What the Seniors Have Learned

In this class, we have learned about the different perspectives of religion such as Functional, Materialistic, and Belief. The Materialistic perspective is that humans made up religion and it doesn't really exist. The Functional perspective states that it doesn't matter if what we believe is true or not, but that it's useful. The Belief perspective says that religion is true and real.

Then we learned how religion has been studied. It's not studied to be skeptical but to find more proof from different sources to know what really happened. Then we studied that each culture has their own belief such as Santeria and Voudo. We also learned that with each culture and belief there come different rituals and creation stories.

We also learned that in many religions because of the culture, women aren't accepted and in some it is thought that they can't have a relationship with God, but some important figures like Jesus and Mohammed treated women well. Jesus had men and women for desciples

We learned that charisma is cool and many religious people have it as a source of motivation. We learned that indigenous people compromise at least 4% of the world population. Most native cultures pass down their stories orally. In Mesoamerica, the ancient teachings have remained hidden for 500 years since the coming of the conquistadors. Also, some indigenous people feel that their traditional sacred ways are not only valid, but actually essential for the future of the world. Every indigenous religion has their own sacred place to worship. They worship almost everything from harvests to marriages.