Saturday, October 13, 2012

World Religions

In Human Geography today, Mr. Schick asked us to research the Christian, Islam, Buddhist, Hindu and Jewish religions and answer questions on each.
 
Christianity was founded in 41 A.D. in Jerusalem, Israel. It is considered to be a monotheistic religion since we worship only one god, who is called God, whereas in a polytheistic religion they worship gods. The Christian religion’s holy book is called the Bible. Christianity has over 2.1 billion followers globally. Christianity is most common in the Americas but can be found in many countries around the world in Europe, Australia, and Asia.

Islam was founded in 632 A.D. in Mecca. Islam is a monotheistic religion, whose central figure is Muhammad. The Islamic holy book is called the Quran, which has multiple spellings such as Koran, Kora’n, and Kuraan. Islam has 1.57 billion. Just like Christianity, Muslims can be found globally but are mostly located in Asia and Africa.

Buddhism was founded in 460 B.C. in Northeast India. Technically, Buddhists worship no gods, which would make them nontheistic. Unlike other religions, Buddhism does not have a holy book. The Buddhist central figure is Buddha. Buddhism has between 200-500 million followers which can be mostly found in India.

Hinduism was founded in 1500 B.C. in India. Hinduism is considered to be a polytheistic religion. Their holy book, called the Vedas, as several different parts. However none are considered to be absolute truth. The Hindu central figure is a trinity of Shiva, Visnhu, and Brahma. Hindus claim a total of about 900 million followers, which would make it the third largest in the world.

Judaism was founded about 3800 years ago in Israel. The Jewish religion is a monotheistic religion. The Jewish Holy book is, like Christianity, called the Bible. The central figure of worship in Judaism is also God. The number of Jews is between 12-14 million, but has a trend of shrinking since many Jews either assimilate or don’t know that they are Jewish and are mostly located in Israel and New York, United States; however it is a global religion.

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