SOC 201 Chapter 7: Chapter 7.9
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Social scientists use the term belief to refer to people"s ideas about what is real and what is not real. Beliefs, then, have to do with what people accept as factual. For example, as i mentioned in chapter 1, people once believed that the earth was the center of the universe. Church leaders were reluctant to let go of their beliefs about the geocentric nature of the cosmos because it was in keeping with their values. Most people in society regard the preservation of human life as an important value, but many disagree with respect to their beliefs about who qualifies as a human being. Having separated out the different elements of culture, it is time to reexamine that definition of culture. Read it through again this time, it should make more sense. As you may recall, there was a final part of the definition:
