Religion has played an important role in the history of every nation and every culture. The influence of religion can be found in art, literature, architecture, philosophy, politics, and more. It would seem, then, that studying religion (religious beliefs, religious history, religious institutions, etc.) would be important part of studying anything and everything else.
This is particularly true for atheists. Agnosticism and atheism often involve critiques of religion, yet religion cannot be substantively or seriously critiqued if it is not understood. There are sites here on About covering specific religions; they do so, however, from the perspective of believers and for the benefit of believers. When I address religion, I try to do so from a critical, scholarly, and objective perspective, and I write for the sake of both believers and nonbelievers.
Disagreements, including heated ones, are frequent between believers and nonbelievers. This isn't just because they reach different conclusions about the value of religion, but also because they have different ideas about the nature of religion itself. The true nature of a religion is defined at least as much by what religious believers do as by the doctrines and dogmas they profess.
A person's actions often tell us more about what they really value and think than the statements they make, and this means that understanding the nature of a religion like Christianity requires that we have some understanding about the history, literature, and institutions of that religion: what its adherents have done, what its institutions have done, how it has affected world history, etc. Religion cannot be understood, much less critiqued, outside the context of how religion and religious believers have behaved.
Do you actively study religion and religious history, or do you not think it is worth the bothering with?
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