Özet:

The study of religion is one of the oldest areas of sociology. Most sociologists from the nineteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth century took the analysis of religion to the center of their more general thoughts on social and cultural life. This tendency is especially applicable to classical period sociologists. But they have marked sociology with their own positivist philosophies. This can also be seen in social science. This positivist philosophy, in combination with agnosticism, has led to the production of religious, such as Spencer, Tylor, Frazer and Durkheim, positive traditional religious theories, which defines a kind of collective madness and meaning in any way as a kind of forgotten or misunderstood symbolic thought and behavior. Positivism also encouraged the focus on social evolution theories. That is why positivist and evolutionary sociologists are aimed at making explanations about the source, evolution and future of religion. Some of them talked about the death of God or religion as a result of the processes of modernization and secularization.   Today, we see that many religious sociologists, even if not all of them, do not participate in the modernization and secularization discussions. On the contrary, they have been directed to investigate the effects of religion in areas such as economy, politics, or education, etc. by adopting a realistic attitude.