I really got excited about Durkheim's theories on religion as a purely social phenomenon. I was ready to become a devout follower of his ideas until reading that he never even set foot in Australia! This fact forced me to re-read Durkheim in Pals book with a little more skepticism. As I wrote in the ilearn forum, it seems to me that religion has grown into a purely religious phenomenon not necessarily out of it. In the earliest days of humanity, religion was science. So to say that their way to explain the natural world was purely social is like saying that today's science is purely social. I think religion then, as today, has at least a dual purpose. It is both a social binding and a way for individuals to come to terms with the world.