Exaltist Ethan
Bridging the Gap Between Believers and Skeptics
Everybody knows there is the Bible for Christians or the Quran for Muslims, but I'm taking the time not to really include those for people who are still searching for their religion. Instead, I want to use this thread for people to know and understand scholarly, academic and particularly neutral sources for their religious studies. And I have found a few resources I would like to share with the Seekers here at Religious Forums.
I know that religion can be particularly confusing, each one of them grooming you to be a follower, telling you that God has your back if you happen to think a certain way. It took years of searching but I no longer consider myself a Seeker. I firmly believe in God because I found the word to describe it. However I am not going to tell you how or what to think - that is not my role in creating this thread. I simply want to provide neutral and academic resources for those who are starting their own spiritual journey.
This audiobook might help. I know, it's Audible and Audible costs money, but this one was internally produced by Audible and is dirt cheap. it doesn't just cover twelve major world religions, it also goes in-depth into a few pagan religions too, such as Kemetism and Hellenism. It appears to be a neutral and factual source and chances are you'll find a religion you like in it. It doesn't seem like it has a free equivalent on YouTube but that shouldn't be too much of an issue given the fact of how inexpensive it is.
Wikipedia is also a great source to find about different religions, spoken in a neutral point of view. This might appear obvious by some, but I didn't use Wikipedia to look up religions until I was an adult, and eventually even used it to find the God I was looking for. Wikipedia has extensive knowledge about all types of religions, even certain types of New Religious Movements. If you are looking for facts and not opinions, I implore you to search that website to find the spirituality you seek. Plus it's free and always will be.
Another scholarly website I would like to share would be Religion for Breakfast. Written in a neutral point of view I have learned a lot about religion from this person's YouTube videos. He does a great job breaking down many religions and offers insight that isn't typically shared from biased points of views. He isn't necessarily pro or anti-religion either, just fascinated by the subject.
If you have fully decided to become a Christian and want to find a denomination that will suit your best interests, I fully implore you to look at Ready to Harvest. His current magnum opus would be the video that discusses fifty different Christian denominations in full detail. I actually watch, and re-watch this video quite often because of the insight and information it provides. Although Joshua, its founder, is a Christian and talks like one, he offers a scholarly, un-biased point of view of many different Christian denominations.
If you are looking for a website that has New Religious Movements, and more progressive, newer theologies, I would suggest NRM Fandom and its list of religions. If you want more notable recent religions I would suggest this website, although I will admit looking through that will appear to be challenging to most people.
The final resource I wish to give to RF seekers is not necessarily a book, article or video, but what I consider to be the best spiritual selector on the Internet, created and administrated through the curators of the popular website Select Smart. In fact, this quiz is so popular a copy of it was made by Belief Net, the Belief-o-Matic, however there are flaws in that version and it is best to take the Select Smart version instead. This is another free resource I implore Seekers to take advantage of. Even if you do not agree with the results on the quiz you'll at least most likely find people who think in some ways similar to yourself. Plus I consider the Select Smart version to be written in a neutral point of view.
That's all I got. If you have any more resources you would like to share with seekers, that is scholarly or otherwise is written in a neutral point of view about many different religions, I suggest that you share it with us in this thread so that people can find the religion they are seeking for.
Also, I would like to note that this thread might be better if it were stuck at the top of this forum, in order to help the most Seekers as possible.
