Some of that promised Peter Berger

I haven't read much in the way of non-fiction, particularly very academic non-fiction. I certainly have not read much sociological material, so my enthusiasm for The Heretical Imperatve may be from my non-exposure to this sort of reading. For those of you more expereinced with those sort of texts, I apologise for my exhuberance.
In the first chapter, Modernity as the Universalization of Heresy, Peter is still setting some of the ground rules for his premise. He defines what he means as modernity by what it does to/for societies. He says that not only does modernnity pluralize intitutions (where there were once two instutions, now there are 50), it also pluralizes plausibility structures.

...there is a direct relation between the cohesion of intitutions and the
subjective cohesiveness of beliefs, values, and worldviews. In a social
situation in which everyone with whom the individual has significant ties to is
a soldier, it is not surprising that the soldier's view of the world, with all
that this implies, will be massively plausible. Conversely, it is very
difficult to be a soldier in a social situation where this makes little of no
sense to everyone else....
...It further further follows that the instutuional pluralization of
modernity had to carry in its wake a fragmentation and ipso facto a weakening of
every conceivable belief and value dependent upon social support. The
typical situation in which the individual finds himself in a traditional society
is one where there are highly reliable plausibility structures.
Conversely, modern societies are characterized by unstable, incohesive,
unreliable plausibility structures. Put differently, in the modern
situation certainty is hard to some by.

Later in the chapter he comes back to what these multiplying plausibiliy structures mean to religion

The impact of modernity on religion is commonly seen in terms of the
process of secularization, which can be described simply as one in which
religion loses is hold on the level both of institutions and of human
consciousness...At the very least there is a close connection between
secularization and the pluralization of plausibility structures described
above. Nor are the reasons for this hard to understand. A religious
worldview, just like any other body of interpretations of reality, is dependent
upon social support. The more unified and reliable this suppport is, the
more these interpretations of reality will be firmly established in
consciousness. The typical premodern society creates conditions under
which religion has, for the individual, the quality of objective certainty;
modern society, by contrast, undermines this certainty, deobjectivates it by
robbing it of its taken-for-granted status, ipso facto subjectivizes
religion....If the typical condition of premodern man is one of religious
certainty, it follows that that of modern man is one of religious doubt.

Being a sociologist, he writes in very general terms. He does concede that not all people in society behave or think as he describes, but these exceptions always prove the rule for sociologists.

To consider the concept of multiplying plausibility structures as the cornerstone of modernity (outside of the religious discussion), we can go back to my post on Duchamp being the father of Modern Art. Many of the British journalists that covered that story commented about how some would be surprised that a significant cubist painting wasn't chosen. A cubist painting, while a significant move away from 19th century established painting techniques, isn't quite an ancestor to some of the most challenging pieces in Modern Art. Duchamp's "Ready Made art" (his term) declared that if he could get you to see this as an artistic work, nothing could be outside the realm of possibility of what is art. The plausibility structures multiplied the day that Duchamp showed Fountain.

Some of this excerpting and rambling is really for my own benefit, so I can come back later if I need it for class or something. But if you are getting anything from these, then cool.