The problem there is the old but true adage “History is written by the victors”. We will never know the true nature of events only outcomes.

For example it was kept pretty quiet until the last few decades that the English executed their prisoners at the Battle Of Agincourt.

The demonisation of the Druids in Britain by Julius Caesar is another case in point.

Your challenge is to find ‘true’ history.

Good luck.

The most effective way to actualize the truth is to become self-aware and do a thorough self-examination. Because as stated, the truth may vary from perspective. For instance, I always liked Howard Zinn's "A Peoples History of the United States" because it offered the historical perspective from the view of the indigenous people and the slaves rather than the rich white old men that is the current popular view. When you view many perspectives, you get better context and can see the agenda of the writer. One of the most wonderful as well as the most dangerous developments of this era is the Internet. While it has truly opened the floodgates of Information at your fingertips it has also given voice to every idiot and troll in the world. Discernment now is more important than ever because of the sheer volume of information, ideas and stories out there. Without proper filtering, it all becomes noise, take a look at the number of people who believe in Trump, watch Fox news as a singular source and consider it whole and complete information. My teaching from journalism class in college has really helped me become more skeptical of information and be able to somewhat effectively vet some information from the chatter out there. Without a rational grounded belief system based on provable facts and sane philosophy, we run the risk of living a life based on information gleened from Facebook or other trite shallow forums.

No I don’t. History is only as good as the source.
Studying philosophy is a better path to enlightenment in my opinion.

All depends who's history and who wrote it.

I agree. Ancient history has real value to teach many things.

Welcome to the asylum. Enjoy your stay.

"History is written by the victors." That quote, attributed to Winston Churchill, sums
it up pretty well.

While it is vitally important to learn and understand world history, it is equally important to know the sources of the information you're getting. Knowing their
agenda(s) is key to knowing whether the information can be trusted.
Unfortunately, most people don't have the level of interest to investigate beyond
a cursory "glance".

You know what makes even more atheists and agnostics?
Reading the bible.

I think there is a connection between education and atheism. I don't consider myself an intellect, but I enjoy thinking and learning. @ 10 I realized that the Catholic church I was forced to attend was preaching B.S. When the priest said all nonbelievers go to hell, that was it for me. Even then I knew how small the Catholic population was globally and all others weren't doomed.

I certainly wish people would read about the history of religions, especially their own, from serious secular historians trained in the historical method. (It isn't true that all history is subjective. That's a cope out. Does anyone here believe that the history of nazi crimes in WW2 is a matter of personal historical interpretation. I very much doubt it.) People based their lives and values on a religion, or so they say, but are too goddam lazy to read one damn historical book about the foundation and history of their religion! Frankly, it pisses me off. And then they want my "respect" for their religious views, views that are based on ignorance and intellectual laziness. From my own experience when people do read seriously about their religion they start to think seriously about their "faith". Religion is an intellectual disease of ignorance, and knowledge is the cure.

Reading history definitely helped solidify my position on gods. We've been inventing them since the beginning. Only one left to debunk.

I think that knowledge of the world’s people and their histories might help a person overcome a narrow dogmatic religious perspective, and might lead to a deeper appreciation for reality. Declaring oneself an atheist or whatever is of little significance.

Studying history allows one to realize that humans developed gods to explain things they couldn't figure out. Like Vulcan, Neptune and Zeus. once they had an explanation for the tides and the moon's et cetera the gods went away

Never embrace the temptation of declaring that another group only have their opinion due to lack of intellect/information and would change to your opinion if they have it.
Even high educated people in many fields are able to compartmentalize their knowledge and keep their faith...

The problem is finding the 'true' history. All historians write from a certain perspective. I once read an early history of N. and S. America from a German and it was different than from the British historians.

However, from my perspective (I have a BS in European History) one idea seems pretty constant and that is the human struggle for access to resources. This is covered in a book, "A Green History of the World." [goodreads.com] Nothing has changed and it is at the forefront of our problems today.

It helps, and would be a great contributing factor to most people but I think travel to other cultures is more important to subduing tribalism that makes religion attractive. Both help a lot but neither is a one stop solution to someone determined to read what they want into everything. Religious people have exercised that muscle so much that it almost takes a betrayal of their idea of god in a traumatic moment to make them realize the truth.

Also determining the difference between real history and fake is always problematic. History is written by the winners of the wars. the romans and authors/replicators of the Bible wrote the history of Jesus and the history of the world for a long time. Anything that displeased the emperor or king at the time of writing was likely omitted or altered for some monk’s fear for their life. Even if someone, beholden to no human cocksucker, is doing their best to record history as they know it, everyone’s knowledge is flawed, biased, and written from some slant or another. The closest you can get to determining truth is to read many opposing accounts of the same incident and use some imagination to figure that the truth is somewhere in the middle. There’s 3 sides to every story. Your side, my side, and the truth.

If one tries to correlate ACTUAL history with the so-called biblical 'history' then one very quickly reaches the conclusion that ' biblical history' is A) one of the biggest misnomers of all time,
b) 'biblical history' is so screwed up, convoluted, hazy, etc, that it makes a London Pea-Souper Fog look like a mere misty shower of rain,
c) that in Exodus, etc, the Hebrews were enslaved for 400+ years but there is absolutely NO mention/reference made to i) WHY their Omnipotent God left them enslaved for so long without caring a fig about their plight, ii) ANY of the Great Monuments in Egypt such as the Pyramids, the Sphinx, Karnak, etc, etc, or, last but by no means least, iii) how the ancient Egyptians managed to build such Monuments considering the 'Great Flood' would have completely covered Egypt at the time they were being constructed.

Art history in college sort of changed my mind about allot of things.

My first History of Western Civ class in college sealed the deal for me. Any last possibility of the supernatural was utterly destroyed when I dug into the roots of my inherited religion, and traced its origins all the way back to the first known religions that had sprung up from ancient man's mysticism and superstition. I became convinced beyond any doubt that there are no such things as gods or deities. Science and logical reasoning got me 99.9% of the way there, history clinched it.

I think that the only way to make anyone agnostic or a-theist is accepting reality using logic, reason, common sense supported by evidence, facts and data.

Just remember, history is written by the victors. A lot what we commonly get in history books is a version written by the group that prevailed and had access to preserving their version of events.

History is important but it differs with each culture. The real death of gods comes about through science and the Internet. 1950 has flown out the window forever. Believers want to bring it all back by creating their own fake Internet sites but this is not working for them. Neither is phony Ark amusement parks.

Isn't history the story of the elites but rarely the story of the common man/woman. Also history (his story) is the story of victors. At football/soccer matches a certain percentage deny that a foul occured, other people have observed the foul. Some of these people the become medical experts and are convinced that the referee is blind. The point is we observe what we want to observe and therefore there is no absolute truth, because truth is in the eye of the beholder

For me it was sociology.

I have no way of knowing what is the real history and what is fake.
certainly know history is perfect, one must consider the perspective of the historian, in order to make any kind of judgment as to its validity.
the history of mankind is about war and religion.
along childhood virtually guarantees a god-shaped vacuum built into each one of us,
when we realize that our parents are just people we then have to create a god to satisfy that need All Humans throughout the planet do this to some degree.

I’m not really sure knowing about history will affect a person’s religious view. It certainly did not affect mine.