Im not trying to be mean.
I didn't and wouldn't imagine you were. Rather, I attribute misunderstandings to my inability to explain myself or my incapacity to understand.
Religion is not a western concept; all faiths/cultures are religions.
The concept conveyed by lexemes such as "religion" (by "like", I mean modern terms in other languages, especially IE languages, that we would translate as "religion") is a Western concept. However, religion as it has been practiced since before the written word rarely ever conforms to this concept. In other words, the concept "religion" is actually (ironically) an aberration. It describes or connotes something rather fundamentally different that "religion" as it has existed within human culture for as long as we can speak to it.
The word isnt used in most cultures because religion is a part of their life.
True. This is part of the distinction. Anything sufficiently distinct from more general social, cultural, economic, familial, etc., practices traditions to warrant ascribing to it a distinct concept like "religion" didn't and hasn't existed for most of human history. "Religion" is fundamentally a
practice, or a set of practices, and is indistinguishable from more general socio-cultural phenomena and practices. This is not true of the modern concept, which is so based in doctrine, orthodoxy, belief systems, etc., that it served as the catalyst to misconstrue ancient religions from the 18th century or earlier up to and beyond the beginning of the 20th.
Religion is not just a set of beliefs. Its not a western concept or ideal.
The word "religion" (and similar words in other languages) denote a modern, Western concept that is an aberration if we have any hope to define "religion" in generally. One reason for this is precisely because religion, historically and globally, hasn't existed as a set of beliefs at all. For example, most people understand Greek religion and Roman religion as they were constructed by 19th century scholars out of poetry and drama because said scholars required religion to consist of texts and doctrine and went looking for it. It has long been known that this was woefully, pathetically wrong. Our current knowledge of religions in Greco-Roman antiquity shares much with Eastern religion, but not with more modern Western religion.
I assume how we see religion now doesnt have to do with a person's western "culture" but, in Britian and America
It depends upon American and European colonialism and scholarship, as well as an imperialistic/colonial interaction with these cultures and cultures that existed more globally, from South America to Japan.
Where I live it is more diverse that to call us "westeners"
The term refers to a cultural and intellectual heritage that is mostly early modern but which borrowed extensively from non-Christian classical culture and Near-Eastern cultures. It's at best vague and at worst a misnomer, but such is the nature of language. It retains its usefulness in that it identifies an otherwise identifiable cultural and intellectual history that is vitally important.
