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Join Date: May 26th 2011

Finding legitimate sources about religion - June 15th 2013, 02:34 AM

I like to research religions and I've come across quite a through sites that don't give the correct information. I've read through some sites for a bit before I realized the information is wrong or outrageous. It's especially easy to get sucked into an unreliable source if you are not knowledgeable about the religion you are looking up. I want to offer some tips to tell whether a website is legitimate or not.

1. I've come across several evangelical Christian websites that target non-mainstream Christian groups like Mormons, Jehovah's witnesses, Christadelphians, Swedenborgians, Seventh day Adventists, Oneness Pentecostals, and strangely Catholics. The information provided by these website is evangelical Christian thought on why those groups are incorrect and why their group is correct. The information they give about the other groups is their interpretation and understanding of why these religious groups are wrong. If that's what you were looking for you should still likely take what they say with a grain of salt. These websites quite possibly aren't providing an accurate representation of what the other group believes.
2. Be suspicious of websites declaring new religious movements and smaller religions cults.
3. If the website slanders and defames another religion then it's likely not reliable.
4. Look up the name of the website on Wikipedia. Wikipedia isn't always awesome but the articles are supposed to be impartial.
5. Know that what you are reading may be the views of one person or one sect of a religion.
6. Go to the religious group's official site or a site owned that religious group. A highly ranked Lutheran website is likely providing the correct information about Lutheranism and so on with other religions.

Does anyone have anything to add?