Studying Religion

[quizbowlchamp1]

So I'm a generalist, but I'm not that good at religion. I was wondering if you guys know any good religion sources. If so, let me know. Thank you.

[quizzical1]

Try seeing summaries of some religions, like Bible or Koran (or Qu'ran), that might help. Also I consider searching up important religious figures. The religion's gods come up frequently, too.

[Krik? Krik?! KRIIIIK!!!]

Hi Russ! Elliot's right that perhaps the most "direct" way to learn about religion is right from the sources themselves. Even looking up summaries goes a long ways here. Especially at lower difficulty levels such as high school, a lot of the religion content is more "big picture" content about major religious figures, holidays, important traditions, core stories, etc.I strongly recommend going to qbreader, putting in 'Religion' in the question filter, then scrolling through the questions there. You'll see the same answerlines come up over and over and over again. Then from there, write down you see come up often, then read more about it so you can get a deeper knowledge. For instance, when I was in HS, I always heard questions on Yom Kippur but didn't know anything about it! So I read into it and was able to get questions early based on the clues I knew.

I'd recommend trying to find a book or syllabus associated with, say, an introductory religion class. They usually go through the basic tenets of a religion and then also discuss some of the more complicated beliefs. I don't recommend textbooks at this level, but rather smaller and more focused books that I personally feel are more interesting. I really enjoyed Muhammad the Believers by Fred Donner to get an understanding of early Islam for instance.

Start with this:
https://www.powerhouseprep.com/dsst/int ... -religions

For the many new faces on the forums recently, I'll give the reminder to NOT purchase materials from Avery. The product he linked is a "World Religions Test Practice Book" with practice questions such as "Which of these is one of the five pillars of Islam?" or "The Adi Granth is the holy text of which faith?" These are facts you can FREELY LEARN for yourself on, say, qbreader, the packet archive or other easily available websites. Avery is charging $31.84 for stuff you can easily learn elsewhere. I was going to highlight the poor quality of his own questions he charges high prices for ($39 for 100 advertised tossups, but a housewrite like SHOW-ME More sells you 280 tossups and 280 bonuses for $20 a team for a mirror and then is posted for free), but the sample questions on his Wordpress link to a "critical error," which I think says a lot about the quality of the operation.

[DavidB256]

Check out this quizbowler-curated list of survey-level texts. I especially recommend Rabbi Joseph Telushkin's Jewish Literacy and Rupert Gethin's The Foundations of Buddhism for those respective religions.

Seconding Ganon's comments about Avery and paid materials in general; your local/school librarians could also help you out with these questions for free.

Edit: Do not start out by trying to read primary texts, e.g. the Bible or the Quran, in whole.

[RexSueciae]

I second the recommendation not to necessarily start with the primary texts. You might want to read them eventually, but nothing is more demoralizing than slogging through a lengthy genealogy or set of incredibly detailed divine laws, especially at the beginning when you don't know any of the context or what's important.

When I'm writing religion (which is something I do), and when I need inspiration, I have been known to walk into a public library, go to the "religion" section, and just start pulling out interesting-looking books. Public libraries in general are good places to find nonfiction books on religious topics, in addition to specialized reference sources. If you'd rather not purchase lots of books (or cannot find pdfs uploaded somewhere on the internet), use WorldCat to see if a nearby public library or university library carries them.

You don't actually need books to learn religion (or any subject, I guess) but they're a good place to start. Wikipedia is nice, even if it is very much a perpetual work in progress (and the sort of in-depth knowledge useful for quizbowl might or might not be present). Pick a religion, or a particular religious figure (who might have come up in a previous question set), something that came up in one of those books you read, and do a deep dive. Browse the article, note anything that stands out, and google for more in-depth sources. Find interesting or offbeat stories about them and learn them (because writers like to pull lead-ins from interesting or offbeat stories).

And in general, when learning things for quizbowl, go back into previous packets and read questions. Pick a question set, go through the rounds, track down all the religion questions, note the clues that you don't know, and read about them until you're confident that you'll get it if it comes up again. Noting clues for later study is a very useful thing at quizbowl practice, at tournaments, or if you're just reading questions by yourself. You might also note what kinds of things get asked and learn the sorts of things that are similar -- if some prophet or pope or tenet or holiday or whatever comes up, don't just learn that answerline but learn about any comparable prophets or popes or tenets or holidays, because a future question-writer is sure to ask about them someday.

[quizbowlchamp1]

When I'm writing religion (which is something I do)

I totally agree with this. If any of you have religion-specific packets, I would love to see them and study them.

[RexSueciae]

When I'm writing religion (which is something I do)

I totally agree with this. If any of you have religion-specific packets, I would love to see them and study them.

Apart from my own 2018 RAPTURE, the only side events on religion (that are posted to the collegiate packet archive under "Beliefs," minus all the mythology side events which are also filed under Beliefs) are as follows: 2021 Religion/Mythology Packet [1 packet], 2018 WORLDSTAR [8 packets, mixed subjects], 2016 Christmas Present [7 packets, mixed subjects], 2010 Simons Classics Tournament [7 packets, "classics" so there's a bit of Roman religion etc], and the 2009 + 2008 RMP Fest(s) [9 packets plus finals in each one, Religion / Myth / Philosophy].

I don't think there ever was a straight religion-only event until RAPTURE and I don't know if there ever will be again (but I'd like to see it happen). All the packets above have religion mixed with other stuff to a greater or lesser degree. Anyways, the difficulty and quality of the above may greatly vary. Since they're (college) side events, they were mostly written for fun and played for fun alongside a larger (college) event (one more likely to be professionally written and proofread), not to mention their difficulty may end up being significantly higher than what you'll experience in competition. (To write that many questions on a topic, often you'll need to start asking about obscure topics.)

Also, once you get to more than a decade ago in packet studying, things start getting weird. Norms for writing have shifted over the years, some older questions lack the rigor of more current ones, topics that used to be very popular no longer are (or topics that were only tossed up at Chicago Open are now firmly college regular due to familiarity / popularity).

Your best bet is, during team practices (and during live games if possible), keep a notebook on hand, and while you're keeping score for your team (which is a good idea anyways, it keeps me alert) quickly jot down any interesting answerlines you hear and then later look them up. Learn stuff that comes up and then learn stuff parallel to what comes up. If you're trying to learn fine art and Andy Warhol comes up, you should be learning about Roy Lichtenstein too. Just apply that to religion.