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Goodbye Jesus

Want To Study Religion And The Bible.


I544C

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Hey guys. I'm still fairly new to the site, so I might be posting this in the wrong forum. I'm not too sure. And I'm sure this has been asked many times, but I'm just really looking for some advice on studying world religions, The Bible, and Christianity in general. I'm just not sure where to start, or what resources are good to use. I don't have any courses at school available for this kind of research, so I've decided to just research it myself. If anyone can offer me some advice on where to start I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks! :)

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That depends on your objective. We here pretty much debunk the bible daily and to be honest there is so much out there it is hard to tell you where to start.

 

Origins of Christianity should give you a few hits to start off with.

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hi 1544c. Welcome! :grin: Try google:....... 'World religions, The Bible, and Christianity'...There's probably 100's of pages...............That's where I begin all my investigations! good luck!

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It depends on what angle you are looking for. Do you want actual history and how it has influence civilization, or looking more for the Evil Bible approach? There are excellent resources for each (and some really lousy Da Vinci Code ones also). And with each, there are a variety of Christian replies attempting to cast a magical miraculous light on things like how the Bible was written, how ancient peoples thought and were influenced by superstition, how other religions affected the major religions we have today, whether or not other people wrote about the characters in the scriptures, etc.

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I checked out Karen Armstrong's "A History of God" last night from the local library. So far it's a decent read. But like others have said, it depends on your angle and what you want to accomplish. If you haven't yet done so I would start with the bible and read it cover to cover.

 

If you have a smartphone or ipod you can get a free app called "you version" which has the whole bible in multiple translations, many of which are available as a (free) audio version as well. Personally speaking, reading the bible start to finish is what caused my deconversion. Following my deconversion I tried to read it a second time to pick up more things I may have missed. Reading it "without the glasses on" turned my stomach and I had to stop, so good luck to you if you can actually get through it.

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Thanks guys I appreciate the help. When it comes down to my objective, I really just want to learn a little bit of everything. The History of the Bible, The history of Jesus (weather he was a real person or not), and a little bit of an "Evil Bible" approach to. As for religions, I mainly just want to study different ones in general. I'm just interested in that sort of thing, along with mythology. :) But like I said, thanks a bunch!

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Your local library should have a selection of books to read on the subject. Studying the bible is different from one denomination to the other, they teach different meanings (interpretations) for bible doctrines. I read the Catholic encyclopedia for information on that church history. I also read Christian History magazine, which isn't too bad. They don't exactly give Christianity a white-wash but some articles sound like cheer leading.

 

You could also try http://www.sacred-texts.com/ for many texts written by many religions and about mythology.

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A few more links:

 

http://antibible.tripod.com/

 

http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/

 

There is a good book, 'God Versus the Bible.' 'The Believer's Conditional Security' is another book I have read that rips apart the Once Saved, Always Saved (OSAS) doctrine of the church but it is also a book that actually tries to convey what 'true Christianity' is to believers. I read it in the days I was a fundy and still refer to it concerning Calvinism.

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If you're interested in Christian apologetic and "anti-apologetics," I'd suggest Luke Muehlhauser of Common Sense Atheism's list at the Ultimate Truth-Seeker Challenge.

 

You might want to be more specific. Studying religion can involve tooonnnns of different topics and fields of study. History, basis for theism (which itself can involve philosophy, cosmology, geology, biology, literary analysis, physics...), beliefs/theology, practices, obligations, worship practices, typical political stances, etc. If you can hone in on what you're looking for more specifically, you might get better answers.

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I found "The Power of Myth" by Joseph Campbell to be an engrossing read. It's about the sacred stories of different cultures, what those stories say about societies and the people who take them to heart. As for overviews of specific religions, Huston Smith is (was?) a generalist and an expert. I own three books by him--one on world religions, one on buddhism and one on islam. Robert Price, also, is a wealth of information. He's a biblical scholar and an unbeliever. He's written rebuttals to Rick Warren and Lee Strobel. And then there's always the dry yet informative college textbooks for World Religions 101.

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If you're interested in Christian apologetic and "anti-apologetics," I'd suggest Luke Muehlhauser of Common Sense Atheism's list at the Ultimate Truth-Seeker Challenge.

 

You might want to be more specific. Studying religion can involve tooonnnns of different topics and fields of study. History, basis for theism (which itself can involve philosophy, cosmology, geology, biology, literary analysis, physics...), beliefs/theology, practices, obligations, worship practices, typical political stances, etc. If you can hone in on what you're looking for more specifically, you might get better answers.

 

 

Sorry for the late reply to this thread, been busy the last few days! Anyway, to be more specific about what I would like to study about world religions, I guess the things I'm interested in most are the God(s) they worship, practices, beliefs, things like that. When it comes to apologetics (or anti) I mainly only care about Christianity, since it was the religion I grew up with. But when it comes to other religions I really only care about what I stated above.

 

As I start, I've started to read the Bible cover to cover, and I picked up God's Problem by Bart D. Ehrman and The End Of Faith by Sam Harris at my local library. I figured these books (mostly only cared about God's Problem, still wanted to read The End Of Faith though) So far I find God's Problem (chose to read it first) very interesting.

 

Again, thanks for the advice everyone!

 

 

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