How Do You View Religion?

How do you view yourself? How do others view you? Do you really care? The answers to all these questions are shaped by the culture you were raised in. for the most part, scientists agree that culture plays a very important role in how a person develops. A woman raised in India might grow up to be a traditional woman who marries young, works part time, and who devotes the majority of her life to her family. The same person, if raised in a more Western-thinking country, might attend college, pursue a career, and not get married until after she's thirty. All cultures have certain things in common, but still have differences that make them very distinct. There are four main criteria anthropologists use when examining cultures. I hope to show these criteria, explain them in a way that is easy to make sense of, and also show how cultures can evolve.

Culture shows up in the social norms, customs, symbols, humor, expectations, beliefs and communications practices. Culture plays a large role in shaping a person's personality. As humans we are born with little or no specific instincts. A person's culture will shape those instincts and train the person on how to survive traditionally. One of the most astonishing things about vulture is the fact that it can be changed in one generation but then keep those changes intact through many hundreds of generation after that.

In the Merit Student's Encyclopedia (page 375), culture is defined as "the patterns of behavior acquired by man though social learning." Nearly all recent studies preformed to find out how culture affects people seem to infer that culture is a learned trait, rather than one passed down through genes (sometimes called "genetic memory") as some anthropologists previously thought. What different types of cultures are there? There are regional cultures, religions cultures, and many others that are considered "sub-cultures".

Culture can be broken into four main components. Orientation to time: whether focus is on the past, present, or future. Orientation to people: orientation to the environment: whether it's here to serve us, or we're here to serve it. Values and Philosophies: what's most important in life, what your values are, whether religion is important or not.

Christianity is one of the most popular religions in the world. It has a long history though not always pleasant. The Christian culture appears to be one of the widest and most known religions, and has gone through many stages and has evolved numerous times. In order to better understand how the four components relate to the study of cultures, let's use Christianity as an example and look at it in the context of the four components used when examining cultures.

Orientation to time

Christianity focuses on the past as well as the present and future. It dwells on the past by recapturing the life and crucifixion of Jesus Christ. The present because they focus on living the Christian life and doing good as well as you can, and the future by looking forward to having an eternity with God in heaven and look toward the revelations, or the return of Christ.

Orientation to people

Christians believe that everyone should hear about what they believe and choose to believe in for themselves or not. They believe that God is the highest authority and people should follow his commandments. There is said to be communications between God and ourselves. Through prophecy, tongues, and prayer Christians can communicate with god. As for, approach to conflict, Christians believe that they should "turn the other cheek" and they believe strongly in forgiveness. It is found in the Lords prayer "...Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us..." Matthew 26:9-13.

Orientation to the environment

Christians believe that