Southern_cross_nemesis
I was more meaning all your websites you put up. I look for stuff and get nothing I want.
Good research skills that I learned from my university. Keywords are the big thing. Practice and you'll get better with it over time.
Like the Halloween article, I just typed in "Halloween is not Pagan" and after sifting through the sites listed on the first or second page, I came across it. I had already known that Halloween as we know it was mostly American in origin and the misinformation was mostly a result of anti-Catholic bigotry. I knew that All Hallow's Eve was celebrated in Ireland, maybe England but not in other parts of Europe. I knew that All Saint's Day wasn't part of the Church Calendar until after 900-ish CE. If an article contradicts these facts I knew and could confirm, then it wasn't worth further reading.
When searching for religious history information try to take most of it with a grain of salt since it's definitely going to be prone to bias, especially if it's not from a scholarly source. Religion (and for some irreligion) is something people get emotionally invested in thus is going to riddled with rationalizations that does contradict other historic facts. Classic examples of this are Ancient Gnostics weren't Christians, Science and Religion are enemies, Religion is the cause of all wars, All Christian Holidays are pagan in origin, Paul was a misogynist etc...
I have a tier of trust when it comes to internet research.
1. Dry facts. Facts that are as dry as possible of political, social, and cultural biases as possible.
2. Scholarly research. History is one of the areas in academics that is going to be biased since we are hardwired to readily put trust in information that conforms to what we value and to reject information that conflicts with what we value. (Creation "science" is perfect example of this). Scholars are not only trained in how to overcome this bias but they are peer reviewed. If it fails peer review, it's usually poor research. Most scholarly research as a string of sources on can look back on to trace where they get their information from. The more recent the scholarly info, generally the better quality it is.
3. Blogs. These can be good sources of information but because they lack the peer review process, they are going to be riddled with biases that may contradict known facts either because of not knowing better or in worse cases out right lying. May or may not have sources listed, may rely on outdated sources. Any religious study or history article that relies on studies from the 1800's is out of date and more about promoting Protestant European Superiority.
4. Conspiracy theories. The least credible of all sources but often a good starting point since they usually hold a grain of truth to them, else they wouldn't believe the garbage they produce. These range anywhere from Jesus is a green lizard man from Mars to Jack Chick tracts. Seriously though, for the sake of sanity I would avoid these sort sites. There is some bat s**t crazy stuff that if you are in the wrong frame of mind and don't fact check with others, you could easily end up believing.
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