Blog 5: Ancestor Worship

An important reading this week was titled "Putting an End to Ancestor Worship" by Rodney Stark. Within this reading, he bashes the founding fathers of Sociology, voicing complaints with each one and seemingly having nothing positive to say about any of them or their ideas. In regards to Karl Marx, he focused on Marx's stance on how religion was rooted in poverty, and challenged this through assertions of how even the extremely wealthy can be tied to religion. Religion has also thrived in times of great economic gain, further showing that religion isn't solely connected with poverty and times of woe. When it comes to Durkheim, Stark criticized his view of religion as being too sociological, and stated that ignoring the supernatural aspects is an extreme lapse in judgement. Then with Weber, he explained how Weber's view of capitalism as being initiated by a protestant work ethic was incorrect, as many cultures without a major protestant force are embracing capitalism.
I agree with Stark's criticisms of the three founding fathers for the most part. Many of their original ideas were too biased or rooted in the historical time periods in which they came from, which makes them dated today. However, since Stark focused on the religious aspects of each, he ignored the ideas that were presented that are still useful today. Some of these ideas include Marx's writings about how capitalism leads to alienation in workers, which is still relevant today. Durkheim's work on suicide is also still relevant today, as we still have issues in our population with suicide and it's easier to see how this may occur through his typing and studies. As for Weber, his different categories of authority still hold up today as being accurate. We can still draw modern day examples of each type, although he believed that we would be past those by now. Stark warns not to idolize these figures, but we can still learn much from them and their work, even with the inherent flaws found in each. They're comparable to the early leaders in many sciences, whose ideas may have been wrong, but who will be remembered for paving the way to allow others to carry on their work and eventually come to the correct conclusions.
(When talking about Rodney Stark, I couldn't help but think of Tony Stark. I imagine Rodney Stark would have this look on his face whenever someone would ask him what he thought about the founding sociologists in regards to their other contributions.)