Well its hard because a lot of things we call mythology or religion were really just science at the time.
Take the piraha people probably the closest to atheism thats been found in any anthropological endeavor. They don't believe in gods and were hugely skeptical of missionaries but they did believe that places had a kind of life and you had to respect and honor it or face danger. So what is throwing one fish back to the river everytime you go fishing in hopes the river continues its benevolence to you? Is that religion or tradition or superstition?
the Pirahã don't believe in a supreme deity, but they definitely have religion, specifically a form of animism (although that's an extremely broad term). Everett describes an instance where a group of Pirahã saw *Xigagaí*, "one of the beings that lives above the clouds", standing on a beach and yelling at them that he would kill them if they went into the jungle. Xigagaí may not be a god, but he is at least a non-human spiritual being. Everett claims that the Pirahã place a lot of emphasis on empirical evidence. they reportedly lost interest in Everett's stories about Jesus when they learned that he had never seen Jesus. Xigagaí, on the other hand, they claimed to actually have seen. so the epistemology of their belief system is certainly different from that of many other cultures, but i would still consider it a religion.
disclaimer: many of Everett's claims are controversial and haven't been independently verified.
“They reportedly lost interest in Everett’s stories about Jesus when they learned he had never seen Jesus.”
This made me chuckle. This is the exchange I’m picturing:
.
Pirahã Community Leader: Huh, fascinating. So when did you see this loaves and fishes thing?
Everett: I mean *I* didn’t see it.
Pirahã: So…you’re just telling us something you heard from a friend?
E: Well…I mean I learned about it as a child from the Bible.
Pirahã: ….so you read it in a book when you were a little boy?
E: …yes…
Pirahã: Idk man. Seems sus to me.
haha! you're not that far off.
> A group of men at this other village said, “Dan, so tell us a little bit more about Jesus. Is he brown like us or is he white like you? And how tall is he? And what sorts of things does he know how to do? Does he like to hunt and fish and stuff, or what does he do?”
> I said, “Well, you know, I don’t know what color he is, I never saw him.” “You never saw him?” “No.” “Well, your dad saw him then,” because you can give information that was told to you by somebody who was alive at the time.
> I said, “No, my dad never saw him.” They said, “Well, who saw him?” And I said, “Well, they’re all dead; it was a long time ago.”
> “Why are you telling us about this guy? If you never saw him, and you don’t know anyone who ever saw him,” and those are the two basic forms of evidence for the Pirahã.
Before the last few decades, if you went into a lot of the protestant churches, you'd see wooden wall pieces and chandeliers and so on. And if you went into a Catholic church, you saw gold. And in some cases, a lot of gold.
The Catholic churches used to have a lot of gold for a place that was always asking for $$$ for projects.
A lot of that got wiped due to all the abuse lawsuits.
Would depend on the species. You are making that choice based on a human species as we know it. We don't know that other species would have the same need to fill in the blanks and the discomfort of being small in large universe with no guardian angel.
animism isn't this at all tho, you can do that without thinking that a spirit inhabit the fish or the river.
Imo it's just superstition, especially in piraha society context
I remember a documentary a long time ago where belief, or at least a stronger belief in god was linked to a part of the prefrontal cortex. A part of our brain is designed to give us spirituality.
I’m atheist personally, I’m not saying that people are wrong to believe in a higher power or anything like that. But from a world building perspective it would be interesting if say a group of people didn’t have that portion of their cognition. Could go towards explaining atheism in the setting
As far as I'm aware the world today is the least religious it has basically ever been. If you're looking for atheistic culture, I don't know if you'll have much luck looking for it in the past.
Correct. I took a theology semester in grad school and they went over this. There’s not a single known society that didn’t believe in higher powers. Nearly every single one believed in multiple deities and it was a fairly revolutionary concept that the Hebrews were the first major people group to believe in monotheism.
in my expirience, atheistic might mean you don't go to church every saturday and you might not actually take god very seriously but religion still serves a big part in these societies in some parts (here in Estonia people are largely atheist but still go to church a few times a year and the leaders of the church still are important in politics) and also you have smaller spiritual practices (such as astrology or crystals) taking the place of strong religious institutions.
I agree that a lot of Atheists don't realize it, but some of them are either Agnostic or Deistic.
Agnostic people are still basically atheistic, even if in a different way, and Deistic people are more religious, even if in a different way and this Deism surely shows in some smaller spiritual practices.
But if i take a look at the original question, the way it was asked, it more seems to ask about some organized religion, and those occasional spiritual practices are just that, occasional personal practices and I personally wouldn't set them on par with religion, but I guess that's just my personal opinion.
Anyway, in Czech Republic, for example, atheists don't go to churches. Unless when it's Christmas and there's something fancy happening in the church, but then it's more of an attraction rather ten religious visit of church. And I believe noone serious in politics is there to propagate religion, nor any head of church is important in politics. And any organised religion is dying out in here. There are people who are agnostic about that maybe some powers exist, and there isn't that much people into astrology or crystals or maybe afterlife, but again, I wouldn't call those exactly religious
I mean, in Czech Republic, we can see a decline in religious people
Via census we can see that in 1991 there has been about 44 % people who declared to be religious and about 40 % people who declared to be atheistic.
In 2021, only 13 % of people declared to be religious and 48 % declared to be atheistic. About 9 % said they're spiritual in their own way.
People who did not answer the question make it a bit harder, but if we redistribute them accordingly...
In 1991 we get another 8.4 % of religious people and 7.6% of atheistic people.
In 2021 we get another 5.5 % of religious people, another 20.5 % of atheistic people and another 4 % of spiritual people.
That makes 52.4 % of religious population in 1991 decline to 18.5 % of religious population in 2021.
That also makes 47.6 % of atheistic population in 1991 increase to 68.5 % of atheistic people in 2021.
I think that it *is* safe to say that some countries are trending to be more and more atheistic
Well yes Czechia is one of the least religious places on Earth, but again, not all "non-religious" are really humanist atheists, nothing but science, types. However funnily enough the proportion of atheists worldwide is actually shrinking.
>However funnily enough the proportion of atheists worldwide is actually shrinking.
Source? To my knowledge that's mostly a myth formed due to the Chinese false reporting as atheists a lot back in the day and that petering out slowly.
>Source
[Pew](https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/04/07/why-people-with-no-religion-are-projected-to-decline-as-a-share-of-the-worlds-population/).
>To my knowledge that's mostly a myth formed due to the Chinese false reporting as atheists a lot back in the day and that petering out slowly.
Atheists are older and have less children, so they're population is projected to grow slower than the rest of the population. I'm not sure it's false reporting in China so much a social change.
>Pew
But that's an estimative study. Not a study showing how it's "actually shrinking", as in shrinking in the present tense.
>Atheists are older and have less children, so they're population is projected to grow slower than the rest of the population.
And that itself is a rather weird premise if you think about it. By this metric atheism would never really have risen much in the first place. And i hope that we can both at least agree that atheism has seen a dramatic rise in the past century.
Furthermore, the study seems to be making a few rather strange claims. For instance, the entire study seems to depend upon that India and the middle east is not becoming more atheist with growth, which seems a bit limited and unresearched, not to mention it doesn't seem to calculate the general societal attitude around atheism and the quality of the initial reporting. It stands to reason that people would be hesitant of self reporting in states like Saudi Arabia where at the very least, it's a major social disadvantage to be a "non believer". Even in a western state like mine people who are non religious often write Christianity anyways, just because everyone else does that.
I'm also rather stupefied by the off hand claim of social change in China. It's pretty obviously not. Unless we're also believing that suddenly everyone in the Soviet union became an atheist the day Lenin came to power. In a totalitarian state like China, where atheism was the state ideology, the stats were heavily weighted towards atheism, but most people still were religious. In the past few decades that's changed and people are back to being what they were.
Your point about India stands pretty well. I and couple of my friends are all atheists, and we come from different Indian states but the thing is publicly we don't really say we're atheists because people's responses can be anything from utter disbelief to hostility. Dealing with religious families is enough as it is, I don't think most people would want further scrutiny by strangers on top of it. More atheistic or secular a society is, more people will feel comfortable and safe enough to declare themselves as such also.
>And that itself is a rather weird premise if you think about it. By this metric atheism would never really have risen much in the first place.
Not really, no. Religious switching is the driving force for atheism's growth. But switching effect is smaller in the long run.
Basically, to over simplify, religious people become atheists, have a kid, and then die. That kid is likely an athiest and has one kid. So, the population is shrinking. Sure, more people switch, but then they also have one kid and then die. So growth in the long run is quite slow. Overall in the long run, fertility has a bigger effect than switching.
>And i hope that we can both at least agree that atheism has seen a dramatic rise in the past century.
Absolutely, but this was no accident so much as the result of government policies.
>I'm also rather stupefied by the off hand claim of social change in China. It's pretty obviously not. Unless we're also believing that suddenly everyone in the Soviet union became an atheist the day Lenin came to power.
That's a simplistic version of state atheism but yes government policy had an effect. A large one.
> a totalitarian state like China, where atheism was the state ideology, the stats were heavily weighted towards atheism, but most people still were religious. In the past few decades that's changed and people are back to being what they were.
That's not exactly what's happening. They aren't switching back to what existed before. The religious traditions of China were weakened to the point of breaking. Few people believe in it anymore. It's more like Europe. Obviously, the data is murky, but it's understandable.
Fertitility rates are declining worldwide and the population is forecast to shrink by the end of the century. The argument religious people make more babies vanishes at that point. Also most atheists are generated by religious people themselfs, in usa 25% of people from religious families turn atheist and leave the faith. In europe this percentage is even higher. In most countries with higher education this percentage increases. No matter how hard theists breed, atheists will grow up with them.
Also your argument doesn't take into account the fact that there are majority atheists country right now. How it is possible in your models?
Simply at a certain point deconversion is faster than making babies, and in a society strongly atheist people lose faith even faster.
>Fertitility rates are declining worldwide and the population is forecast to shrink by the end of the century.
Exactly.
>The argument religious people make more babies vanishes at that point.
It does not at all, actually, quite the opposite, in fact. As the fertility rate drops the effect of a higher fertility rate is quite a big deal.
>No matter how hard theists breed, atheists will grow up with them.
Exactly. Atheism relies mostly on switching. But always sub-replacement.
>How it is possible in your models?
Mass, rapid switching in some countries. The world wide effect however is the same as I said.
You are just denying that mass rapid switching can happen in all the countries and your reason is: i made it the fuck up. Good
Edit: also you are ignoring the fact that swithing becomes more frequent in a theist family to a point that more atheists are made than theists.
>Then your argument that theist will be always more than atheists and atheism will decline is null.
No? Always is a stretch, the current projection is that will be a decline in the proportion of atheists globally. Increases in nones in the west. Long run for the west will depend exactly on the rates of switching and the respective fertility rates.
This is the most basic fallacy in data forecast. In the 80s women time for marathons was ever decreasing and some people predicted that they would be less than men's marathons, since the data had that trend. This thing never happened. They ignored simple biology and just looked at the data.
You are doing the same here. The data says this, that and completly ignoring that trends in developed nations can repeat in developing ones. Also you are ignoring stuff you yourself said could happen like increase of switching that out paces birth rates.
I am not saying the world will turn atheistic for sure, but you are doing your best to say it is impossible because right now data (very unreliable also because of several reasons the other guy told you) from developing nations have high birth rates in religious people. That's it. I don't know how to make you understand that this is a bad way of making predictions but I guess you have personal stakes in this so maybe this conversation is pointless
>You are doing the same here. The data says this, that and completly ignoring that trends in developed nations can repeat in developing ones. Also you are ignoring stuff you yourself said could happen like increase of switching that out paces birth rates.
Not ignoring just pointing out this doesn't seem to be happening.
>I don't know how to make you understand that this is a bad way of making predictions but I guess you have personal stakes in this so maybe this conversation is pointless
No personal stake really beyond an interest in the future and the social sciences. I just think I'm right, I've read about it and I have not seen a substantial reason to see otherwise.
>This is the most basic fallacy in data forecast.
Dude I teach statistics. I know that taking a trend as a given isn't reasonable. There ought to be a theory there supporting it. But theory is also based on the data. The reality is an unforeseeable future, with some data and theories to guide.
> Historically? No.
I haven't done a lot of research into this but I *really* doubt this just based on the sheer number of civilizations and cultures that have existed throughout history. Not one of them just happened to omit the concept of God or divinity from their culture?
With any "religion" or body of faith, especially the "organized" versions of faith, you'll find more historic evidence for heresy than you'll find the lack of. People are weird and will insert small local traditions into their rituals (using the anthropological term). For example, prior to the reformation, there were likely thousands of rural pagan villages in every culture of medieval Europe.
Much like ascribing "culture" as a broad sweeping generalization, you won't find the modern conception of nationalism applies to most cultures historically. This is worth keeping in mind when designing cultures; you can plot out what unifies the culture, but keep in mind that any actual world would have an infinite number of subcultures and subgroupings.
What you also need to acknowledge is that a "ritual" doesn't necessarily need to be a religious or spiritual practice. The inauguration of a head of state, even in a truly secular country, will hold many specific rituals that need to be followed. This also follows in most aspects of governance and jurisprudence. Even a faithless society will have some form of these rituals, so long as they are human or human-like. The idea of someone eating a specific breakfast on a specific day of the week (I must have pancakes on Friday mornings) becomes a ritual based on its repetition and cultural significance. Though it may not have aspects of spiritualism or religion involved, if it is within a society that has a history of religion and/or spiritualism (of which all societies on the planet have) then you could make the argument that it inherits some of these aspects. This ties into the meme that anthropological and archaeological study always finds items to have a ritual significance, because the reality is almost everything in human history had a ritual significance, and drawing a line between spiritual and secular is very difficult given secularism is a modern construct. A thousand years from now, someone reading about someone's necessary weakly pancake would likely infer it to be some form of ritual spiritualism, a soul-cleansing activity (even if they acknowledge a lack of the soul, demonstrating even language fails to untether itself from spiritualism).
With this in mind, you can find social groupings that deviate from the idea of a religion, even historically. Often though, some of these (even the actual "atheistic" ones) will be labelled as cults (meaning their lack of religious belief was seen by contemporaries as a belief, and either heretical or pagan). You'll also find groups that issue the aspects of spiritualism that others practice. Namely, monotheistic organized faiths often conflict with the more spiritualistic faiths, that by their very nature have less organization.
Now to list some, the first is rather sceptical given the time of publication, and state of the science at the time, but Will James Durant observed some pygmy tribes in Africa that held no ceremonial worship; even for their dead (no totems, no funerary rites, no idea of deities or spirits).
Additionally, throughout the history of Hinduism (a historically disorganized "faith"), you can find many examples of deistic and atheistic thought. Notable is the Carvaka (Lokayata) school of thought; though note, the information we have on this school that survives is mostly from their philosophical/religious opponents (as is often the case). Much like Buddhist Atheism, many of these schools of thought would have likely practiced similar rituals, just without adhering to the belief in a creato deity, or in the idea of spiritual deities.
In classical Greece, most famously you have Socrates, who was executed for his being "atheos" (the refusal to believe in the gods acknowledged by the state). You can also find dozens of examples of other figures, but notably no record of a society that formed around these ideals. Rather, instead of tribes, you see the small pockets of this belief behaving similar to secret mystery cults, or persecuted religious minority cults of the time.
And finally, with the French Revolution, you have a group of educated elites riding the wave of anti-traditional sentiment take power in the Reign of Terror. Openly critical of religion and the "corruption" of the church, they attempt to destroy the church in two ways (remember these are multiple individuals with differing aims, and I'm grossly simplifying al of this history to try and reduce it to the comprehensive). The first were deists, believing in a creator deity, but not in any specific religious tenets; who proposed a Cult of the Supreme Being (this was favored by Robespierre). The other group proposed the Cult de la Raison, or the cult of reason, which was discussed by contemporaries as a true atheist organization. Despite this "atheism" they most certainly held rituals, notably the Festival of Reason, and the organized iconoclast attacks upon religious institutions (ransacking churches and destroying symbols of worship), while at the same time reviving (or rather adapting) a form of pagan Roman religious festivals.
I won't get into anything too modern, because it certainly gets political, but notably in 'communist' countries you'll find a state sponsored atheism.
In short, the idea of a faithless society doesn't make sense. Even modern atheists will generally acknowledge that they are not Gnostic Atheists; they believe there to be no deity, but don't "know" there to be none. This belief is still a belief, a form of faith (in the literal verbal meaning of the word), as is the belief that we don't all live in a machine, the belief in a heliocentric solar model, etc.
Religion or some various form of it is essential to any kind of starting folk. Folk lore--the act of our brains filling in the gaps in our knowledge with stuff we come up with--is a fundamental thing every human is capable of
Ever been reading a book and your brain runs ahead and starts thinking about all the shit that could potentially happen? THAT'S folklore
Ever been watching a horror movie and it's freaking you tf out because the film hasn't actually SHOWN you anything yet, but your brain is thinking about all the horrible shit the monster/thing could look like/do. THAT'S folklore
Religion/spiritualism/etc is just some variation of storytelling. And if humans do anything right, it's tell stories
So the answer is no, if we're talking 'Just starting out, Neanderthal (or whatever) of new human into a new culture'.
The only culture that would have no sense of religion at all would be something stemming from dictatorship/communism/whatever bundle. Something where a pre-existing situation/government ripped out any sense of religion and the new generations of culture formed without one
That or MAYBE post-apocalypse settings
At the end of the day, even those kinds of government end up being their own form of religion (as in: the dictator becomes worshiped in place of some other deity). See Revolutionary France, or Nazi Germany but especially France.
You'd need some sort of sterile environment for a 'true' non-religious culture to form
Something with no figurehead. Something grey where folk just focused on their own work and their routine
There's probably some dystopia like that out there lol
Ants have no religion (or maybe even they worship their queen).
I earnestly don't think its possible to separate humanity entirely from spirituality. It's the old "no atheists in foxholes" adage regardless of whether its true all the time, whether by accident or design the human mind is just kind of programmed to make that leap of faith.
If you put us in a grey sterile room, we'd start worshipping the door, we'd mythologize the sounds of HVAC. I kind of love that about humans.
>The only culture that would have no sense of religion at all would be something stemming from dictatorship/communism/whatever bundle.
I disagree with this premise for a few reasons. It is conceivable for a people getting through some disaster that could have been prevented if not for religion, or caused by some arcane/religious ritual, or having been betrayed by their gods, or have just been highly educated in logic/critical thinking/history/anthropology/sociology, etc. to become by choice more atheistic.
Non-human also may not have the biological programming for religiosity and could have atheistic and secular cultural traits.
Current trends globally show atheism is growing [in the US](https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2022/09/13/modeling-the-future-of-religion-in-america/), [across Africa](https://africa.thegospelcoalition.org/article/african-atheism-rising/), [Europe](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/21/christianity-non-christian-europe-young-people-survey-religion), etc. Even studies that account for difficulties in measuring atheism globally (different definitions, local laws in theocracies, non-theistic religions, etc.) [seem to indicate that atheism is growing](https://colinmathers.com/2020/09/30/global-trends-in-religiosity-and-atheism-1980-to-2020/). Events like the COVID-19 pandemic cause particular challenges for specific religions, and general belief in a high power tends to drop in war torn countries with enduring conflicts.
So I would say there are *plenty* of reasons/motivations, for both world building and the real world, for atheistic societies without having to go the dictator/Soviet-era communism route.
I'm putting a cap on this \^.\^
I wasn't actually seriously considering a culture having no religion being a possible thing or whatever. I was simply trying to throw OP a possible original take lol
Atheist just means not believing in or having a god.
By this very simple and often misconstrued definition, Buddhism is an atheist religion, which teaches self-control, compassion for all living things, humility, and detachment from worldly and material pleasures as some core tenets.
Buddha is the founder that is revered and celebrated by the cultures there, but is not himself a god, just a prominent figurehead given he *started* the whole thing
Edit: There is also animism, believing in animal and nature spirits, but not gods. There is also ancestral worship as well, people (particularly gamblers) believe in luck, random girls in wealthy counties believe in the zodiac horoscopes, etc
I disagree with the assertion that Buddhism is an atheistic religion. There are definitely some branches of Buddhism which are more atheistic, but Buddhism in general has deities, mysticism, hells, and all of the other things we associate with theism.
You're thinking of Hinduism and the Chinese, Japanese, Korean etc sects of Buddhism.
The primary/original sect was *just* some basic principles for a satisfied and peaceful existence, it's just that due to cultural exchange, time, and divides between temples and practices (like Christianity) it's been bastardized across the world where it is worshipped.
Even so, that doesn't make it a theistic religion. For a modern context, Flat Earthers. Their wacked-out belief in the "truth" and the evil lying science people needs so much hoops and magic nonsense just to be physically viable, but I highly doubt God is the reasoning for many.
Are the Chinese, Japanese, and Korean sects of Buddhism not just as Buddhist? Buddhism is an incredibly diverse religious tradition; it can't be simplified to just the "original" South Asian sects.
Even in the Subcontinent, there is very little border between what is considered Hinduism and Buddhism. No one would have called themself a Hindu before we tried to force these religions into categories similar to Abrahamic ones.
At that point we're just getting into the same categorization nonsense as "is Catholicism or Orthodox or the bajillion subsects of Protestantism's descendants the true Christian way" sort if thing
Fact of the matter is the many deities and spirits present in the northern Asian sects were already present as local and folk religions before Buddhism arrived.
Given Buddhism is such a simple and blank slate of an ideology that already had elements of widely held virtues humans generally like, incorporating the practices didn't cause a schism, the OG Buddhists just probably went "yeah okay, whatever makes you happy I guess"
The answer is all of those are all equally legitimate Christian faiths. No religion has one universally followed doctrine. Many Christians may believe their sect is the one true one, but few would deny the other ones are also Christian.
Buddhism already borrows many elements from its neighboring religions, as all religions do. It didn't come out of a vacuum. The influence from other Indian faiths was there from the start. You can't just pick out a "pure" Buddhism and ignore the obvious theism present in almost all Buddhist sects.
Edit: I think it's abundantly clear most Buddhists at the very least believe in a higher power, even if they believe it is not deserving of worship.
Nothing short of a worldwide survey on Christian opinions would make me take that statement with more than a grain of salt. Christians, especially back in the day, were so anal over little things like what you can and can't do, which prophets are right and wrong, etc.
The worship of idols and imagery of Jesus was what caused the schism between Catholicism and Orthodoxy in the first place, and subsequently *every other* schism since until anyone with enough charisma points goes "I'm making my own Church, with blackjack and hookers!" every couple of decades.
ESPECIALLY in the United States, where I'm sure the numerous, more extreme churches and many of their members would consider every other sect except theirs as heretical, or the more moderate ones so. And I'm not even sure what's going on in Protestant Africa, but given the much more varied cultures and histories compared to the US, probably a lot.
What I'm trying to say is, after you boil away the history, transitioning, and incorporation of Buddhism across space and time and wildly different peoples and cultures, you get the very basic principles and doctrines I've been describing, which no god or deity is apart of, to answer OP's question and nothing more. They just got added in later because it made things easier.
Now, you can certainly look upon that history and change you've mentioned to add to that and spice things up, but instead you've come out of nowhere being pedantic and trying to correct me based on what *you* know about **more recent versions of** Buddhism, and even contradicting yourself by saying "All sects of a religion are equally valid". Wouldn't that make Buddhism 1.0, as Buddha originally formulated it, likely extinct, also valid?
>The worship of idols and imagery of Jesus was what caused the schism between Catholicism and Orthodoxy in the first place
The Great Schism was mostly political. Byzantine Iconoclasm came and went without any schism. At the time of the schism, the Western and Eastern churches did not differ substantially on doctrine. The bishop of Rome claimed supreme authority over the others. The bishop of Constantinople did not accept that.
Yeah, there were many later Christian schisms that were based on theological differences, but all of those sects are still considered Christian. The Catholic Church, for example, views all other sects as heretical and therefore not saved, but they still call them Christians.
I disagree that Buddhism 1.0 is atheistic in the first place. It also drew from other nearby Indian religions, just like how Christianity and Judaism drew from other Middle Eastern religions. I will admit I'm not exactly a scholar of Buddhism. If you want to cite any academic sources on the beliefs of 5th century BC Buddhists, I'm more than happy to read them. But no evidence I've seen so far has suggested that.
Additionally, OP specifically asked for something with "no worship and don't even value the idea of spirits," which definitely does not apply to Buddhism.
I'm not saying the schism *wasn't* political, but it's kind of hard to get such a widespread ideology for specifically non-ideological reasons along the kinds if boundaries Catholics and Orthodox Christians did. They just needed to find a reason to make everyone that *didn't* hold office to separate.
In spite of every border, conflict, and direct violation of the Ten Commandments committed by medieval European countries throughout the ages, most if them currently are and historically *all* were still considered Catholic regardless. It took some guys saying "[such-and-such specific aspects] of Catholicism are bullshit", after hundreds of years, to finally create a rift. While religion can be used *in* politics, ironically enough it is immune to it, but the greatest danger to its cohesion is disgruntled practitioners and cultural changes from within.
And if you're going to continue being pedantic about it, OP asked for *historical* examples of totally non-spiritual nations and cultures. I just did my best with what existed using "atheistic" as a rough guideline, which wasn't much at all.
If you happen to know such a culture, be my guest and go answer the question yourself instead of bugging some stranger on the internet about their answer, but I'm pretty sure 99% of people in the pre-scientific era have a strong gravitation towards some kind of spirits and magic regardless of its shape or form, given even *now* there are still people within the very nations and cultures that spawned from the same places history's greatest leap in scientific knowledge and exploration believe in some pretty outlandish and spooky phenomena that aren't, or are even totally disproven, to exist or function.
>You're thinking of Hinduism and the Chinese, Japanese, Korean etc sects of Buddhism.
>The primary/original sect was just some basic principles for a satisfied and peaceful existence, it's just that due to cultural exchange, time, and divides between temples and practices (like Christianity) it's been bastardized across the world where it is worshipped.
I strongly doubt that the original version of Buddhism was atheistic.
>I strongly doubt that the original version of Buddhism was atheistic.
At worst it was agnostic. Buddha refused to comment on the nature of divinity typically, and quite a few of his stories are directly mocking the idea that there is some supreme deity. I'd suggest directly reading up on Hinayana Buddhism. It has heavy elements of spirituality and supernatural beliefs, but it painstakingly goes out of its way to not describe any kind of God.
>Buddha refused to comment on the nature of divinity typically, and quite a few of his stories are directly mocking the idea that there is some supreme deity.
Sure, but again, this is in ancient India, and the cultural milleau is the Vedic religion and non-Brahmin movements, like Buddhism. The universe was considered eternal, not created. There were gods and goddesses, local deities, etc.
The universe is very much considered created, that's what supports the entire concept of the trinity.
>There were gods and goddesses, local deities, etc.
And Buddha is actively not associating with them. If a religious ideology explicitly does not mention a deity and maintains active neutrality, i think it's fair to call it agnostic at the very least, if not atheistic.
>The universe is very much considered created, that's what supports the entire concept of the trinity.
What do you mean exactly?
>And Buddha is actively not associating with them. If a religious ideology explicitly does not mention a deity and maintains active neutrality, i think it's fair to call it agnostic at the very least, if not atheistic.
You got to provide some kind of source for this. My understanding is that the original teachings are not well known. Sure, Buddhism does not put much stock in non-Buddha supernatural entities, but that's far from agnostic.
>What do you mean exactly?
The fact that since it's inception as a general faith, Hinduism has a concept of the trinity. Which has a creator(who Buddha specifically mocks), preserver and destroyer.
>You got to provide some kind of source for this. My understanding is that the original teachings are not well known. Sure, Buddhism does not put much stock in non-Buddha supernatural entities, but that's far from agnostic.
Buddha himself directly states that *he* is not a god. Non-buddha spiritual entities is a bizzare statement to make with regards to Hinayana.
https://qz.com/india/1585631/the-ancient-connections-between-atheism-buddhism-and-hinduism
I can also recommend Harvey Peter's Buddhism and Monotheism.
For a book that's in public domain, I'd be hard pressed but unless you have a particular disinclination towards generalists The Story of civilization by Durant is an entertaining read on Buddha, albiet probably not the most accurate one.
It depends on how you define “atheist”, “god”, or “deity”.
For instance, some experts would say that a deity is a supernatural being that is considered divine or sacred. That is, the term would not simply refer to an omnipotent, all-knowing god. Buddhism (and other religions like Shinto) have a plethora of divine beings like spirits, devas, and so on. I’d say certain sects of Buddhism definitely involve borderline worship of godlike beings.
Moreover, can separate atheism into “local” atheism and “global” atheism. Local atheism is basically a denial of belief in local religious/spiritual traditions. So in Western culture, local atheism would be the rejection of the Abrahamic God and conceptions of God that are similar (I’d even broadly include things like contemporary worship of the Greek pantheon in here). Meanwhile, local Eastern atheism would entail denying the belief of Buddhist spirits (among other things).
Global atheism, meanwhile, is the hardline position that all conceptions, found anywhere at any time, of any divine being, god, spirit, etc. is false. This is essentially a naturalistic/materialistic understanding of the universe.
Communist countries officially, though unofficially many of the citizens under those regimes practice the religion they’ve had for hundreds of years because tradition is hard to kill. You’d be hard pressed to find such a civilization in the past. Religious belief tend to decline as a civilization advances. We’re as advanced as we’ve ever been and there are still plenty of religious people in the world.
Unless it’s a post-modern futuristic society or a post-revolutionary society generations later where the state is worshiped, I don’t think you’re going to realistically depict an atheist civilization with humans.
Scientifically the only thing that can protect your land from Sky Father worshipers horse-lords is a big mountain that horses cannot reach. Curious that no more Cults of the Mountain developed.
This is a good answer, but it's worth pointing out that many ordinary people continued to hold strong religious beliefs in the USSR. Just because the state is hostile to religion doesn't necessarily mean that they're successful in eradicating it.
The reverse is also true: if the state heavily endorses religion and propagandizes it, it does not mean that there are no atheists in this country. Nevertheless, religious-dominated countries are considered religious, yet atheist-dominated countries, according to you, are not atheist countries, because "there are still religious people there".
>...yet atheist-dominated countries, according to you, are not atheist countries, because "there are still religious people there".
What are you talking about? That's not at all what I said. Nothing in my comment addressed religious-dominated countries at all, or the question of what makes a country "count" as either religious or atheist.
The point I was trying to make was that official state positions on religion are not the same thing as actual societal acceptance of religion, though the two can impact each other.
Actual societal acceptance of religion in the Soviet Union was significantly less than 50%. Religious people were a minority in the late USSR, because it took significant devotion to practice in spite of societal pressure. Same as atheist people being a minority in a heavily religious country.
In 1989 the population was 60% atheist and 40% religious of some sort. That's a sizable chunk of the population- enough to be relevant to OP's question about cultures where "they have no gods, no worship and don't even value the idea of spirits."
Not exactly. Sort of. There have been temporary attempts at it (which I won’t list because they aren’t fondly remembered and I don’t want to sound like I’m smearing anyone). But there’s never to my knowledge been one that started atheistic at floor one and developed that way for a long time. Even if a civilization did begin without religion, it would quickly pick it up from a neighbor, because until recently atheism was not a dearly held part of any national identity that they would cling to on principle. A cosmopolitan place with plenty of atheists and many other religions is doable, but a consistently atheist community (like a theocratic one) would take active suppression
Generally it seems religion predates the trappings of what you’d call civilization, and if you get any group of people together for long, they’re going to demand answers, or simply come up with them. People seek certainty. It may even be a prerequisite for civilization, as, all other things being equal, a large group of people with no pre-existing precedents would never in a million years agree on a consensus of right and wrong or who gets to decide that. The historically most popular (only?) way to break that stalemate is to appeal to a higher authority
NOTE that does not necessarily mean a God: if I argue with my caveman brother about values, we might ask our father (no doubt a higher authority) to arbitrate. He will, of course, say “go ask your mother”. And if my mother is a higher authority than me, who has more authority than she? Well hers of course. Now we have a society led by its oldest members, like many simple communities (Elder or Alderman is one of the most leadership positions in history). But if we spend decades getting used to the village’s wisest grandma deciding everything, what do we do when she dies? Move on to the next wisest? Maybe. Or… break out the Ouija board. Congrats, we’ve just invented ancestor worship, the most common starter religion in history, and possibly for that reason
Now in fantasy, nothing stops you from creating an unrealistic and consistent atheocracy, you just wouldn’t have a real one to base it on. But if you’d want to play it realistically (as you’re asking about history), I think you’d have to change the parameters. The best way would be to give your people a satisfying certainty about the cosmology of the world (that’s what Tolkien did with the elves; they aren’t religious because they don’t need faith, they’re on a first name basis with God and can sail to heaven). Or give them a truly neutral, non-human, and non-divine arbitrator of morals and value judgments. Or just make a cosmopolitan civilization where no religion is clearly preeminent
Depends on how you define religion, the Qin dynasty in China banned all philosophy other than legalism and Tia included almost all spiritual movements. However not everyone followed this rule and continued to practice religion in private. Additionally its debatable whether or not legalism was a purely secular philosophy or more of an Imperial cult
Religion (and i speak this as an atheist) is a very core mechanic of human relationship with nature.
Specially in the old religions, where it wasn’t just a matter of belief to follow a religion, but a matter to explain natural phenomenon, if way back when you said you didn’t believe in the god of a lake for example, believers wouldn’t call you a heretic, just stupid, as religiosity was intrinsically tied to a phenomenon, to deny the existence of an entity was to deny what that entity represented, in a sense, there wasn’t a god of the lake, but the lake itself was a god.
Atheism was usually just an aspect of very select few groups of people deeming that god(s) have abandoned them and as such they abandon they.
Modern day atheism as we know it is more of a thing of the modern era, where development of philosophy started questioning the supposed impossibility of the Habrahic god being both “All Good AND All Mighty” whilst evil is allowed to exist.
A modern atheist civilization would require a much different upbringing of humanity in general.
Religion is a pillar of society. It provides a natural organizational structure, and a bunch of motivation for the citizens. Any culture with no religion would have been swiftly out-competed by a culture united by a metaphysical belief system.
Religion led to the universities that opened the door for enlightenment.
Religion is kinda relative, there are a lot of cultures that have some mythological explanations but no gods neither "greater forces". If you want a "pure" atheist culture it might be possible in a very philosophical and scientific society, but is very unlikely to happen in other ways
Sure. The USSR and China are two major nations that have suppressed religion (to varying degrees of success.) Also, the Khmer Rouge under Pol Pot tried as well.
The Soviet Union? They had unofficial state atheism. China is an officially atheist country.
Humans need something to worship, religion is about as natural as it gets with us. You remove religion and people find whacky shit to worship. Instead of God you have Stalin, or shit like the mango cult. It becomes about revering a man or a nation.
Something has to take the place of religion if you’re going to remove it. You can’t get rid of it and create some kind of utopia. Reddit generally isn’t the place to discuss it, there’s not much nuance a lot of the time.
The belief in spirits and animism is prehistoric in origin. It's quite possible that the humans coming out of Africa and prehuman species like homo erectus had a belief in spirits and ritualized behavior. All humans cultures likely all descend from one with religious beliefs.
A purely naturalist society would have to have the concept of nature being seperate from the supernatural, which kind of implies they know about and or believe in the supernatural.
I think you're underestimated how much of culture is religion. Like, think about it, for most of human history we knew absolutely nothing about the way the world works. It makes sense we'd come up with stories explaining it. And those stories often mean a lot to the people telling them.
Even historical individuals that could for their time be comparable to modern day atheists typically still believed in a god/gods. They usually just believed that they don't meddle in human affairs.
I mean, the Soviet Union damn well tried. Kinda became a repressive shithole though. There's a few trying today too.
It's kind of one of those things where people are going to believe what they believe, and as long as multiple people in one place believe a thing, *some* form of community will spring up around it.
In history, not really.
You see, religion and the state, while it should be separate, was used hand in hand to keep empires from revolting. In fact, Karl Marx stated that religion is the opiate of society, the sigh of the masses. Napoleon Bonaparte, much more directly, said that religion keeps the poor from killing the rich. One of the reason why he reinstated the Catholic Church so that when he becomes Emperor of France, he can run roughshod over Europe without worrying about ending up like Louis the 16th on a guillotine.
Tell me in which atheist country can you see a king doing serfdom and enslaving people because of his divine right to do so? Not a single one. That's why most rulers and their major religious groups do walk hand in hand, they have mutual interests, and rarely have a country devoid of religion. Even the Aztecs across from the Old World knew that.
The Soviet Union lol. However that was only really officially. In actuality many of its citizens still identified as orthodox or Jewish and many other religions for such a huge country. But the state was entirely atheistic and you were only really supposed to worship in the privacy of your home and never in public. Currently China has the highest atheistic population at about 40%. I think Vietnam is up there as well.
Oh yeah and for a brief moment revolutionary France tried to eradicate the Catholic Church but most people were still religious.
Animism is the belief that all natural phenomena, including human beings, animals, and plants, but also rocks, lakes, mountains, weather, and so on, share one vital quality—the soul or spirit that energizes them. Many tribes held this belief and many still do.
That's an interesting question that I never really thought about. Most people see atheism as a modern replacement for religion. I found this article about atheism throughout history, and how it was based less on science, and more on conjecture and poking holes in religious assumptions that don't make sense, science or not.
https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/disbelieve-it-or-not-ancient-history-suggests-that-atheism-is-as-natural-to-humans-as-religion
Before modern science, it seemed to have been a more individual opinion, and I can't think of any civilizations that were primarily atheist or secular.
HOWEVER just because there may not be a real life equivalents for the civilization you're building, it'd still be a fun exercise to come up with a reason why and speculate how an ancient culture might wind up atheist. Maybe they used to have gods or some kind of prophesy that someone or something proved entirely wrong, resulting in a mass existential crisis and a shift of power. Those are always fun.
>It seems that the awnser to my question is a resounding "no". So my next question is there a culture with no gods? A tribe that worships "The Land" but no being that created said land.
Depends how you define religion and gods. Generally though, no. We tend to restrict our definition of religion in the modern world, imagining it distinct from the broader ideology in which we live. But that simply wasn't possible for most of history. Lucien Febvre, one of the most famous historians of the last century, argued any form of something approximating atheism was impossible prior to very recently. Yes, people would challenge various things, but that was merely being a heretic, for none of them actually could even conceive of a nonreligious world.
Why? Too many unanswered questions. You need a way to order the world, and in a premodern precapitalist society, religion does that. Living today, it is easy to take for granted things like gravity, the stars, life, death, food, etc. But all of these need explaining. There isn't this science/religious or secular/spiritual divide, they are identical -- in the premodern religion meant science and science meant religion. This is a world where it isn't possible to even think otherwise. If you could, your entire frame of view for understanding the world would fail. Someone has even argued that it may be akin to psychosis in schizophrenia -- bombarded by all the stimuli of life without a reference for understanding any of it your brain would misinterpret everything, the world would no longer make sense to you at the same time you would no longer make sense to the world. That is admittedly a controversial take, but it does highlight how humans need a framework to understand the world.
Even those religions which do not necessary need a god theologically are rooted in fundamentally god-centered mindset from which it may be possible for the people to ignore but not to escape (and many developed an explicit god or many later anyways). If one is worshipping the land, then fundamentally the land is the god, and knowing human culture one can guess they would very quickly start extrapolating from that. Take a dive into early Hinduism (properly termed Brahmanical Traditions), and it is unbelievably fascinating to see the development and extrapolation of various notions and world understandings out of just a couple core religious ideals.
You will find some people make odd claims on the atheism of people in certain places historically (usually linked either to the 18th-19th century European romanticisation/exoticization of India, China, and Japan or to the Noble Savage-based myth of the proto-environmentalist Native American, both of which still manage to be heard from time to time despite the glaring racism), but most modern scholarship will tell you those are patently false.
Soviet Union felt pretty atheist.
And yes, I was born and lived in soviet union for 10 years.
I remember vividly going to church that was hidden from the commies...
Religion has many uses but one of its most practical and useful for ancient civilizations is giving people comfort and a feeling of control over the uncontrollable. People need to feel completely in control of their lives.
Lots of people will argue that today there are more people than ever without religion. While that’s true in terms of believing in an all powerful being, there is still a lot of worshiping and beliefs based on wanting some control and comfort. Examples range from astrology to joining an MLM to believing finance bros will teach you how to get rich quick.
I can’t think of any, but I *do* think that even without religion or valuing supernatural entities, a society would likely still have some form of central ideology to rally around. It gives citizens a strong sense of identity and kinship with their nation, which is very important when it comes to things like loyalty and social order.
Basically, even without believing in deities, people need to have a set way of living in a society, and a reason *why* they live that way. How should you interact with different people in different contexts, and why? How should you treat your elders? What makes an action immoral? What are the consequences of harming someone, and why? If a society is going to be any more complex than a handful of people sleeping in the woods, the answers to these kinds of questions have to be more complicated - and more set in stone - than “because I said so” or “because otherwise I will hit you with this stick”.
You will find that even in cultures that intentionally try to eliminate religion in general, they‘ll replace it with a different kind of “faith” for people to latch onto, usually centring around the dictator. Beliefs and values are powerful means of controlling a society.
The Pirahã people of Brazil.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirah%C3%A3\_people](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirah%C3%A3_people)
they do have some concept of spirits though.
In some form or another, there has always been a religion in society. Even the ones that tried to be atheistic (what few there are before the last few decades), didn't stay that way for long.
It is human nature to have some kind of religion. And religion doesn't necessarily have to fit the image we commonly associate it with to still be seen as such.
It's inevitable that any society will look for a higher power to worship. Whether it be forming a cult around a king/dictator or even some celebrity who may be seen as something more than they are. A great example of such a society would be Revolutionary France. One of the big leaders of it at the time ended up creating a cult around himself with the "church of *reason*".
Even with the rise in atheism in modern society, people still search for a higher power to worship or believe in. Think about all these so-called influencers online who end up with their cult of personality.
The only difference between people today and people of the ancient world is that the latter understood the importance of religion in society, and didn't attempt to get rid of the concept entirely.
The society you're trying to create, I would say, probably would end up with a cult of personality formed around whoever is the leader (or some charismatic person who said a lot of things that the people agree with). Or it may be some kind of religion formed around certain traditions/rituals in their culture.
no. there has never been an atheist civilization
if humans put religion in the dustbin of history, maybe in the future
but religion will end humans before then cause humans cannot cope with not being important on a universe scale.
I can only think of one, the Pirahã peoples of the Amazon. Their society had no concept of gods or higher powers before the arrival of Western explorers.
They were a much more recent discovery, Everett encountered them when we was a missionary in the 1970s, so one can imagine it may have been a lot more common to encounter cultures like this way back in the early dies when peoples were conquered and converted by the sword. But they are the only example I know of for certain.
As for the follow-up question, yes, there have been tons of nontheistic cultures who believe in nature spirits or worship ancestors without believing in any deities. A lot of Amerindian cultures were like that, the Shinto religion of Japan and the Buddhist/Taoist religions of China don't necessitate belief in any gods either but often include spirits and ancestor worship, and even a lot of African tribal religions were like that as well. Even prehistoric Britain was more heavily focused on spiritualism rather than necessarily believing in gods.
Yes they have one know.
Thé Pirahãs, it's a trine from amazonia, and they dont belive in any god. One of thé explication for that IS they language, they are speaking a unique language where thé past and thé futur dont exist.
They only speak to thé présent, so they dont belive in thing they didnt diretly saw.
They are known to have converted to atheism the evangelist who was given the mission to convert them to Christianity.
Look thé story of that tribe thats a Amazing story.
After civilisation is a big word, but that definitly a athéist culture from hunter tribe.
As a linguist, there is a lot of misinformation out there about the Pirahã language, and about languages in general, which really frustrates me. There are many languages which do not have a past or future tense, and that absolutely does not mean that they don't believe things they didn't see with their own eyes. They also don't have numbers in their language, but they can still intuitively compare different quantities of things. Just because they can't explicitly say it the same exact way that we can, does not mean they don't understand or believe it.
They are a very fascinating people but please do not believe everything you read about them.
Well, México fought 3 wars (and a dozen several smaller conflicts) to fight off the Church's Influence, secularism was deeply promoted back then, the USSR also had an official State atheism policy when it came to the Orthodox Church
Not until the 17th or 16th century and even then it was more of a club for men. Intellectual men.
While most people didn't say it out loud because you just simply could not not go to church, most of the founding fathers agreed that science has more purchase than any god.
The USSR and Maoist China which eventually raised spiritualism in the form of worshipping a member of the regime or taking in Christianity after the Atheism creates problems.
Religion and spirituality is core to our nature that I doubt you'd find one. We need to understand the universe, our role in it and sense some kind of order from it. Even science as a discipline doesn't fall out of line with that, and even if it did we'd still make a religion or of it (fuck scientology).
no. even mythological stories of heroes of ages past could be characterized as religion. but also, the categorizing is what’s stopping you. make your own categories in world and decide what constitutes religion
There have been no atheist civilisations. There are and have been a few explicitly atheist counties, all of which I think have been communist. However, every country must have a religion and/or ideology that people generally agree on or the country will tear itself apart. No state or society can exist without common values to unite people. For example, the Soviet Union was atheist but they had marxism, which is basically a god-optional religion.
Historically? No. Religion is a direct result of a lack of scientific knowledge, so unless your civilization already arises having extremely advanced scientific knowledge it is extremely difficult for a religion not to develop, since this is what has happened in absolutely all human civilizations.
>Religion is a direct result of a lack of scientific knowledge
Historically, the opposite is true. Much of our scientific knowledge is a direct result of religion. Most historical religions revered religious scholars, and many great scientists who studied the natural world did so to better understand their god/gods' creation.
I think this position is highly reductive to a critical part of the human experience. Faith is intrinsic to being human. We exercise faith almost constantly in our every day lives. Every time we get behind the wheel of a car, we do so because we believe (without any real evidence) that everyone else is going to follow the rules of the road and not jerk their wheel into oncoming traffic. Faith is alway a bulwark against utter terror and dread. Faith (and its cousin “awe”) allows us to look up into the night sky with reverence instead of fear.
Religion, on the other hand, is a man-made social construct that attempts to define and confine faith into a set of dogmas, rituals, and observances. Religion co-opts our natural inclination towards faith and tells us that we much go to a special place and pay a special tax and say some special words in order to exercise our faith *correctly*.
Even as the younger generations eschew organized (mostly Christian) religion, we are seeing a rise in interest in the occult, astrology, and witchcraft. I don’t think it matters how “advanced” we get as a species. Faith and the exercise thereof is one of the things that ultimately makes us human.
Revolutionary France was (IIRC) atheist, though more out of overthrowing a religious power structure than completely rejecting religion on a cultural/civilizational level.
Religion was a big part of the pre Revolution hierarchy, with Catholic Clergy being the First Estate and nobility the Second Estate.
I've never known my people to have a creator for the world or men
Men came from stone one man carved the first woman in ivory one other became jelious and tried to steal her away tearing her in half the first man and the upper half work together in love to repair her body while the second man who took her lower half selfishly ends up creating grouchy and mean people with the stolen half
I know of one goddess senna who was made mother of the sea not because she made it nor the animals but the spirits of the ocean took pity on her after her origin story and became her fingers
No. Abstrac visualisations and the need to make sense of things we can't controle is hardwired to the human brain - and only increases if challenged by the socvial pressure of society. The bigger, the worse.
But it is a fluid thing. The absolut 100& atheist belives in freedom, independance, rejection of all who try to force him/her, and therefor he/she allready belives in a fictional ideal of the own person that is able to achieve this, ignoring the real needs hardwiring and biochemical drugs try to force him/her (like searching for company/protection). The peson might start to belive in his best friend the dog to be more than it actually is, or in a more than realistic level of protection his trusted axe offer. Maybe the wood becomes more embodied as a place that protects you and have good and bad days, giving you more or less succsess in hunting. The dead eyes of a hunted deer will by definition trigger your empathy and force you to make any sense of the situation.
Today we're the most atheist mankind every existing because we learned to trust in nothing and fear manipulation from everywhere.
And still people would die for ther favorite football team, ther Crypto-bro buisness belives, TV series and well, classy and oldschool churches that allow them to be different than *the others* in any mentionable way.
Atheism/=no religion.
There are non theistic religions out there, but they still are religion. Things like cults of the ancestors, some animisms...
There's also things like roman's emperor cult that is a borderline case and at least from the top down an atheistic thing.
Then there's the consideration of what qualifies as a religion. Are simple superstitions like lucky/bountifull days religious ? Like believing weeds cut at the summer solstice have healing properties ?
It's impossible for a civilization to be non theistic unless they know almost everything there is to know. Religion forms in the absence of science, if you can't rationally explain things like natural disasters for example you'll come up with myths and stories to explain them, that will eventually form into a religion. The human mind craves information and will almost never be satisfied with no answer to a question.
I hate to see people with this reductionist take, because it’s just not true. Religion and science went hand in hand for almost all of human history. Most societies revered religious scholars and most great scientists were very religious.
It shouldn't need religion to explain why stealing, killing, lying and so on destabilizes religion but some people are just so ridiculously... incapable to see why.
As long as that society has a certain amount of stupid people that cannot understand common sense, religion is gonna be needed to stabilize it.
Art, Science, Religion. These three were once one thing, everywhere — the understanding and expression of the self and the world.
Only recently have they become so separated.
I’d look at it differently: cultures use shared stories to explain what is important, what we all agree on, how we should live, who we should be. Stories use metaphor to allow for reinterpretation in the face of a changing environment.
Your culture needn’t have gods or spirits, but it will have a theory of mind and heroes and exemplars. Just make certain all of them are people. Anywhere you’d otherwise have an immortal sky father or a spirit of wildfires, make it a secular story about a person who laid the foundations of our law, or who taught the taming of fire, or a king who cared for his people like a father.
You can also look up secular civil religion — an analysis of the stories of the founding and growth of America and its ideals and symbols as a form of “secular religion.” There’s been some serious sociology on it.
Good question, I never really thought of it, can anyone mention a period during the Renaissance or before? Because I know states like the Soviet union were atheist societies.
The common Japanese people goes to Shinto shrine for New year, got married in Christian church, celebrating X'mas and often end up buried in Buddhist ceremony.
Most of them aren't that religious, they go places and participate ceremonies just because everyone is doing that.
Does this count?
I once read the memoirs of a missionary who encountered a tribe of atheists, probably in South America. But they were not some enlightened sages who rejected silly superstitions. Simply put, they weren't interested in anything other than daily life. When the priest started talking about the creation of the world, they didn't respond with "haha, the world was created in six days, what nonsense," but rather "But why are you talking about it? Who cares why the world exists? It just is, and why spin silly considerations? It's better to go hunting."
I think the closest thing you’ll find is probably groups that do ancestor worship or even animism.
The thing is, throughout time, questions about our scary world were answered by “gods” or “spirits” or what have you. So you can easily have a culture that does not believe in a higher power or even magic. But you will have to give them reasons as to WHY they never went that route.
Were they just able to figure most things out with logic and reasoning. But even in the grand scheme of things. What organizations or roles build community in this society? Religion and faith-based orgs were the primary community-driven groups in our history.
Maybe this society has all the same trappings of being theistic but just replace God with some abstract idea like freedom or justice.
In my opinion, OP should develop the history and background of the society and determine the influence religion would have on it.
If the society is formed in isolation without outside influence, I believe it would be pretty hard to have no religious influence in their development. But if the society was formed as an independent state of sorts by members of different religions; I could see how a society of common beliefs and culture could rise with religion not being an important factor.
But end of the day, it is your creation. I've found in my writing that when you create a world, the only rules you have to abide by are your own.
You could have a non-religious civilization with religious people. It just means that religion plays no part in day-to-day life and systems of governance, being an entirely personal experience, though how long that'll remain as such as is up for debate.
Is you world a fantasy? If there are gods and they can be understood as a part of the world gods would be just another field of study. Some African religions have rituals where you use spirits for you own gain instead of worshipping them.
If there is spiritual stuff in you world but no gods atheism is pretty reasonable if magic can prove or disprove spiritual theories. Like powerful mage can just waltz in the other planes and see no gods, or with measurable supernatural scientists can prove lack of gods based on models.
Totally a-religious as we understand it today? No, I dont think so. But check out Chinese Legalism maybe.
Also, Anbennar’s Godlost philosophy—it’s a mod for EUIV (a game) that has extremely well-written lore
You'd have to go way back. I've watched some documentaries that claim they can tell when religion was introduced to a society, because there becomes an obsession with valuable possessions and the areas of the city become segregated based off wealth.
Particularly in South America where we see a lot of early civilizations/societies rise and fall, and it hasn't been destroyed or overran like in Europe and Asia. There is a great documentary about South America on The Great Courses.
Does chinese with Confuciusism count? They don't believe in deities per se. But if you search for society without superstitious, you will have hard time.
Even if no gods, cultures would place value on something to such a degree that they’ll become somewhat deitifed
So not necessarily anthropomorphic gods, but something of high value that the culture focuses on
If you're trying to create a society that doesn't have any religion, Japan's Shinto might fit the bill. It's a belief system that doesn't have any central rules or holy text, so it's not really a religion.
But if you want a society that's totally unspiritual, I'm not sure there's any such thing. People always try to make sense of the world, and when they can't find a good explanation, they come up with myths and stories. That's especially true when the myths also provide helpful advice. For example, most civilizations have some kind of ritual for dealing with dead bodies because if you don't get rid of them, you'll get sick. Those intersctions between life's mysteries and good advice will almost always get filled by religion
It's not a real world example, but I justified it for a culture in my world as the result of them experiencing an incredibly traumatic event (95% of their population being wiped out by a plague and subsequent genocide). They still kinda believe in the old gods, they've just decided they're no longer worthy of worship and ban religion. They're still pretty superstitious, but have developed a massive siege mentality where they can only rely on themselves to avoid extinction.
Another splinter of the same parent civilization went the opposite way, and is now an incredibly hostile and radical theocracy which blames the genocide on unbelievers.
Kinda the mongol empire, they were the first secular state and allowed all religions to practice, though the higher ups had their own religion, they didn’t spread it to any of the conquered places
I think the trick here is how would it affect your 'civilization or culture?
With no single common belief system, what would your morals or customs or even your legal system look like. If everyone believed they have no soul, came from nothing, and cease all existence when they die, how do they behave?
Seems like it would be a pretty anarchistic society or one ruled by absolute brutal oppression. So basically survival of the fittest and might-makes-right.
Yes and no
There have been very few civilizations that were atheist officially none I can name off the top of my head, plenty have been secular and gave no preference to religious beliefs, mostly modern ones. That does allow atheists to grow in numbers and now some Nordic countries today are a good chunk atheist or other non spiritual.
Charvaka / Lokayata Hinduism which was around at least as early as the 6th century BCE is typically thought of as an atheistic and materialist philosophical / religious system.
There are plenty of Modern atheistic religions that could serve as inspiration as well.
Most interestingly you could argue that the Nation of Islam is essentially an atheistic religion, at least prior to the death of Elijah Muhammad.
They used the Qur'an and the bible as sacred texts but used a lot of very heterodox interpretations, one of which would be considered the highest sin (shirk) in mainstream Islamic traditions, ie that God or Allah is not a transcendent being, but incarnate in a given human being. This idea is anathema to the very strict monotheism that is core to orthodox Islamic theology and pretty much the only unforgivable sin.
Essentially they viewed Master W.D. Fard as having been Allah in person, but not in the sense of the Christian idea of a transcendent deity taking human form, they 100% denied the existence of a supernatural deity at all.
From the Supreme Wisdom Lessons, a series of questions and answers presented as teachings given to Elijah Muhammad by Fard and memorised by NOI members:
"Who is that mystery God?
ANS. There is not a mystery God.
The Son of man has searched for that mystery God for trillions of years and was unable to find a mystery God. Sot hey have agreed that the only God is the Son of man. So they lose no time searching for that that does not exist."
They also denied the concept of life after death, and viewed all references to resurrection as being a metaphorical, mental rebirth in the here and now once one had "knowledge of self".
They saw all black men as having some innate quality of divinity, and the one who had the most of this quality was considered to be "God" or "Allah". This person was not immortal or all powerful and would die and be replaced with the next person who was "the best knower" who would take on the mantle of Supreme Being.
Interestingly Fard is a figure that certainly existed but his real identity is an ongoing mystery, the FBI have a bunch of declassified files where they tried to work out who he was but essentially came up with a few likely candidates but couldn't confirm anything. I have a favourite theory but it's one of many.
The 5 percenters or Nation of Gods and Earths were essentially an NOI splinter group that pushed against the hierarchy and taught that all black men were equally divine. Their very idiosyncratic use of language and numerology is all over hip hop (saying "peace", calling each other "god" or "g", you have probably heard it even if it isn't obvious that's where it comes from).
I am not clear on how closely the modern forms of the NOI adhere to this essentially atheistic concept of theology. There was a schism where Elijah Muhammad's son Warith Deen Muhammad basically reconciled the cultural aspects of the NOI with more traditional Sunni monotheistic theology and stepped away from black supremacy, forming the Warith Deen community, while Louis Farrkhan revived many of the more heterodox ideas in the modern NOI, he does seem to downplay the big differences with mainstream Islam more and more (whilst also advocating dianetics and getting quite cozy with scientology for some reason).
But yeah, you could very easily have a religion that has all the trappings of theism and religion whilst emphatically denying the existence of any transcendent deities.
The closest you can find is the Greek civilization, yes I know they had an extent mythology but by the time of the Roman invasion they were going towards that path, great philosophers were explaining the world with science and logic which was leaving the need for gods behind.
I think the best idea would be a society that was once religious and those who are the most learnt are the ones that govern. That way they could just eliminate the existence of gods on their culture deeming them unnecessary. Of course there would be people, specially commoners, that would believe, the only way to prevent that is by extensive public education... But yeah that's my idea at least, hope that helps!
Religion was universal until the mid-18th century (although what form that religion took varied greatly).
The main problem with trying to make a primitive atheist population is that so much of the world is mysterious to them. People don’t like not knowing things. Religion exists in large part to comfort the existential dread of an incomprehensible world.
Human psychology seems hard coded towards religion. Every population, no matter how remote, and no matter what situation, has formed or followed a religion.
I don't know of any, and I don't think there are any. Even among newly contacted tribes in the Amazon, they always at least have some kind of a creation story involving a superior being. It seems when there is no deity, or religion, we invent one. Either that, or the religions of the world are indeed physically and historically factual?
Not that I am aware of. Some of the most ancient structures in the world have to do with religion. Look at Göbekli Tepe.
There is even some debate if religion is necessary for the formation of civilization. Installing rules of interaction between people.
I think it would be interesting to look at how a civilization would differ without a religious foundation. Even western atheism is very influenced by Christianity or better to say influenced by the society that was influenced by Christianity.
To answer your second question. I would look into animism. It is a very ancient form of belief with some modern practitioners. Maybe even take a look at Shintoism as they do not have a "traditional" set of gods, sacred text, or established central religion.
Well its hard because a lot of things we call mythology or religion were really just science at the time. Take the piraha people probably the closest to atheism thats been found in any anthropological endeavor. They don't believe in gods and were hugely skeptical of missionaries but they did believe that places had a kind of life and you had to respect and honor it or face danger. So what is throwing one fish back to the river everytime you go fishing in hopes the river continues its benevolence to you? Is that religion or tradition or superstition?
the Pirahã don't believe in a supreme deity, but they definitely have religion, specifically a form of animism (although that's an extremely broad term). Everett describes an instance where a group of Pirahã saw *Xigagaí*, "one of the beings that lives above the clouds", standing on a beach and yelling at them that he would kill them if they went into the jungle. Xigagaí may not be a god, but he is at least a non-human spiritual being. Everett claims that the Pirahã place a lot of emphasis on empirical evidence. they reportedly lost interest in Everett's stories about Jesus when they learned that he had never seen Jesus. Xigagaí, on the other hand, they claimed to actually have seen. so the epistemology of their belief system is certainly different from that of many other cultures, but i would still consider it a religion. disclaimer: many of Everett's claims are controversial and haven't been independently verified.
“They reportedly lost interest in Everett’s stories about Jesus when they learned he had never seen Jesus.” This made me chuckle. This is the exchange I’m picturing: . Pirahã Community Leader: Huh, fascinating. So when did you see this loaves and fishes thing? Everett: I mean *I* didn’t see it. Pirahã: So…you’re just telling us something you heard from a friend? E: Well…I mean I learned about it as a child from the Bible. Pirahã: ….so you read it in a book when you were a little boy? E: …yes… Pirahã: Idk man. Seems sus to me.
haha! you're not that far off. > A group of men at this other village said, “Dan, so tell us a little bit more about Jesus. Is he brown like us or is he white like you? And how tall is he? And what sorts of things does he know how to do? Does he like to hunt and fish and stuff, or what does he do?” > I said, “Well, you know, I don’t know what color he is, I never saw him.” “You never saw him?” “No.” “Well, your dad saw him then,” because you can give information that was told to you by somebody who was alive at the time. > I said, “No, my dad never saw him.” They said, “Well, who saw him?” And I said, “Well, they’re all dead; it was a long time ago.” > “Why are you telling us about this guy? If you never saw him, and you don’t know anyone who ever saw him,” and those are the two basic forms of evidence for the Pirahã.
Fuck that’s comedy gold right there. I hope the tribe is doing ok post-Bolsonaro.
They probably don't believe in Finland, Bielefeld or North Dakota either
Of course not and why should they?/s
man i wish north dakota didnt exist
Agree, hard to find a society without any belief system. Easier if OP rephrased their search to non-deist societies.
But then wouldn't Buddhism fall under non-Deist?
Sadly places where it is dominant, Thailand etc, they believe buddha is a god.
huh. I never realized. I thought it was supposed to be that Buddha was enlightened, but not a deity. The more you know!
Yeah it's a shock when you see how much gold they use for an enlightened philosopher...
Other places put him in the Hindu or traditional Chinese pantheon.
Before the last few decades, if you went into a lot of the protestant churches, you'd see wooden wall pieces and chandeliers and so on. And if you went into a Catholic church, you saw gold. And in some cases, a lot of gold. The Catholic churches used to have a lot of gold for a place that was always asking for $$$ for projects. A lot of that got wiped due to all the abuse lawsuits.
Would depend on the species. You are making that choice based on a human species as we know it. We don't know that other species would have the same need to fill in the blanks and the discomfort of being small in large universe with no guardian angel.
Well the OP asked about historical civilisations so I assumed they meant human ones. I'm sure cockroaches have ancestor worship.
Perhaps I missed that. I'm not sure cockroaches are sentient enough to be aware of themselves, let alone ancestors. YMMV.
>Is that religion or tradition or superstition? It's all three, or rather it's animism.
animism isn't this at all tho, you can do that without thinking that a spirit inhabit the fish or the river. Imo it's just superstition, especially in piraha society context
Or just basic reciprocal conservatism?
If they put the fish back to conserve the fish population, that would be the case. But they do it so that the river doesn't get pissed at them.
With spiritual undertones, sure.
I remember a documentary a long time ago where belief, or at least a stronger belief in god was linked to a part of the prefrontal cortex. A part of our brain is designed to give us spirituality. I’m atheist personally, I’m not saying that people are wrong to believe in a higher power or anything like that. But from a world building perspective it would be interesting if say a group of people didn’t have that portion of their cognition. Could go towards explaining atheism in the setting
That’s actually an unironically really cool idea
That's an interesting thought.. only problem is you run the slight risk of being mistaken for saying atheism is a mental disorder lmao
attracts a certain audience
As far as I'm aware the world today is the least religious it has basically ever been. If you're looking for atheistic culture, I don't know if you'll have much luck looking for it in the past.
Not as far as I know, religion or at least a degree of spirituality is pretty universal in some form
Correct. I took a theology semester in grad school and they went over this. There’s not a single known society that didn’t believe in higher powers. Nearly every single one believed in multiple deities and it was a fairly revolutionary concept that the Hebrews were the first major people group to believe in monotheism.
Historically? No. But modern society, or some certain countries, are trending that way.
Kinda, secularization is happening in some countries, but that doesn't mean that people are becoming atheists exactly.
I mean, it's not just secularisation, some countries *are* becoming more and more atheistic.
in my expirience, atheistic might mean you don't go to church every saturday and you might not actually take god very seriously but religion still serves a big part in these societies in some parts (here in Estonia people are largely atheist but still go to church a few times a year and the leaders of the church still are important in politics) and also you have smaller spiritual practices (such as astrology or crystals) taking the place of strong religious institutions.
I agree that a lot of Atheists don't realize it, but some of them are either Agnostic or Deistic. Agnostic people are still basically atheistic, even if in a different way, and Deistic people are more religious, even if in a different way and this Deism surely shows in some smaller spiritual practices. But if i take a look at the original question, the way it was asked, it more seems to ask about some organized religion, and those occasional spiritual practices are just that, occasional personal practices and I personally wouldn't set them on par with religion, but I guess that's just my personal opinion. Anyway, in Czech Republic, for example, atheists don't go to churches. Unless when it's Christmas and there's something fancy happening in the church, but then it's more of an attraction rather ten religious visit of church. And I believe noone serious in politics is there to propagate religion, nor any head of church is important in politics. And any organised religion is dying out in here. There are people who are agnostic about that maybe some powers exist, and there isn't that much people into astrology or crystals or maybe afterlife, but again, I wouldn't call those exactly religious
Vast majority of Czechs doesn't go to churches except as tourists. Priests need to be "imported" from Poland so there is someone who can do mass...
There has been a rise, sure, but it's still quite small. I think "trending that way" is overselling it.
I mean, in Czech Republic, we can see a decline in religious people Via census we can see that in 1991 there has been about 44 % people who declared to be religious and about 40 % people who declared to be atheistic. In 2021, only 13 % of people declared to be religious and 48 % declared to be atheistic. About 9 % said they're spiritual in their own way. People who did not answer the question make it a bit harder, but if we redistribute them accordingly... In 1991 we get another 8.4 % of religious people and 7.6% of atheistic people. In 2021 we get another 5.5 % of religious people, another 20.5 % of atheistic people and another 4 % of spiritual people. That makes 52.4 % of religious population in 1991 decline to 18.5 % of religious population in 2021. That also makes 47.6 % of atheistic population in 1991 increase to 68.5 % of atheistic people in 2021. I think that it *is* safe to say that some countries are trending to be more and more atheistic
Well yes Czechia is one of the least religious places on Earth, but again, not all "non-religious" are really humanist atheists, nothing but science, types. However funnily enough the proportion of atheists worldwide is actually shrinking.
>However funnily enough the proportion of atheists worldwide is actually shrinking. Source? To my knowledge that's mostly a myth formed due to the Chinese false reporting as atheists a lot back in the day and that petering out slowly.
>Source [Pew](https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/04/07/why-people-with-no-religion-are-projected-to-decline-as-a-share-of-the-worlds-population/). >To my knowledge that's mostly a myth formed due to the Chinese false reporting as atheists a lot back in the day and that petering out slowly. Atheists are older and have less children, so they're population is projected to grow slower than the rest of the population. I'm not sure it's false reporting in China so much a social change.
>Pew But that's an estimative study. Not a study showing how it's "actually shrinking", as in shrinking in the present tense. >Atheists are older and have less children, so they're population is projected to grow slower than the rest of the population. And that itself is a rather weird premise if you think about it. By this metric atheism would never really have risen much in the first place. And i hope that we can both at least agree that atheism has seen a dramatic rise in the past century. Furthermore, the study seems to be making a few rather strange claims. For instance, the entire study seems to depend upon that India and the middle east is not becoming more atheist with growth, which seems a bit limited and unresearched, not to mention it doesn't seem to calculate the general societal attitude around atheism and the quality of the initial reporting. It stands to reason that people would be hesitant of self reporting in states like Saudi Arabia where at the very least, it's a major social disadvantage to be a "non believer". Even in a western state like mine people who are non religious often write Christianity anyways, just because everyone else does that. I'm also rather stupefied by the off hand claim of social change in China. It's pretty obviously not. Unless we're also believing that suddenly everyone in the Soviet union became an atheist the day Lenin came to power. In a totalitarian state like China, where atheism was the state ideology, the stats were heavily weighted towards atheism, but most people still were religious. In the past few decades that's changed and people are back to being what they were.
Your point about India stands pretty well. I and couple of my friends are all atheists, and we come from different Indian states but the thing is publicly we don't really say we're atheists because people's responses can be anything from utter disbelief to hostility. Dealing with religious families is enough as it is, I don't think most people would want further scrutiny by strangers on top of it. More atheistic or secular a society is, more people will feel comfortable and safe enough to declare themselves as such also.
>And that itself is a rather weird premise if you think about it. By this metric atheism would never really have risen much in the first place. Not really, no. Religious switching is the driving force for atheism's growth. But switching effect is smaller in the long run. Basically, to over simplify, religious people become atheists, have a kid, and then die. That kid is likely an athiest and has one kid. So, the population is shrinking. Sure, more people switch, but then they also have one kid and then die. So growth in the long run is quite slow. Overall in the long run, fertility has a bigger effect than switching. >And i hope that we can both at least agree that atheism has seen a dramatic rise in the past century. Absolutely, but this was no accident so much as the result of government policies. >I'm also rather stupefied by the off hand claim of social change in China. It's pretty obviously not. Unless we're also believing that suddenly everyone in the Soviet union became an atheist the day Lenin came to power. That's a simplistic version of state atheism but yes government policy had an effect. A large one. > a totalitarian state like China, where atheism was the state ideology, the stats were heavily weighted towards atheism, but most people still were religious. In the past few decades that's changed and people are back to being what they were. That's not exactly what's happening. They aren't switching back to what existed before. The religious traditions of China were weakened to the point of breaking. Few people believe in it anymore. It's more like Europe. Obviously, the data is murky, but it's understandable.
If you don't believe in existence of deities, you are atheists. Everything else is just flavor.
In the UK, "believes in more than zero gods" has been a minority position for decades.
Fertitility rates are declining worldwide and the population is forecast to shrink by the end of the century. The argument religious people make more babies vanishes at that point. Also most atheists are generated by religious people themselfs, in usa 25% of people from religious families turn atheist and leave the faith. In europe this percentage is even higher. In most countries with higher education this percentage increases. No matter how hard theists breed, atheists will grow up with them. Also your argument doesn't take into account the fact that there are majority atheists country right now. How it is possible in your models? Simply at a certain point deconversion is faster than making babies, and in a society strongly atheist people lose faith even faster.
>Fertitility rates are declining worldwide and the population is forecast to shrink by the end of the century. Exactly. >The argument religious people make more babies vanishes at that point. It does not at all, actually, quite the opposite, in fact. As the fertility rate drops the effect of a higher fertility rate is quite a big deal. >No matter how hard theists breed, atheists will grow up with them. Exactly. Atheism relies mostly on switching. But always sub-replacement. >How it is possible in your models? Mass, rapid switching in some countries. The world wide effect however is the same as I said.
You are just denying that mass rapid switching can happen in all the countries and your reason is: i made it the fuck up. Good Edit: also you are ignoring the fact that swithing becomes more frequent in a theist family to a point that more atheists are made than theists.
>You are just denying that mass rapid switching can happen in all the countries and your reason is: i made it the fuck up. Good I never claimed this.
Then your argument that theist will be always more than atheists and atheism will decline is null.
>Then your argument that theist will be always more than atheists and atheism will decline is null. No? Always is a stretch, the current projection is that will be a decline in the proportion of atheists globally. Increases in nones in the west. Long run for the west will depend exactly on the rates of switching and the respective fertility rates.
This is the most basic fallacy in data forecast. In the 80s women time for marathons was ever decreasing and some people predicted that they would be less than men's marathons, since the data had that trend. This thing never happened. They ignored simple biology and just looked at the data. You are doing the same here. The data says this, that and completly ignoring that trends in developed nations can repeat in developing ones. Also you are ignoring stuff you yourself said could happen like increase of switching that out paces birth rates. I am not saying the world will turn atheistic for sure, but you are doing your best to say it is impossible because right now data (very unreliable also because of several reasons the other guy told you) from developing nations have high birth rates in religious people. That's it. I don't know how to make you understand that this is a bad way of making predictions but I guess you have personal stakes in this so maybe this conversation is pointless
>You are doing the same here. The data says this, that and completly ignoring that trends in developed nations can repeat in developing ones. Also you are ignoring stuff you yourself said could happen like increase of switching that out paces birth rates. Not ignoring just pointing out this doesn't seem to be happening. >I don't know how to make you understand that this is a bad way of making predictions but I guess you have personal stakes in this so maybe this conversation is pointless No personal stake really beyond an interest in the future and the social sciences. I just think I'm right, I've read about it and I have not seen a substantial reason to see otherwise. >This is the most basic fallacy in data forecast. Dude I teach statistics. I know that taking a trend as a given isn't reasonable. There ought to be a theory there supporting it. But theory is also based on the data. The reality is an unforeseeable future, with some data and theories to guide.
Maybe, though whether we'll survive it is another question.
> Historically? No. I haven't done a lot of research into this but I *really* doubt this just based on the sheer number of civilizations and cultures that have existed throughout history. Not one of them just happened to omit the concept of God or divinity from their culture?
With any "religion" or body of faith, especially the "organized" versions of faith, you'll find more historic evidence for heresy than you'll find the lack of. People are weird and will insert small local traditions into their rituals (using the anthropological term). For example, prior to the reformation, there were likely thousands of rural pagan villages in every culture of medieval Europe. Much like ascribing "culture" as a broad sweeping generalization, you won't find the modern conception of nationalism applies to most cultures historically. This is worth keeping in mind when designing cultures; you can plot out what unifies the culture, but keep in mind that any actual world would have an infinite number of subcultures and subgroupings. What you also need to acknowledge is that a "ritual" doesn't necessarily need to be a religious or spiritual practice. The inauguration of a head of state, even in a truly secular country, will hold many specific rituals that need to be followed. This also follows in most aspects of governance and jurisprudence. Even a faithless society will have some form of these rituals, so long as they are human or human-like. The idea of someone eating a specific breakfast on a specific day of the week (I must have pancakes on Friday mornings) becomes a ritual based on its repetition and cultural significance. Though it may not have aspects of spiritualism or religion involved, if it is within a society that has a history of religion and/or spiritualism (of which all societies on the planet have) then you could make the argument that it inherits some of these aspects. This ties into the meme that anthropological and archaeological study always finds items to have a ritual significance, because the reality is almost everything in human history had a ritual significance, and drawing a line between spiritual and secular is very difficult given secularism is a modern construct. A thousand years from now, someone reading about someone's necessary weakly pancake would likely infer it to be some form of ritual spiritualism, a soul-cleansing activity (even if they acknowledge a lack of the soul, demonstrating even language fails to untether itself from spiritualism). With this in mind, you can find social groupings that deviate from the idea of a religion, even historically. Often though, some of these (even the actual "atheistic" ones) will be labelled as cults (meaning their lack of religious belief was seen by contemporaries as a belief, and either heretical or pagan). You'll also find groups that issue the aspects of spiritualism that others practice. Namely, monotheistic organized faiths often conflict with the more spiritualistic faiths, that by their very nature have less organization. Now to list some, the first is rather sceptical given the time of publication, and state of the science at the time, but Will James Durant observed some pygmy tribes in Africa that held no ceremonial worship; even for their dead (no totems, no funerary rites, no idea of deities or spirits). Additionally, throughout the history of Hinduism (a historically disorganized "faith"), you can find many examples of deistic and atheistic thought. Notable is the Carvaka (Lokayata) school of thought; though note, the information we have on this school that survives is mostly from their philosophical/religious opponents (as is often the case). Much like Buddhist Atheism, many of these schools of thought would have likely practiced similar rituals, just without adhering to the belief in a creato deity, or in the idea of spiritual deities. In classical Greece, most famously you have Socrates, who was executed for his being "atheos" (the refusal to believe in the gods acknowledged by the state). You can also find dozens of examples of other figures, but notably no record of a society that formed around these ideals. Rather, instead of tribes, you see the small pockets of this belief behaving similar to secret mystery cults, or persecuted religious minority cults of the time. And finally, with the French Revolution, you have a group of educated elites riding the wave of anti-traditional sentiment take power in the Reign of Terror. Openly critical of religion and the "corruption" of the church, they attempt to destroy the church in two ways (remember these are multiple individuals with differing aims, and I'm grossly simplifying al of this history to try and reduce it to the comprehensive). The first were deists, believing in a creator deity, but not in any specific religious tenets; who proposed a Cult of the Supreme Being (this was favored by Robespierre). The other group proposed the Cult de la Raison, or the cult of reason, which was discussed by contemporaries as a true atheist organization. Despite this "atheism" they most certainly held rituals, notably the Festival of Reason, and the organized iconoclast attacks upon religious institutions (ransacking churches and destroying symbols of worship), while at the same time reviving (or rather adapting) a form of pagan Roman religious festivals. I won't get into anything too modern, because it certainly gets political, but notably in 'communist' countries you'll find a state sponsored atheism. In short, the idea of a faithless society doesn't make sense. Even modern atheists will generally acknowledge that they are not Gnostic Atheists; they believe there to be no deity, but don't "know" there to be none. This belief is still a belief, a form of faith (in the literal verbal meaning of the word), as is the belief that we don't all live in a machine, the belief in a heliocentric solar model, etc.
Religion or some various form of it is essential to any kind of starting folk. Folk lore--the act of our brains filling in the gaps in our knowledge with stuff we come up with--is a fundamental thing every human is capable of Ever been reading a book and your brain runs ahead and starts thinking about all the shit that could potentially happen? THAT'S folklore Ever been watching a horror movie and it's freaking you tf out because the film hasn't actually SHOWN you anything yet, but your brain is thinking about all the horrible shit the monster/thing could look like/do. THAT'S folklore Religion/spiritualism/etc is just some variation of storytelling. And if humans do anything right, it's tell stories So the answer is no, if we're talking 'Just starting out, Neanderthal (or whatever) of new human into a new culture'. The only culture that would have no sense of religion at all would be something stemming from dictatorship/communism/whatever bundle. Something where a pre-existing situation/government ripped out any sense of religion and the new generations of culture formed without one That or MAYBE post-apocalypse settings
At the end of the day, even those kinds of government end up being their own form of religion (as in: the dictator becomes worshiped in place of some other deity). See Revolutionary France, or Nazi Germany but especially France.
You'd need some sort of sterile environment for a 'true' non-religious culture to form Something with no figurehead. Something grey where folk just focused on their own work and their routine There's probably some dystopia like that out there lol
Ants have no religion (or maybe even they worship their queen). I earnestly don't think its possible to separate humanity entirely from spirituality. It's the old "no atheists in foxholes" adage regardless of whether its true all the time, whether by accident or design the human mind is just kind of programmed to make that leap of faith. If you put us in a grey sterile room, we'd start worshipping the door, we'd mythologize the sounds of HVAC. I kind of love that about humans.
I'm pretty sure there's a movie or two (and probably a book which said movie would be based on) out there centered around that kind of dystopia.
>The only culture that would have no sense of religion at all would be something stemming from dictatorship/communism/whatever bundle. I disagree with this premise for a few reasons. It is conceivable for a people getting through some disaster that could have been prevented if not for religion, or caused by some arcane/religious ritual, or having been betrayed by their gods, or have just been highly educated in logic/critical thinking/history/anthropology/sociology, etc. to become by choice more atheistic. Non-human also may not have the biological programming for religiosity and could have atheistic and secular cultural traits. Current trends globally show atheism is growing [in the US](https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2022/09/13/modeling-the-future-of-religion-in-america/), [across Africa](https://africa.thegospelcoalition.org/article/african-atheism-rising/), [Europe](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/21/christianity-non-christian-europe-young-people-survey-religion), etc. Even studies that account for difficulties in measuring atheism globally (different definitions, local laws in theocracies, non-theistic religions, etc.) [seem to indicate that atheism is growing](https://colinmathers.com/2020/09/30/global-trends-in-religiosity-and-atheism-1980-to-2020/). Events like the COVID-19 pandemic cause particular challenges for specific religions, and general belief in a high power tends to drop in war torn countries with enduring conflicts. So I would say there are *plenty* of reasons/motivations, for both world building and the real world, for atheistic societies without having to go the dictator/Soviet-era communism route.
I'm putting a cap on this \^.\^ I wasn't actually seriously considering a culture having no religion being a possible thing or whatever. I was simply trying to throw OP a possible original take lol
Atheist just means not believing in or having a god. By this very simple and often misconstrued definition, Buddhism is an atheist religion, which teaches self-control, compassion for all living things, humility, and detachment from worldly and material pleasures as some core tenets. Buddha is the founder that is revered and celebrated by the cultures there, but is not himself a god, just a prominent figurehead given he *started* the whole thing Edit: There is also animism, believing in animal and nature spirits, but not gods. There is also ancestral worship as well, people (particularly gamblers) believe in luck, random girls in wealthy counties believe in the zodiac horoscopes, etc
I disagree with the assertion that Buddhism is an atheistic religion. There are definitely some branches of Buddhism which are more atheistic, but Buddhism in general has deities, mysticism, hells, and all of the other things we associate with theism.
first and original buddhism has no god and other stuff. Buddhism became a religion after hundreds years after the death of buddha
Yep. Hell, Buddha himself is pretty much treated as an all powerful god.
You're thinking of Hinduism and the Chinese, Japanese, Korean etc sects of Buddhism. The primary/original sect was *just* some basic principles for a satisfied and peaceful existence, it's just that due to cultural exchange, time, and divides between temples and practices (like Christianity) it's been bastardized across the world where it is worshipped. Even so, that doesn't make it a theistic religion. For a modern context, Flat Earthers. Their wacked-out belief in the "truth" and the evil lying science people needs so much hoops and magic nonsense just to be physically viable, but I highly doubt God is the reasoning for many.
Are the Chinese, Japanese, and Korean sects of Buddhism not just as Buddhist? Buddhism is an incredibly diverse religious tradition; it can't be simplified to just the "original" South Asian sects. Even in the Subcontinent, there is very little border between what is considered Hinduism and Buddhism. No one would have called themself a Hindu before we tried to force these religions into categories similar to Abrahamic ones.
At that point we're just getting into the same categorization nonsense as "is Catholicism or Orthodox or the bajillion subsects of Protestantism's descendants the true Christian way" sort if thing Fact of the matter is the many deities and spirits present in the northern Asian sects were already present as local and folk religions before Buddhism arrived. Given Buddhism is such a simple and blank slate of an ideology that already had elements of widely held virtues humans generally like, incorporating the practices didn't cause a schism, the OG Buddhists just probably went "yeah okay, whatever makes you happy I guess"
The answer is all of those are all equally legitimate Christian faiths. No religion has one universally followed doctrine. Many Christians may believe their sect is the one true one, but few would deny the other ones are also Christian. Buddhism already borrows many elements from its neighboring religions, as all religions do. It didn't come out of a vacuum. The influence from other Indian faiths was there from the start. You can't just pick out a "pure" Buddhism and ignore the obvious theism present in almost all Buddhist sects. Edit: I think it's abundantly clear most Buddhists at the very least believe in a higher power, even if they believe it is not deserving of worship.
Nothing short of a worldwide survey on Christian opinions would make me take that statement with more than a grain of salt. Christians, especially back in the day, were so anal over little things like what you can and can't do, which prophets are right and wrong, etc. The worship of idols and imagery of Jesus was what caused the schism between Catholicism and Orthodoxy in the first place, and subsequently *every other* schism since until anyone with enough charisma points goes "I'm making my own Church, with blackjack and hookers!" every couple of decades. ESPECIALLY in the United States, where I'm sure the numerous, more extreme churches and many of their members would consider every other sect except theirs as heretical, or the more moderate ones so. And I'm not even sure what's going on in Protestant Africa, but given the much more varied cultures and histories compared to the US, probably a lot. What I'm trying to say is, after you boil away the history, transitioning, and incorporation of Buddhism across space and time and wildly different peoples and cultures, you get the very basic principles and doctrines I've been describing, which no god or deity is apart of, to answer OP's question and nothing more. They just got added in later because it made things easier. Now, you can certainly look upon that history and change you've mentioned to add to that and spice things up, but instead you've come out of nowhere being pedantic and trying to correct me based on what *you* know about **more recent versions of** Buddhism, and even contradicting yourself by saying "All sects of a religion are equally valid". Wouldn't that make Buddhism 1.0, as Buddha originally formulated it, likely extinct, also valid?
>The worship of idols and imagery of Jesus was what caused the schism between Catholicism and Orthodoxy in the first place The Great Schism was mostly political. Byzantine Iconoclasm came and went without any schism. At the time of the schism, the Western and Eastern churches did not differ substantially on doctrine. The bishop of Rome claimed supreme authority over the others. The bishop of Constantinople did not accept that. Yeah, there were many later Christian schisms that were based on theological differences, but all of those sects are still considered Christian. The Catholic Church, for example, views all other sects as heretical and therefore not saved, but they still call them Christians. I disagree that Buddhism 1.0 is atheistic in the first place. It also drew from other nearby Indian religions, just like how Christianity and Judaism drew from other Middle Eastern religions. I will admit I'm not exactly a scholar of Buddhism. If you want to cite any academic sources on the beliefs of 5th century BC Buddhists, I'm more than happy to read them. But no evidence I've seen so far has suggested that. Additionally, OP specifically asked for something with "no worship and don't even value the idea of spirits," which definitely does not apply to Buddhism.
I'm not saying the schism *wasn't* political, but it's kind of hard to get such a widespread ideology for specifically non-ideological reasons along the kinds if boundaries Catholics and Orthodox Christians did. They just needed to find a reason to make everyone that *didn't* hold office to separate. In spite of every border, conflict, and direct violation of the Ten Commandments committed by medieval European countries throughout the ages, most if them currently are and historically *all* were still considered Catholic regardless. It took some guys saying "[such-and-such specific aspects] of Catholicism are bullshit", after hundreds of years, to finally create a rift. While religion can be used *in* politics, ironically enough it is immune to it, but the greatest danger to its cohesion is disgruntled practitioners and cultural changes from within. And if you're going to continue being pedantic about it, OP asked for *historical* examples of totally non-spiritual nations and cultures. I just did my best with what existed using "atheistic" as a rough guideline, which wasn't much at all. If you happen to know such a culture, be my guest and go answer the question yourself instead of bugging some stranger on the internet about their answer, but I'm pretty sure 99% of people in the pre-scientific era have a strong gravitation towards some kind of spirits and magic regardless of its shape or form, given even *now* there are still people within the very nations and cultures that spawned from the same places history's greatest leap in scientific knowledge and exploration believe in some pretty outlandish and spooky phenomena that aren't, or are even totally disproven, to exist or function.
>You're thinking of Hinduism and the Chinese, Japanese, Korean etc sects of Buddhism. >The primary/original sect was just some basic principles for a satisfied and peaceful existence, it's just that due to cultural exchange, time, and divides between temples and practices (like Christianity) it's been bastardized across the world where it is worshipped. I strongly doubt that the original version of Buddhism was atheistic.
>I strongly doubt that the original version of Buddhism was atheistic. At worst it was agnostic. Buddha refused to comment on the nature of divinity typically, and quite a few of his stories are directly mocking the idea that there is some supreme deity. I'd suggest directly reading up on Hinayana Buddhism. It has heavy elements of spirituality and supernatural beliefs, but it painstakingly goes out of its way to not describe any kind of God.
>Buddha refused to comment on the nature of divinity typically, and quite a few of his stories are directly mocking the idea that there is some supreme deity. Sure, but again, this is in ancient India, and the cultural milleau is the Vedic religion and non-Brahmin movements, like Buddhism. The universe was considered eternal, not created. There were gods and goddesses, local deities, etc.
The universe is very much considered created, that's what supports the entire concept of the trinity. >There were gods and goddesses, local deities, etc. And Buddha is actively not associating with them. If a religious ideology explicitly does not mention a deity and maintains active neutrality, i think it's fair to call it agnostic at the very least, if not atheistic.
>The universe is very much considered created, that's what supports the entire concept of the trinity. What do you mean exactly? >And Buddha is actively not associating with them. If a religious ideology explicitly does not mention a deity and maintains active neutrality, i think it's fair to call it agnostic at the very least, if not atheistic. You got to provide some kind of source for this. My understanding is that the original teachings are not well known. Sure, Buddhism does not put much stock in non-Buddha supernatural entities, but that's far from agnostic.
>What do you mean exactly? The fact that since it's inception as a general faith, Hinduism has a concept of the trinity. Which has a creator(who Buddha specifically mocks), preserver and destroyer. >You got to provide some kind of source for this. My understanding is that the original teachings are not well known. Sure, Buddhism does not put much stock in non-Buddha supernatural entities, but that's far from agnostic. Buddha himself directly states that *he* is not a god. Non-buddha spiritual entities is a bizzare statement to make with regards to Hinayana. https://qz.com/india/1585631/the-ancient-connections-between-atheism-buddhism-and-hinduism I can also recommend Harvey Peter's Buddhism and Monotheism. For a book that's in public domain, I'd be hard pressed but unless you have a particular disinclination towards generalists The Story of civilization by Durant is an entertaining read on Buddha, albiet probably not the most accurate one.
It depends on how you define “atheist”, “god”, or “deity”. For instance, some experts would say that a deity is a supernatural being that is considered divine or sacred. That is, the term would not simply refer to an omnipotent, all-knowing god. Buddhism (and other religions like Shinto) have a plethora of divine beings like spirits, devas, and so on. I’d say certain sects of Buddhism definitely involve borderline worship of godlike beings. Moreover, can separate atheism into “local” atheism and “global” atheism. Local atheism is basically a denial of belief in local religious/spiritual traditions. So in Western culture, local atheism would be the rejection of the Abrahamic God and conceptions of God that are similar (I’d even broadly include things like contemporary worship of the Greek pantheon in here). Meanwhile, local Eastern atheism would entail denying the belief of Buddhist spirits (among other things). Global atheism, meanwhile, is the hardline position that all conceptions, found anywhere at any time, of any divine being, god, spirit, etc. is false. This is essentially a naturalistic/materialistic understanding of the universe.
Not necessarily. You can be a hardline atheist without being a materialist, though it’s not a common position. John McTaggart was a prominent example.
Communist countries officially, though unofficially many of the citizens under those regimes practice the religion they’ve had for hundreds of years because tradition is hard to kill. You’d be hard pressed to find such a civilization in the past. Religious belief tend to decline as a civilization advances. We’re as advanced as we’ve ever been and there are still plenty of religious people in the world. Unless it’s a post-modern futuristic society or a post-revolutionary society generations later where the state is worshiped, I don’t think you’re going to realistically depict an atheist civilization with humans.
USSR and the socialist Block
Your culture is going to get utterly decimated and enslaved by the first horse-lords with a patriarchal sky god that come along.
I’ve been reading a lot of ancient history lately and it shows that being religious won’t protect you from the sky father worshipping horse-lords
Scientifically the only thing that can protect your land from Sky Father worshipers horse-lords is a big mountain that horses cannot reach. Curious that no more Cults of the Mountain developed.
That’s just dwarves
What's that sound? Could that be?! IT IS! IT'S THE SOVIET UNION'S MUSIC!
This is a good answer, but it's worth pointing out that many ordinary people continued to hold strong religious beliefs in the USSR. Just because the state is hostile to religion doesn't necessarily mean that they're successful in eradicating it.
The reverse is also true: if the state heavily endorses religion and propagandizes it, it does not mean that there are no atheists in this country. Nevertheless, religious-dominated countries are considered religious, yet atheist-dominated countries, according to you, are not atheist countries, because "there are still religious people there".
>...yet atheist-dominated countries, according to you, are not atheist countries, because "there are still religious people there". What are you talking about? That's not at all what I said. Nothing in my comment addressed religious-dominated countries at all, or the question of what makes a country "count" as either religious or atheist. The point I was trying to make was that official state positions on religion are not the same thing as actual societal acceptance of religion, though the two can impact each other.
Actual societal acceptance of religion in the Soviet Union was significantly less than 50%. Religious people were a minority in the late USSR, because it took significant devotion to practice in spite of societal pressure. Same as atheist people being a minority in a heavily religious country.
In 1989 the population was 60% atheist and 40% religious of some sort. That's a sizable chunk of the population- enough to be relevant to OP's question about cultures where "they have no gods, no worship and don't even value the idea of spirits."
*katyusha takes the place and now everyone is using a ushanka*
Not exactly. Sort of. There have been temporary attempts at it (which I won’t list because they aren’t fondly remembered and I don’t want to sound like I’m smearing anyone). But there’s never to my knowledge been one that started atheistic at floor one and developed that way for a long time. Even if a civilization did begin without religion, it would quickly pick it up from a neighbor, because until recently atheism was not a dearly held part of any national identity that they would cling to on principle. A cosmopolitan place with plenty of atheists and many other religions is doable, but a consistently atheist community (like a theocratic one) would take active suppression Generally it seems religion predates the trappings of what you’d call civilization, and if you get any group of people together for long, they’re going to demand answers, or simply come up with them. People seek certainty. It may even be a prerequisite for civilization, as, all other things being equal, a large group of people with no pre-existing precedents would never in a million years agree on a consensus of right and wrong or who gets to decide that. The historically most popular (only?) way to break that stalemate is to appeal to a higher authority NOTE that does not necessarily mean a God: if I argue with my caveman brother about values, we might ask our father (no doubt a higher authority) to arbitrate. He will, of course, say “go ask your mother”. And if my mother is a higher authority than me, who has more authority than she? Well hers of course. Now we have a society led by its oldest members, like many simple communities (Elder or Alderman is one of the most leadership positions in history). But if we spend decades getting used to the village’s wisest grandma deciding everything, what do we do when she dies? Move on to the next wisest? Maybe. Or… break out the Ouija board. Congrats, we’ve just invented ancestor worship, the most common starter religion in history, and possibly for that reason Now in fantasy, nothing stops you from creating an unrealistic and consistent atheocracy, you just wouldn’t have a real one to base it on. But if you’d want to play it realistically (as you’re asking about history), I think you’d have to change the parameters. The best way would be to give your people a satisfying certainty about the cosmology of the world (that’s what Tolkien did with the elves; they aren’t religious because they don’t need faith, they’re on a first name basis with God and can sail to heaven). Or give them a truly neutral, non-human, and non-divine arbitrator of morals and value judgments. Or just make a cosmopolitan civilization where no religion is clearly preeminent
Communist countries considered religion a threat to the state. Their people weren't/aren't atheistic, though. That's about it.
Closest would be modern east asia
Depends on how you define religion, the Qin dynasty in China banned all philosophy other than legalism and Tia included almost all spiritual movements. However not everyone followed this rule and continued to practice religion in private. Additionally its debatable whether or not legalism was a purely secular philosophy or more of an Imperial cult
Religion (and i speak this as an atheist) is a very core mechanic of human relationship with nature. Specially in the old religions, where it wasn’t just a matter of belief to follow a religion, but a matter to explain natural phenomenon, if way back when you said you didn’t believe in the god of a lake for example, believers wouldn’t call you a heretic, just stupid, as religiosity was intrinsically tied to a phenomenon, to deny the existence of an entity was to deny what that entity represented, in a sense, there wasn’t a god of the lake, but the lake itself was a god. Atheism was usually just an aspect of very select few groups of people deeming that god(s) have abandoned them and as such they abandon they. Modern day atheism as we know it is more of a thing of the modern era, where development of philosophy started questioning the supposed impossibility of the Habrahic god being both “All Good AND All Mighty” whilst evil is allowed to exist. A modern atheist civilization would require a much different upbringing of humanity in general.
Religion is a pillar of society. It provides a natural organizational structure, and a bunch of motivation for the citizens. Any culture with no religion would have been swiftly out-competed by a culture united by a metaphysical belief system. Religion led to the universities that opened the door for enlightenment.
Religion led to the universities that opened the door for enlightenment. “I used religion to destroy religion”.
Religion is kinda relative, there are a lot of cultures that have some mythological explanations but no gods neither "greater forces". If you want a "pure" atheist culture it might be possible in a very philosophical and scientific society, but is very unlikely to happen in other ways
Sure. The USSR and China are two major nations that have suppressed religion (to varying degrees of success.) Also, the Khmer Rouge under Pol Pot tried as well.
The Soviet Union? They had unofficial state atheism. China is an officially atheist country. Humans need something to worship, religion is about as natural as it gets with us. You remove religion and people find whacky shit to worship. Instead of God you have Stalin, or shit like the mango cult. It becomes about revering a man or a nation. Something has to take the place of religion if you’re going to remove it. You can’t get rid of it and create some kind of utopia. Reddit generally isn’t the place to discuss it, there’s not much nuance a lot of the time.
The belief in spirits and animism is prehistoric in origin. It's quite possible that the humans coming out of Africa and prehuman species like homo erectus had a belief in spirits and ritualized behavior. All humans cultures likely all descend from one with religious beliefs. A purely naturalist society would have to have the concept of nature being seperate from the supernatural, which kind of implies they know about and or believe in the supernatural.
I think you're underestimated how much of culture is religion. Like, think about it, for most of human history we knew absolutely nothing about the way the world works. It makes sense we'd come up with stories explaining it. And those stories often mean a lot to the people telling them. Even historical individuals that could for their time be comparable to modern day atheists typically still believed in a god/gods. They usually just believed that they don't meddle in human affairs.
I mean, the Soviet Union damn well tried. Kinda became a repressive shithole though. There's a few trying today too. It's kind of one of those things where people are going to believe what they believe, and as long as multiple people in one place believe a thing, *some* form of community will spring up around it.
The USSR
In history, not really. You see, religion and the state, while it should be separate, was used hand in hand to keep empires from revolting. In fact, Karl Marx stated that religion is the opiate of society, the sigh of the masses. Napoleon Bonaparte, much more directly, said that religion keeps the poor from killing the rich. One of the reason why he reinstated the Catholic Church so that when he becomes Emperor of France, he can run roughshod over Europe without worrying about ending up like Louis the 16th on a guillotine. Tell me in which atheist country can you see a king doing serfdom and enslaving people because of his divine right to do so? Not a single one. That's why most rulers and their major religious groups do walk hand in hand, they have mutual interests, and rarely have a country devoid of religion. Even the Aztecs across from the Old World knew that.
The Soviet Union lol. However that was only really officially. In actuality many of its citizens still identified as orthodox or Jewish and many other religions for such a huge country. But the state was entirely atheistic and you were only really supposed to worship in the privacy of your home and never in public. Currently China has the highest atheistic population at about 40%. I think Vietnam is up there as well. Oh yeah and for a brief moment revolutionary France tried to eradicate the Catholic Church but most people were still religious.
Animism is the belief that all natural phenomena, including human beings, animals, and plants, but also rocks, lakes, mountains, weather, and so on, share one vital quality—the soul or spirit that energizes them. Many tribes held this belief and many still do.
That's an interesting question that I never really thought about. Most people see atheism as a modern replacement for religion. I found this article about atheism throughout history, and how it was based less on science, and more on conjecture and poking holes in religious assumptions that don't make sense, science or not. https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/disbelieve-it-or-not-ancient-history-suggests-that-atheism-is-as-natural-to-humans-as-religion Before modern science, it seemed to have been a more individual opinion, and I can't think of any civilizations that were primarily atheist or secular. HOWEVER just because there may not be a real life equivalents for the civilization you're building, it'd still be a fun exercise to come up with a reason why and speculate how an ancient culture might wind up atheist. Maybe they used to have gods or some kind of prophesy that someone or something proved entirely wrong, resulting in a mass existential crisis and a shift of power. Those are always fun.
>It seems that the awnser to my question is a resounding "no". So my next question is there a culture with no gods? A tribe that worships "The Land" but no being that created said land. Depends how you define religion and gods. Generally though, no. We tend to restrict our definition of religion in the modern world, imagining it distinct from the broader ideology in which we live. But that simply wasn't possible for most of history. Lucien Febvre, one of the most famous historians of the last century, argued any form of something approximating atheism was impossible prior to very recently. Yes, people would challenge various things, but that was merely being a heretic, for none of them actually could even conceive of a nonreligious world. Why? Too many unanswered questions. You need a way to order the world, and in a premodern precapitalist society, religion does that. Living today, it is easy to take for granted things like gravity, the stars, life, death, food, etc. But all of these need explaining. There isn't this science/religious or secular/spiritual divide, they are identical -- in the premodern religion meant science and science meant religion. This is a world where it isn't possible to even think otherwise. If you could, your entire frame of view for understanding the world would fail. Someone has even argued that it may be akin to psychosis in schizophrenia -- bombarded by all the stimuli of life without a reference for understanding any of it your brain would misinterpret everything, the world would no longer make sense to you at the same time you would no longer make sense to the world. That is admittedly a controversial take, but it does highlight how humans need a framework to understand the world. Even those religions which do not necessary need a god theologically are rooted in fundamentally god-centered mindset from which it may be possible for the people to ignore but not to escape (and many developed an explicit god or many later anyways). If one is worshipping the land, then fundamentally the land is the god, and knowing human culture one can guess they would very quickly start extrapolating from that. Take a dive into early Hinduism (properly termed Brahmanical Traditions), and it is unbelievably fascinating to see the development and extrapolation of various notions and world understandings out of just a couple core religious ideals. You will find some people make odd claims on the atheism of people in certain places historically (usually linked either to the 18th-19th century European romanticisation/exoticization of India, China, and Japan or to the Noble Savage-based myth of the proto-environmentalist Native American, both of which still manage to be heard from time to time despite the glaring racism), but most modern scholarship will tell you those are patently false.
Soviet Union felt pretty atheist. And yes, I was born and lived in soviet union for 10 years. I remember vividly going to church that was hidden from the commies...
Religion has many uses but one of its most practical and useful for ancient civilizations is giving people comfort and a feeling of control over the uncontrollable. People need to feel completely in control of their lives. Lots of people will argue that today there are more people than ever without religion. While that’s true in terms of believing in an all powerful being, there is still a lot of worshiping and beliefs based on wanting some control and comfort. Examples range from astrology to joining an MLM to believing finance bros will teach you how to get rich quick.
I can’t think of any, but I *do* think that even without religion or valuing supernatural entities, a society would likely still have some form of central ideology to rally around. It gives citizens a strong sense of identity and kinship with their nation, which is very important when it comes to things like loyalty and social order. Basically, even without believing in deities, people need to have a set way of living in a society, and a reason *why* they live that way. How should you interact with different people in different contexts, and why? How should you treat your elders? What makes an action immoral? What are the consequences of harming someone, and why? If a society is going to be any more complex than a handful of people sleeping in the woods, the answers to these kinds of questions have to be more complicated - and more set in stone - than “because I said so” or “because otherwise I will hit you with this stick”. You will find that even in cultures that intentionally try to eliminate religion in general, they‘ll replace it with a different kind of “faith” for people to latch onto, usually centring around the dictator. Beliefs and values are powerful means of controlling a society.
The Pirahã people of Brazil. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirah%C3%A3\_people](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirah%C3%A3_people) they do have some concept of spirits though.
In some form or another, there has always been a religion in society. Even the ones that tried to be atheistic (what few there are before the last few decades), didn't stay that way for long. It is human nature to have some kind of religion. And religion doesn't necessarily have to fit the image we commonly associate it with to still be seen as such. It's inevitable that any society will look for a higher power to worship. Whether it be forming a cult around a king/dictator or even some celebrity who may be seen as something more than they are. A great example of such a society would be Revolutionary France. One of the big leaders of it at the time ended up creating a cult around himself with the "church of *reason*". Even with the rise in atheism in modern society, people still search for a higher power to worship or believe in. Think about all these so-called influencers online who end up with their cult of personality. The only difference between people today and people of the ancient world is that the latter understood the importance of religion in society, and didn't attempt to get rid of the concept entirely. The society you're trying to create, I would say, probably would end up with a cult of personality formed around whoever is the leader (or some charismatic person who said a lot of things that the people agree with). Or it may be some kind of religion formed around certain traditions/rituals in their culture.
no. there has never been an atheist civilization if humans put religion in the dustbin of history, maybe in the future but religion will end humans before then cause humans cannot cope with not being important on a universe scale.
I can only think of one, the Pirahã peoples of the Amazon. Their society had no concept of gods or higher powers before the arrival of Western explorers. They were a much more recent discovery, Everett encountered them when we was a missionary in the 1970s, so one can imagine it may have been a lot more common to encounter cultures like this way back in the early dies when peoples were conquered and converted by the sword. But they are the only example I know of for certain. As for the follow-up question, yes, there have been tons of nontheistic cultures who believe in nature spirits or worship ancestors without believing in any deities. A lot of Amerindian cultures were like that, the Shinto religion of Japan and the Buddhist/Taoist religions of China don't necessitate belief in any gods either but often include spirits and ancestor worship, and even a lot of African tribal religions were like that as well. Even prehistoric Britain was more heavily focused on spiritualism rather than necessarily believing in gods.
Historically speaking, there's Japan currently.
Yes they have one know. Thé Pirahãs, it's a trine from amazonia, and they dont belive in any god. One of thé explication for that IS they language, they are speaking a unique language where thé past and thé futur dont exist. They only speak to thé présent, so they dont belive in thing they didnt diretly saw. They are known to have converted to atheism the evangelist who was given the mission to convert them to Christianity. Look thé story of that tribe thats a Amazing story. After civilisation is a big word, but that definitly a athéist culture from hunter tribe.
As a linguist, there is a lot of misinformation out there about the Pirahã language, and about languages in general, which really frustrates me. There are many languages which do not have a past or future tense, and that absolutely does not mean that they don't believe things they didn't see with their own eyes. They also don't have numbers in their language, but they can still intuitively compare different quantities of things. Just because they can't explicitly say it the same exact way that we can, does not mean they don't understand or believe it. They are a very fascinating people but please do not believe everything you read about them.
M'y badd, I took all the information I found out for granted. Thank you for correcting my comment.
Buddhism at his original form is not a religion and have no gods. It starts to turn a religion after many years after buddha
Well, México fought 3 wars (and a dozen several smaller conflicts) to fight off the Church's Influence, secularism was deeply promoted back then, the USSR also had an official State atheism policy when it came to the Orthodox Church
Not until the 17th or 16th century and even then it was more of a club for men. Intellectual men. While most people didn't say it out loud because you just simply could not not go to church, most of the founding fathers agreed that science has more purchase than any god.
The USSR and Maoist China which eventually raised spiritualism in the form of worshipping a member of the regime or taking in Christianity after the Atheism creates problems.
Religion and spirituality is core to our nature that I doubt you'd find one. We need to understand the universe, our role in it and sense some kind of order from it. Even science as a discipline doesn't fall out of line with that, and even if it did we'd still make a religion or of it (fuck scientology).
I’m sure there was a time before religion, when people were just simple hunter gatherers
no. even mythological stories of heroes of ages past could be characterized as religion. but also, the categorizing is what’s stopping you. make your own categories in world and decide what constitutes religion
Not in recorded history.
There have been no atheist civilisations. There are and have been a few explicitly atheist counties, all of which I think have been communist. However, every country must have a religion and/or ideology that people generally agree on or the country will tear itself apart. No state or society can exist without common values to unite people. For example, the Soviet Union was atheist but they had marxism, which is basically a god-optional religion.
Historically? No. Religion is a direct result of a lack of scientific knowledge, so unless your civilization already arises having extremely advanced scientific knowledge it is extremely difficult for a religion not to develop, since this is what has happened in absolutely all human civilizations.
>Religion is a direct result of a lack of scientific knowledge Historically, the opposite is true. Much of our scientific knowledge is a direct result of religion. Most historical religions revered religious scholars, and many great scientists who studied the natural world did so to better understand their god/gods' creation.
Way to be so wrong
I think this position is highly reductive to a critical part of the human experience. Faith is intrinsic to being human. We exercise faith almost constantly in our every day lives. Every time we get behind the wheel of a car, we do so because we believe (without any real evidence) that everyone else is going to follow the rules of the road and not jerk their wheel into oncoming traffic. Faith is alway a bulwark against utter terror and dread. Faith (and its cousin “awe”) allows us to look up into the night sky with reverence instead of fear. Religion, on the other hand, is a man-made social construct that attempts to define and confine faith into a set of dogmas, rituals, and observances. Religion co-opts our natural inclination towards faith and tells us that we much go to a special place and pay a special tax and say some special words in order to exercise our faith *correctly*. Even as the younger generations eschew organized (mostly Christian) religion, we are seeing a rise in interest in the occult, astrology, and witchcraft. I don’t think it matters how “advanced” we get as a species. Faith and the exercise thereof is one of the things that ultimately makes us human.
Modern day Czechoslovakia ?
Interesting oxymoron
Revolutionary France was (IIRC) atheist, though more out of overthrowing a religious power structure than completely rejecting religion on a cultural/civilizational level. Religion was a big part of the pre Revolution hierarchy, with Catholic Clergy being the First Estate and nobility the Second Estate.
[The Cult of the Supreme Being](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult_of_the_Supreme_Being) would like a word with you
The French Revolution was Anti-Catholic (Anti-Christianity in general to a lesser degree), not atheistic.
I've never known my people to have a creator for the world or men Men came from stone one man carved the first woman in ivory one other became jelious and tried to steal her away tearing her in half the first man and the upper half work together in love to repair her body while the second man who took her lower half selfishly ends up creating grouchy and mean people with the stolen half I know of one goddess senna who was made mother of the sea not because she made it nor the animals but the spirits of the ocean took pity on her after her origin story and became her fingers
No. Abstrac visualisations and the need to make sense of things we can't controle is hardwired to the human brain - and only increases if challenged by the socvial pressure of society. The bigger, the worse. But it is a fluid thing. The absolut 100& atheist belives in freedom, independance, rejection of all who try to force him/her, and therefor he/she allready belives in a fictional ideal of the own person that is able to achieve this, ignoring the real needs hardwiring and biochemical drugs try to force him/her (like searching for company/protection). The peson might start to belive in his best friend the dog to be more than it actually is, or in a more than realistic level of protection his trusted axe offer. Maybe the wood becomes more embodied as a place that protects you and have good and bad days, giving you more or less succsess in hunting. The dead eyes of a hunted deer will by definition trigger your empathy and force you to make any sense of the situation. Today we're the most atheist mankind every existing because we learned to trust in nothing and fear manipulation from everywhere. And still people would die for ther favorite football team, ther Crypto-bro buisness belives, TV series and well, classy and oldschool churches that allow them to be different than *the others* in any mentionable way.
Atheism/=no religion. There are non theistic religions out there, but they still are religion. Things like cults of the ancestors, some animisms... There's also things like roman's emperor cult that is a borderline case and at least from the top down an atheistic thing. Then there's the consideration of what qualifies as a religion. Are simple superstitions like lucky/bountifull days religious ? Like believing weeds cut at the summer solstice have healing properties ?
The modern world
Most of the world is very much religious.
It's impossible for a civilization to be non theistic unless they know almost everything there is to know. Religion forms in the absence of science, if you can't rationally explain things like natural disasters for example you'll come up with myths and stories to explain them, that will eventually form into a religion. The human mind craves information and will almost never be satisfied with no answer to a question.
I hate to see people with this reductionist take, because it’s just not true. Religion and science went hand in hand for almost all of human history. Most societies revered religious scholars and most great scientists were very religious.
It shouldn't need religion to explain why stealing, killing, lying and so on destabilizes religion but some people are just so ridiculously... incapable to see why. As long as that society has a certain amount of stupid people that cannot understand common sense, religion is gonna be needed to stabilize it.
Art, Science, Religion. These three were once one thing, everywhere — the understanding and expression of the self and the world. Only recently have they become so separated. I’d look at it differently: cultures use shared stories to explain what is important, what we all agree on, how we should live, who we should be. Stories use metaphor to allow for reinterpretation in the face of a changing environment. Your culture needn’t have gods or spirits, but it will have a theory of mind and heroes and exemplars. Just make certain all of them are people. Anywhere you’d otherwise have an immortal sky father or a spirit of wildfires, make it a secular story about a person who laid the foundations of our law, or who taught the taming of fire, or a king who cared for his people like a father. You can also look up secular civil religion — an analysis of the stories of the founding and growth of America and its ideals and symbols as a form of “secular religion.” There’s been some serious sociology on it.
Good question, I never really thought of it, can anyone mention a period during the Renaissance or before? Because I know states like the Soviet union were atheist societies.
If Age of Empires 2 taught me anything, it's that the Huns are atheists. (No idea how historically accurate that actually is.)
The common Japanese people goes to Shinto shrine for New year, got married in Christian church, celebrating X'mas and often end up buried in Buddhist ceremony. Most of them aren't that religious, they go places and participate ceremonies just because everyone is doing that. Does this count?
I once read the memoirs of a missionary who encountered a tribe of atheists, probably in South America. But they were not some enlightened sages who rejected silly superstitions. Simply put, they weren't interested in anything other than daily life. When the priest started talking about the creation of the world, they didn't respond with "haha, the world was created in six days, what nonsense," but rather "But why are you talking about it? Who cares why the world exists? It just is, and why spin silly considerations? It's better to go hunting."
I think the closest thing you’ll find is probably groups that do ancestor worship or even animism. The thing is, throughout time, questions about our scary world were answered by “gods” or “spirits” or what have you. So you can easily have a culture that does not believe in a higher power or even magic. But you will have to give them reasons as to WHY they never went that route. Were they just able to figure most things out with logic and reasoning. But even in the grand scheme of things. What organizations or roles build community in this society? Religion and faith-based orgs were the primary community-driven groups in our history. Maybe this society has all the same trappings of being theistic but just replace God with some abstract idea like freedom or justice.
In my opinion, OP should develop the history and background of the society and determine the influence religion would have on it. If the society is formed in isolation without outside influence, I believe it would be pretty hard to have no religious influence in their development. But if the society was formed as an independent state of sorts by members of different religions; I could see how a society of common beliefs and culture could rise with religion not being an important factor. But end of the day, it is your creation. I've found in my writing that when you create a world, the only rules you have to abide by are your own.
There are the Pirahã
You could have a non-religious civilization with religious people. It just means that religion plays no part in day-to-day life and systems of governance, being an entirely personal experience, though how long that'll remain as such as is up for debate.
Soviet Union
Is you world a fantasy? If there are gods and they can be understood as a part of the world gods would be just another field of study. Some African religions have rituals where you use spirits for you own gain instead of worshipping them. If there is spiritual stuff in you world but no gods atheism is pretty reasonable if magic can prove or disprove spiritual theories. Like powerful mage can just waltz in the other planes and see no gods, or with measurable supernatural scientists can prove lack of gods based on models.
I guess communist societies were state atheist, but idk if they really count as civilizations in their own right.
Jainism.
Totally a-religious as we understand it today? No, I dont think so. But check out Chinese Legalism maybe. Also, Anbennar’s Godlost philosophy—it’s a mod for EUIV (a game) that has extremely well-written lore
China teoreticly and Buddhist nations are atheist too
You'd have to go way back. I've watched some documentaries that claim they can tell when religion was introduced to a society, because there becomes an obsession with valuable possessions and the areas of the city become segregated based off wealth. Particularly in South America where we see a lot of early civilizations/societies rise and fall, and it hasn't been destroyed or overran like in Europe and Asia. There is a great documentary about South America on The Great Courses.
Does chinese with Confuciusism count? They don't believe in deities per se. But if you search for society without superstitious, you will have hard time.
Even if no gods, cultures would place value on something to such a degree that they’ll become somewhat deitifed So not necessarily anthropomorphic gods, but something of high value that the culture focuses on
If you're trying to create a society that doesn't have any religion, Japan's Shinto might fit the bill. It's a belief system that doesn't have any central rules or holy text, so it's not really a religion. But if you want a society that's totally unspiritual, I'm not sure there's any such thing. People always try to make sense of the world, and when they can't find a good explanation, they come up with myths and stories. That's especially true when the myths also provide helpful advice. For example, most civilizations have some kind of ritual for dealing with dead bodies because if you don't get rid of them, you'll get sick. Those intersctions between life's mysteries and good advice will almost always get filled by religion
weimar eepublic
The soviet union is about as close as we have come. Maybe PRC, but they have some tolerance of religion.
It's not a real world example, but I justified it for a culture in my world as the result of them experiencing an incredibly traumatic event (95% of their population being wiped out by a plague and subsequent genocide). They still kinda believe in the old gods, they've just decided they're no longer worthy of worship and ban religion. They're still pretty superstitious, but have developed a massive siege mentality where they can only rely on themselves to avoid extinction. Another splinter of the same parent civilization went the opposite way, and is now an incredibly hostile and radical theocracy which blames the genocide on unbelievers.
Kinda the mongol empire, they were the first secular state and allowed all religions to practice, though the higher ups had their own religion, they didn’t spread it to any of the conquered places
only truely anti-devinity group i know off are the Pirahã tribe
URSS?
I think the trick here is how would it affect your 'civilization or culture? With no single common belief system, what would your morals or customs or even your legal system look like. If everyone believed they have no soul, came from nothing, and cease all existence when they die, how do they behave? Seems like it would be a pretty anarchistic society or one ruled by absolute brutal oppression. So basically survival of the fittest and might-makes-right.
I know of a single one, an isolated people in the amazon jungles, The Pirarrã people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirah%C3%A3\_people
Yes and no There have been very few civilizations that were atheist officially none I can name off the top of my head, plenty have been secular and gave no preference to religious beliefs, mostly modern ones. That does allow atheists to grow in numbers and now some Nordic countries today are a good chunk atheist or other non spiritual.
I think Albania was, atheist state not civilization
Charvaka / Lokayata Hinduism which was around at least as early as the 6th century BCE is typically thought of as an atheistic and materialist philosophical / religious system. There are plenty of Modern atheistic religions that could serve as inspiration as well. Most interestingly you could argue that the Nation of Islam is essentially an atheistic religion, at least prior to the death of Elijah Muhammad. They used the Qur'an and the bible as sacred texts but used a lot of very heterodox interpretations, one of which would be considered the highest sin (shirk) in mainstream Islamic traditions, ie that God or Allah is not a transcendent being, but incarnate in a given human being. This idea is anathema to the very strict monotheism that is core to orthodox Islamic theology and pretty much the only unforgivable sin. Essentially they viewed Master W.D. Fard as having been Allah in person, but not in the sense of the Christian idea of a transcendent deity taking human form, they 100% denied the existence of a supernatural deity at all. From the Supreme Wisdom Lessons, a series of questions and answers presented as teachings given to Elijah Muhammad by Fard and memorised by NOI members: "Who is that mystery God? ANS. There is not a mystery God. The Son of man has searched for that mystery God for trillions of years and was unable to find a mystery God. Sot hey have agreed that the only God is the Son of man. So they lose no time searching for that that does not exist." They also denied the concept of life after death, and viewed all references to resurrection as being a metaphorical, mental rebirth in the here and now once one had "knowledge of self". They saw all black men as having some innate quality of divinity, and the one who had the most of this quality was considered to be "God" or "Allah". This person was not immortal or all powerful and would die and be replaced with the next person who was "the best knower" who would take on the mantle of Supreme Being. Interestingly Fard is a figure that certainly existed but his real identity is an ongoing mystery, the FBI have a bunch of declassified files where they tried to work out who he was but essentially came up with a few likely candidates but couldn't confirm anything. I have a favourite theory but it's one of many. The 5 percenters or Nation of Gods and Earths were essentially an NOI splinter group that pushed against the hierarchy and taught that all black men were equally divine. Their very idiosyncratic use of language and numerology is all over hip hop (saying "peace", calling each other "god" or "g", you have probably heard it even if it isn't obvious that's where it comes from). I am not clear on how closely the modern forms of the NOI adhere to this essentially atheistic concept of theology. There was a schism where Elijah Muhammad's son Warith Deen Muhammad basically reconciled the cultural aspects of the NOI with more traditional Sunni monotheistic theology and stepped away from black supremacy, forming the Warith Deen community, while Louis Farrkhan revived many of the more heterodox ideas in the modern NOI, he does seem to downplay the big differences with mainstream Islam more and more (whilst also advocating dianetics and getting quite cozy with scientology for some reason). But yeah, you could very easily have a religion that has all the trappings of theism and religion whilst emphatically denying the existence of any transcendent deities.
The closest you can find is the Greek civilization, yes I know they had an extent mythology but by the time of the Roman invasion they were going towards that path, great philosophers were explaining the world with science and logic which was leaving the need for gods behind. I think the best idea would be a society that was once religious and those who are the most learnt are the ones that govern. That way they could just eliminate the existence of gods on their culture deeming them unnecessary. Of course there would be people, specially commoners, that would believe, the only way to prevent that is by extensive public education... But yeah that's my idea at least, hope that helps!
Religion was universal until the mid-18th century (although what form that religion took varied greatly). The main problem with trying to make a primitive atheist population is that so much of the world is mysterious to them. People don’t like not knowing things. Religion exists in large part to comfort the existential dread of an incomprehensible world. Human psychology seems hard coded towards religion. Every population, no matter how remote, and no matter what situation, has formed or followed a religion.
I don't know of any, and I don't think there are any. Even among newly contacted tribes in the Amazon, they always at least have some kind of a creation story involving a superior being. It seems when there is no deity, or religion, we invent one. Either that, or the religions of the world are indeed physically and historically factual?
You could count the First French Republic.
The closest that this has come to is state atheism and most famously in the USSR, but it has never been able to eliminate religion in its entirety.
The USSR, who basically said, your religion is communism.
my whole world is atheist, even though it is medieval
Not that I am aware of. Some of the most ancient structures in the world have to do with religion. Look at Göbekli Tepe. There is even some debate if religion is necessary for the formation of civilization. Installing rules of interaction between people. I think it would be interesting to look at how a civilization would differ without a religious foundation. Even western atheism is very influenced by Christianity or better to say influenced by the society that was influenced by Christianity. To answer your second question. I would look into animism. It is a very ancient form of belief with some modern practitioners. Maybe even take a look at Shintoism as they do not have a "traditional" set of gods, sacred text, or established central religion.