I, Atheist

People that know me a little bit also know that I believe [harhar] in Atheism. Nevertheless, I'm very much interested in religious studies, as I think that, as an Atheist, I can have the necessary distance to have a (relatively) unbiased view towards all religions (of course, I would be totally biased when comparing religions with Atheism, but that's not the point of religious studies).

After digging around a little bit on Wikipedia (which is an excellent source for stuff like that), I came across one thing that seemed to be very interested, namely Apocrypha, religious writings that are (partially) accepted by the church, but still not part of any canon like the Old or the New Testament. Christian apocrypha are e.g. alternative versions of the gospels, often showing a different picture of the sceneries described in the four canonical gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

After having read quite a bit on this topic on Wikipedia, I went to the nearest bookstore, just out of curiosity, and looked for some literature on this topic. After searching for some time, I even found a book that was exactly what I searched for: Apokryphe Apostelakten (in english: "apocryphal apostle files"), which seems to be a standard work on exactly this topic. So far, I didn't have much time to read it, but what I came across so far was quite interesting, like the writings of a patriarch, denouncing certain writings as heretic, due to certain attributes they bear, like that Jesus wasn't crucified (and he laughed at those who thought they crucified him), two Gods (the "evil" God of Judaism, and the "good" God of Christianity), which I immediately recognized as a variation of early Gnosticism.

Anyway, for an "outsider", it is very interesting to get a view on alternative opinions of Christian belief, many of them contradicting what Roman-Catholic Church teaches, in its purest and unaltered form, and the mentioned book can definitely help with that. Nevertheless, I will keep on believing in Atheism.