practice a certain religion.