hold religious significance of ethnic religions of the past. The Kotel, or the Wailing Wall, in Jerusalem is a more modern example, being the last standing part of the second temple. Other examples of physical geography in religion are trees, which were used to create totems, and rivers, such as the Nile, which was sacred in the ancient Egyptian religion and the Ganges, which is still sacred today to the Hindus. Water is used as a means of purification in Christianity, Judaism and Islam. The desert is also and example. It is often considered to be a means of spiritual refinement. The ecology of religion is of great importance. The processes of nature become ritualized in attempt to change the processes or powers behind them. Simple ethnic religions, especially, are built around cycles of nature as fertility rituals. The more complex the religion becomes, the more complex the type of ritual practiced becomes. When Christianity began, it practiced many of the values from the Mediterranean agricultural societies from which it originated. Christianity began to take on the characteristics of the people who accepted it. For instance, the Jewish Passover became Easter, Christmas was not originally practiced, but Christians gradually absorbed the pagan celebration of the winter solstice. Religion also relates directly to the land. Environmental determinism is the belief that the physical environment determines religious thought. The importance of the Ganges River in India for instance, eventually gave rise to the belief that it is sacred. Probabilism is the idea that the environment put broad limits on religious thought. It theorized that for each environment, there is a range of possibilities where some conceptual structures are more probable than others. Religion can also have a number of effects on the landscape. Among them, the most popular are sacred structures. Included among these are structures such as churches, cathe...
