In AP World history, we've been spending a lot of time on classical Chinese and Indian philosophy and religion. While Hinduism obviously has a lot of cosmic and strange mythology, it seems like it has core philosophical concepts that are very complex, while Greek religion doesn't seem to have core philosophical concepts of this kind.
In Hinduism, it appears so far that the ultimate goal was to realize that we are not separate from the rest of the universe but are one with it, and through this realization assimilate with the Brahman, for example. Greece seemed to be a very intellectually advanced classical civilization, but based on my knowledge of Greek religion there weren't any core philosophical concepts like in Hinduism or Buddhism. It seems that all I've heard of Greek religion is its stories and mythology.
So are there any core philosophical ideas behind Greek religion like there appear to be in Hinduism and Buddhism and other old religions? Am I just so used to hearing about Greek myth here in the West that I don't think much of it? Is there philosophy to their religion that I and other laymen just haven't heard about yet? I just don't understand why Greek religion seems to be solely myth based when other religions seemed to have big philosophical ideas behind them.
I'm planning on asking my AP World teacher this, but I just wanted to ask here over the weekend because it feels like a stupid question.
One major reason is that much of ancient Greek though on the gods, the afterlife, and what humans should do in life is taught as Greek philosophy, not religion.
I can't think of any Greek philosophers who didn't try to address the nature of the gods, the role of human worship, and whether humans have souls that persist after death. Different movements greatly disagreed on these questions, and some movements explicitly denied classical mythological answers. For example, the epicureans explicitly argued against the mythological afterlife in the underworld, instead claiming that humans simply ceased to be after death. These conflicts don't mean, though, that Greek philosophy isn't an important part of Greek religion and vice versa.
So, when we are taught about classical Greece we hear about religion and philosophy separately--I imagine driven largely by the perceived conflict between philosophical ideas and the mythology. When we learn in high school about eastern religions, though, the class focuses almost entirely on the philosophy, with at most passing mention of the mythology. For example, look at your textbook's section on Buddhism, then google "buddhist temple interior". Did the textbook section explain anything about what you're seeing inside actual Buddhist temples? (In fact, many of these photos have a statue of a person in the center, but in not all of them is the statue of "the" Buddha described in your textbook, Gautama Buddha.)