The Internet
is a wonderful tool, but so often you cannot find what you are looking for, or
your search generates so many hits that you cannot identify what you want to
know from everything else. And then, if you do find what you want, often the
information is so elementary you do not learn anything, or it is so advanced
that you cannot understand it. This is particularly bad for world religions
where Web sites are frequently written by insiders using insider language.
Enter a team of university faculty and students from Wyoming. Led by
University of Wyoming Religious Studies Director Paul Flesher, this group of
students, alumni and community college professors recently provided the
expertise (and hard work) for creating a Web site that can help people looking
for information about different world religions on the World Wide Web. (You can
visit the site at http://research.studentadvantage.com.)
Working with a company called Student Advantage, this team served as the
"expert consultants" with regard to religions on the Web. While the
company provided the software, the team searched the Internet to find more than
2000 Web sites about religion. They then described the kinds of information each
site contained and classified them to simplify browsing. Thus rather than a
search finding anything and everything, people can look through only sites about
religions, whether by searching or by browsing by topic or religion.
The Wyoming team selected the 2000 best religion Web sites from tens of thousands of sites on the Internet. Sites include those from large religions such as Christianity, Buddhism and Islam, as well as from religions with smaller memberships such as Judaism, Bahai and even Zoroastrianism. New religious movements were also included: Scientology, the Unification Church, and Rael, to name just a few. African and Afro-Carribean religions also appear. Sites on the Old and New Testaments and the archaeology of ancient Israel and early Christianity have their own sections, as do important religious issues such as the separation of church and state.
In addition, the Web site provides introductory tutorials explaining how
to study different religions and how to analyze and evaluate their Web sites.
Finally, for those who are studying world religions in college-level classes,
the Web site provides samples of A, B and C papers, and explains which features
of the papers earned them that grade.
So despite the ability to withdraw from the world we have in Wyoming,
through their contribution to this Web site, Wyoming faculty and students
introduce the Internet world to the world's religions.
Flesher is
director of UW's Religious Studies program. Further information about the
program can be found on the Web at www.uwyo.edu/relstds/index.htm.