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Originally posted by chavos
lurk...
I'll take your word on it...i've never studied sociology. But i don't believe that's completely getting to teh core of the question. If family and government are doing the same thing according to this theory...i question how accurate it is on teh details to give it such breadth of scope.
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They're not necessarily doing the same exact things - but think about it. In order to live with other people, we need to learn how to behave, right? Family lays the framework for that - teach kids to say please and thank you, to share, not to pick your nose in public, etc. Teach them the basic rules of the game. Education teaches them practical skills and knowledge but also how to get along with other people, frameworks of competition and cooperation, etc. Now what happens when you're free of those family and education system constraints? To some extent, people internalize the rules they've learned. But you've still got a good 60 years to go, and what keeps people in line? Government passes and enforces laws that keep us from killing and stealing from each other. If you start your own family, you're re-inserted into that structure and its constraints. Religion is another way of keeping people in line, so to speak: one, it sets down the rules for how to treat other people, but it also provides a deeply internalized constraint on how to behave - your eternal soul is on the line. It's not just about your relationship to other people (although you are in a community whose purpose is to support you in following certain precepts), it's about a relationship to a higher power. What better authority to keep people in line than a deity who can see your actions all the time, and can see into your very soul and knows not just what you do but what you feel and think? I'm not trying to be cynical, I'm just saying that religion does in fact serve a purpose of social control.
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If all community, and all human relation is social control and cohesion...then organized science is about social control and cohesion. That, i don't buy.
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Why don't you buy it? Think about the peer review process, the system of conferences and other methods for sharing scientific work. It at least works as a measure of social control for scientists. In terms of social control for the larger society, sometimes science is relevant and sometimes it's not.