Blake

Hello all--I've been reading over the shoulder of my girlfriend for over a year, & actively lurking in the last couple of weeks. I came across a subject that especially interested me in part 1 of Metacrock & Gurdur's formal debate concerning "innate religious instinct," namely whether there have ever been any nonreligious cultures. (Atheist, for sure, since Buddhist/Confucian China doesn't truck much if at all with a Deity--but nonreligious is a tougher standard to meet.) If there are/have been any, they're not readily apparent. IvanK brought up the topic last year (<a href="http://iidb.org/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic&f=22&t=000537" target="_blank">Atheist Societies in History, Misc. Religion Disc. 2001</a>), & <a href="http://iidb.org/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic&f=3&t=001415" target="_blank">in Gurdur's companion thread to his formal debate</a> Touchstone thought he remembered an account from Darwin of some atheist Tierra del Fuegans. I tracked down that passage pretty easily (god, I love all these people rendering classic books as etexts!), in <a href="http://jollyroger.com/library/TheVoyageoftheBeaglebyDarwinebook.html" target="_blank">The Voyage of the Beagle</a> (Chapter X):

"Captain Fitz Roy could never ascertain that the Fuegians have any distinct belief in a future life. They sometimes bury their dead in caves, and sometimes in the mountain forests; we do not know what ceremonies they perform. Jemmy Button would not eat land-birds, because "eat dead men": they are unwilling even to mention their dead friends. We have no reason to believe that they perform any sort of religious worship; though perhaps the muttering of the old man before he distributed the putrid blubber to his famished
party, may be of this nature. Each family or tribe has a wizard or conjuring doctor, whose office we could never clearly ascertain. Jemmy believed in dreams, though not, as I have said, in the devil: I do not think that our Fuegians
were much more superstitious than some of the sailors; for an old quartermaster firmly believed that the successive heavy gales, which we encountered off Cape Horn, were caused by our having the Fuegians on board. The nearest approach to a religious feeling which I heard of, was shown by York Minster, who, when Mr. Bynoe shot some very young ducklings as specimens, declared in the most solemn manner, "Oh, Mr. Bynoe, much rain, snow, blow much." This was evidently a retributive punishment for wasting
human food. In a wild and excited manner he also related, that his brother, one day whilst returning to pick up some dead birds which he had left on the coast, observed some feathers blown by the wind. His brother said (York imitating
his manner), "What that?" and crawling onwards,
he peeped over the cliff, and saw "wild man" picking his birds; he crawled a little nearer, and then hurled down a great stone and killed him. York declared for a long time afterwards storms raged, and much rain and snow fell. As far as we could make out, he seemed to consider the
elements themselves as the avenging agents: it is evident in this case, how naturally, in a race a little more advanced in culture, the elements would become personified. What the "bad wild men" were, has always appeared to me most mysterious: from what York said, when we found the place like the form of a hare, where a single man had slept the night before, I should have thought that they were thieves who had been driven from their tribes; but other obscure
speeches made me doubt this; I have sometimes imagined that the most probable explanation was that they were insane."

Unfortunately, Darwin's ability to communicate with these folks seems to have been pretty limited; Touchstone, do you recall anything about the more recent reference you cited about them?

Also, in IvanK's thread, katlynnhow cited <a href="http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/steven_mahone/moralexistence.html" target="_blank">an article I haven't gotten to yet</a> that sounds very promising. Does anyone know any other references--especially in the realm of (relatively) hard anthropological research?

Thanks, Blake

Amos

Don't know anything about that Bill but know that there can be no such civilization for long. The word religion must be defined to include Buddhism and such religions in which afterlife is described somewhat different etc.

The reason we are "hard wired" for God (or some sort of God) is because we are the illusion and only God is real. God here is the identity we serve with our ego awareness (notice the duality in "our ego" and don't tell me that we do not have an ego).

Better yet, there are no female dominant societies because females make poor kings. If there are they are female dominant for different reason such as a the name in polygamous societies.

Amos

Panta Pei

Bill the Cat wrote:

"I came across a subject that especially interested me in part 1 of Metacrock & Gurdur's formal debate concerning "innate religious instinct," namely whether there have ever been any nonreligious cultures."

Wouldn't the American culture qualify as 'non-religious'? Granted, the religious are found wandering freely within the 'culture', however, the culture is democratic. Democracy is a government in which the people hold the ruling power.

I am an American and not religious.

Does this qualify or are you referring to a culture as a completely separate group of beings living a nonreligious lifestyle?

If so, then do atheists qualify as a culture?

As for Amos:

"Better yet, there are no female dominant societies because females make poor kings."

Amos, you're a hoot! But, in an embarassing way, I was also a fan of Archie Bunker.

~ Steve

Vorkosigan

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Amos:
The reason we are "hard wired" for God (or some sort of God) is because we are the illusion and only God is real.

Great, if I kill myself, I've killed god. I;m not sure if I'm ready to make that great a sacrifice for the cause of atheism, though.

Better yet, there are no female dominant societies because females make poor kings.


True, but they make great queens

Michael

Blake

Amos, I am truly uninterested in your psycho-theology. If you learn something concrete to contribute, great; if not, please don't derail this thread.

Everyone else, *please* don't feed this guy ....

livius drusus

Panta, I think the US is culturally extremely religious even it is (theoretically, at least) politically non-religious. Democracy may arguably describe the governmental system, but not the culture. Anyway, US culture is a pretty hard thing to put your finger on given its heterogeneity.

Then don't post to this thread.

Blake

Interesting questions, Steve! I don't think American culture qualifies as "non-religious." Though you are American and non-religious (as am I), studies repeatedly show that overall, Americans are quite religious: large majorities of us go to church, believe in God & angels, etc. As to whether the culture is democratic & the people actually hold ruling power, I think that's a subject for another thread

When I said "culture," I was thinking of it in the sense of a set of social traits common to or dominating a distinct group of people in a particular geographical area--roughly synonymous to the term "society." So it could be used as broadly as to say "American culture" (or even more broadly, "Western" culture), or as narrowly as the culture of the much smaller society of Tierra del Fuegans that Darwin observed. I wasn't thinking of it in terms of subsets of people, such as American atheists; though it's valid to identify such things as cultures, for the purposes of Gurdur's & Metacrock's argument I'd call them subcultures.

Blake

Amos

Billy, if you want to be an atheist you should learn to walk upright and just be an atheist. There is nothing wrong with rejecting modern theism as Americans know it and you do not need to look for some model society to reinforce your position. If you think Darwin observed one, let me assure ("hard" philosophy) that he was wrong there too. And BTW, I am not a theologian (in case you did not notice or unless you do not see the difference).

turtonm
True, queens make poor kings and must crown him king to make herself queen so that reason will prevail. In religious tradition the subconscious mind is queen and the conscious mind is king. This makes Queens of a nation, such as the Queen of England (or the Netherlands) a religious paradox and . . .. Enough derailing for now so I'll stop here.

livius druses

Sorry, the post looked so naked so I thought I'll spruce it up a bit.

copernicus

First of all, I think that Communist regimes such as China and the late Soviet Union qualified as "atheist", at least in a superficial sense. Communist regimes seem to promote atheism only because they see religion as a competitor. To the extent that these regimes created a new "culture", they unabashedly promoted atheism. Western societies are not so much "atheist" as "secular". Atheism is in no sense a cultural ideal.

If you are interested in a more philosophical discussion of why atheist "cultures" don't really seem to exist, I can recommend Stewart Elliott Guthrie's <a href="http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/sally_morem/guthrie-review.html" target="_blank">Faces in the Clouds</a>. Guthrie's main point is that humans tend to "understand" or "explain" external reality in terms of analogy with humans, ie. anthropomorphism. This is not just true of religion, but of all sorts of non-religious experiences. Hence, like Amos, Guthrie proposes that humans are "hard-wired" for belief in god(s). Unlike Amos, Guthrie does not attribute this to the external existence of god(s), but just to the way the human mind tends to cope with external reality. Let's not forget that God is not just the "Father" or the "Son", but unabashedly male. What is the point if there is no female to mate with? (Not counting the Virgin Mary, of course ) Guthrie himself accepts the "hard-wired for religion" argument without actually accepting the claim that our perceptions of an external deity are therefore justified. Metacrock's argument is a complete non-sequitur. If it weren't, then it would not be possible for humans to harbor illusions.

I like the last paragraph in Sally Morem's review (see the above link):

The "bears on the trail" reference is about Guthrie's argument that it is of greater survival benefit for humans to misperceive a rock as a bear than the misperceive a bear as a rock. In other words, our tendency to animate the inanimate and to anthropomorphize so many things in our environment is a feature, not a bug.

[ February 06, 2002: Message edited by: copernicus ]</p>

Seeker196

I have studied the original Hinayana Buddhism of India, ca 500BC (later Buddhism was theistic) and found it to be atheist, but not materialist.

In the original Buddhism of India, there are no gods, or God, or spirits, or souls.

Original Hinayana has only 2 beliefs that are mystical (i.e. there is no reason to believe them, you're just supposed to accept on faith):
1) Nirvana exists.
2) Nirvana is blissful.

Contrary to popular beliefs brought about by contact with later forms, reincarnation was not a part of the earliest Buddhism. The Buddha himself did not believe in a soul, he actually believed that all his teaching were based on logical observation and reasoning rather than divine revelation. There is certainly no idea of a God, or gods.

However, this atheist Buddhism did not long outlast the death of the buddha. Schools of monks arose, the more popular one believing in an invisible soul which reincarnated (a Hindu belief).

After Buddhism left India, it 'degenerated' even more, adopting the idea that there are invisible gods. This was perhaps inevitable, as these local gods were very popular, and much more easy to talk about and explain than the extremely dry texts of Early Buddhism, which are long lists of psychological states and observations designed to lead one to the conclusion that there is no God, no soul, no permanent forms, no eternal self,only a constant flux.

So I would say that Early Hinayana Buddhism was an atheist religion.

How can you have an atheist religion? Atheism is imply the belief that Gods, spirits etc do not exist. It says nothing else. However, Buddhism IS nonetheless a religion and not a philosophy because it has tenets which rest only on faith.

Thailand is a country with Modern Hinayana Buddhism, much mixed with native folk religions. Some Hinayana in Thailand are atheist and do not believe in reincarnation.

There is an easy way to distiguish a Hinayana (Thailand, Ceylon) monastery from a Mahayana (Tibet, China, Japan, Korea, Cambodia everywher else) monastery.

The Hinayana temple will only have a statue of the buddha, or no icon. Many Hinayana believe that the Buddha is dead, he attained Nirvana (nothingness) and thus there is not much point praying to him, the statue is just there for inspiration or reminder. There are no icons of 'spirits' or other non-material beings in a Hinayana temple, because they do not believe those things exist.

In contrast, a Mahayana temple will be lavishly decorated with many icons of the thousands of Bodhisattva (saints, gods, spirits) and the Mahayana believer will actually pray to these beings.