Why Do People Get Confused With Culture And Religion

Why do people confuse religion with culture?

They go together, more or less.Obviously polytheism. Many gods and even more goddessesses including liberty.“Patrice Ayme says "Most of the 10,000 or so religions we know of had, each, many “gods”. However not so the religion of Abraham. Who imposed that? Generals. Constantine was a general, he took over the Roman empire in his twenties. Later he steamed his wife alive, killed his nephew, and his gifted son (who did not like his father’s “Catholicism”).The other great general was Muhammad himself (and his successors, aka Caliphs).The one and only god was imposed, because he was an excellent role model for the one and only fascist in power: fascist on the throne, fascist in the sky. It just fit. The religion founded by one general is naturally one with a general on the top.That does not mean one should not look positively to the present pope: he makes a nice Father Christmas. (And has many excellent ideas, such as cap and trade of carbon perm its being a sin… As I long believed.)India has a million gods. But the fascist military structure implicit in Christianism helped Europeans to conquer the world. With Biblical efficiency.How? India, under polytheism, had zero religious wars (as Partha a commenter to this site, pointed out). Why? Polytheism accommodates many feelings, ideas, dispositions, characters, and divinize them all. This insures tolerance where it is the most important to have it, in the heart." fromhttps://patriceayme.wordpress....One advantage of polytheism is science comes early to a polytheist civilization. How early?In India, 2500 years ago!How was the revolution period of the Earth around the Sun calculated in ancient times?

Why does people confuse between Hinduism and Indian culture?

Hindu and Sindhu are synonymous. It is people of the subcontinent, where Sindhu river flows. The country was called 'Hindustan'. S and H pronunciations are interchangeable in many parts of India even to this day. Budhism Jainism as philosophies are also old and have roots in India. However Jains, Bodhis, were jointly called Hindus, along with the residents of the region, who had Vedic, Sanatan dharma or many other ways of reaching to their Creator. Christians,and  Muslims, came to India  quite early and were in miniscule numbers. However when they came as conquerors, word 'Hindu' came to be represented as Indian religion distinguished from other religions. Parsees, Jews in India were distinguished as such from beginning. Most of Indian Muslims and Christians are converts  from Hindus and have a same way of living, speaking, dressing, food habits. Even few Hindus borrowed Muslim and Christian ways of living eg. purdah in North Indian women, wearing western dresses. Whole culture in North India was called Ganga Jamuni culture. Iqbal wrote, " Hindi hain ham watan hai, Hindostan hamara".The partition of the country, was a great blow to Hindus, and Rashtriya Swyam Sewak sangh (RSS) put up a 'Hindutva' philosophy that all people who are in India are from people of ancient India. Irrespective the way of their praying, they belong to Hindostan and are Hindus. RSS has no problem with Muslim following Islam or Chrisitians their faith, but they have a longing that this country may not get partitioned again.Muslims felt this as an aggression on their religion, as Hindu is a religion. This has caused confusion.Conversion from one religion to other has become a modern day  liberty. When few people convert to Hinduism, they follow the traditional Hindu dress and follow traditional ways. Otherwise people in Indian culture can not be distinguished  from their appearance and association as to what faith they follow.

What is the difference between religion and culture?

Religion is the way of living, and culture is the social behavior that comes with that way of living. the difference between above two is a silver lining, which is hard to differentiate. So let me just generalize it for youa group of people start living together, forming a society. this society needs a particular bonding in order to recognize themselves from other, so they choose some guidelines- a set of do's and don't, for governing this society.these guidelines are set according to the way of living the society thinks is most favorable for them to flourish. which somewhere gives birth to Religion. these guidelines now propagate as a divine rule, bonding the society. Remember the guidelines for the society is something chosen collectively and might not suit every ones ideology. but then over the course of time these guidelines with the help of religion flourish as an ideal way of living. which over time sets parameters and boundaries to live. thus reaching to a particular Culture, which is nothing but a way of life over a course of time. thus keeping the basic idea of society intact and moving.           so basically religion is like a manuscript, whereas culture is like the amendments that follows keeping the manuscript in mind(which changes over time in form of editions but basically in a way stick to the same idea).