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.

Cultural Characteristics

The date is the eleventh of October in the year 2012, and it is another exciting edition of Mr. Schick’s Human Geography class. Today, Mr. Schick our host (teacher) had his class, section two Human Geography, finish the presentation on Christopher Columbus then we got to the main portion of class (drum roll please) soda, or is it pop… no coke. I don’t know call it what you wish, but the lesson was still on what different counties call soda, pop, or coke. Actually, it wasn’t, it was about Cultural Characteristics and the difference in various cultures and what makes up a culture. Some components to a culture are its language, religion and ethnic heritage. For example, Canada speaks both French and English. However English is dominant in most provinces. However, French is the dominant language in Quebec and caused their government to want to succeed from Canada and become its own country. In Sweden, they speak several languages and it does not cause any troubles between the people.

10/10/12

Today in Human Geography class with Mr. Schick, we presented our presentations that we created through Google on the Native Americans, the Vikings, or Christopher Columbus. After hearing the Columbus presentation, I doubt that one would wish to hang with Columbus if they knew that he raped some of the natives, cut off their hands, and enslaved the “Indians.” I mean really compared to the Native Americans and the Vikings you would think that Christopher Columbus was more intent on conquering a world that they knew almost nothing about the combat skills of the natives then actually trading with them like he was hired to do. What if he actually had landed in India? What would that do to their relationship? I will bet Christopher Columbus never thought of that? Did he? In fact the Vikings, the big ferocious conquering warriors, treated the Americas better than Columbus did. Now grant it, the Vikings did land on an arctic tundra that nobody could live in, so maybe it really is not that great of a comparison. Still, I doubt the Vikings would have committed atrocities such as that. I mean they probably would have burned some villages and looted them, so I guess it’s your pick; being raped, enslaved, and having your hands cut off, or killed.

Columbus Day presentation.

Pop quiz: “Who was the first European to discover America?”

A)     Marco Polo

B)      Christopher Columbus

C)      The Vikings

D)     None of the above

E)      All of the above

If this was history class, your answer was probably B) Christopher Columbus. Also, if this were a History course, which it’s not, you would be right too. If you used that knowledge to answer this question, I have one thing to say to you, “WRONG SIR!!!” What your History teachers probably failed to bestow upon you is that Christopher Columbus discovered NOTHING!!! For starters, the Vikings beat Columbus by at least 500 years. Second, it was already found and inhabited long before the Vikings got there. Thirdly, he thought he landed in India. Have been wondering why the Native Americans are commonly called Indians? Well there’s your answer. Thus, if Christopher Columbus is to be renowned for anything, it’s the atrocities he committed against the natives. I will bet you never knew that he cut off their hands and enslaved them back in Europe now did you? I thought so. Now who’s the great explorer that we celebrate the discovery of our continent on Columbus Day?  

"God Grew Tired of Us" assessment

Today, Mr. Schick tested our knowledge of the documentary “God Grew Tired of Us.” I mean he actually tested our knowledge of the movie. In my opinion, I found the test to be on the… harder side, yup definitely the hardest test we have had all year. I never even thought that Mr. Schick would actually have been cruel enough to put the main character’s tribe on the test. I mean come on now, who cares about what tribe some African dude was from. Then, after we all surely turned in failing grades except for one, Mr. Schick had our shadow today read us the answers. Once we finished dealing with the test, Mr. Schick told us a story about how his neighbors got a rooster, which would crow every morning about a half-hour before sunrise. Thus, we plotted revenge with him, revealing his great plan to take a recording of the cock-a-doodle-doing, hook it up a stereo and play it from the edge of their property at about two o’ clock in morning. We shall see how they like being woken up in the morning by the sound of a rooster.

Fundraising for Sudan

Today in Human Geography class, we started by sharing the organizations that we found. Some of these organizations were focused on helping the Lost Boys while others were about children with cleft lips. Mr. Schick also informed us that he was able to contact John Dau about coming to our school to speak to us. However, the price to bring him here would be between six and ten thousand dollars. After seeing the email, Mr. Schick took survey to see if we still wanted him to come, and the majority still said that we wanted him to come over skyping him. Therefore, we are going to work out a way to raise the money to bring him hear as a guest speaker. One idea that we came up with was having a dress-down day for those who pay 3-5 dollars for a bracelet. The guidelines for this dress-down day would be to buy and wear the Sudan bracelet along with jeans and a T-shirt.  

Mr. Schick's Wrath

In Human Geography on the third of October, we did more work as to which organizations need our help. We also heard about the wrath which was unleashed upon section 1 by Mr. Schick. Mr. Schick’s rage was justified by the fact that after he set them to work, within 20 minutes, there were students who were deleting people’s work and typing random comments such as “Mason eats dead puppies.” Mr. Schick tried to resolve this peaceably by ordering them to quit it in a calm controlled voice. This was not enough, the “cyber-terrorism” continued and Mr. Schick’s section one Human Geography class saw that Mr. Schick’s cruel rage knows no limits. In fact, no form of rational comments could stop it. Then, it struck, Mr. Schick dictated that he would turn it into an assignment and give everyone 0’s. Our class however, was much more behaved. There were still groups complaining that their work was being deleted, but Mr. Schick just closed the document for a few minutes and then re-opened it to allow people to copy and paste their work, then closed it again.