Godless tribes, do they exist?

Hagar

Every now and again we hear of a new tribe being discovered in Borneo, the Amazon or some other isolated spot. Have any of these tribes been godless? If not, is godlessness an unnatural state for mankind? Is it perhaps that deep down we have a knowledge that there is a god but we don't know him so we fill in the blanks with various religions? Is it possible that god exists in spite of all the claptrap that the various religions spew forth? Are Atheists and Agnostics turning their backs on god because of issues with religion and not because of a real certainty that god is just a myth?

DanCorb

And how many of these tribes understand earthquakes? I'm guessing they use god to explain those. Throughout history humans have used a god to explain the things they cannot understand.

Atheists are "turning their backs on god" because there's not a shred of evidence.

Dades

I've never heard of a godless tribe/civilization outside the pages of a science fiction novel. But is man's predilection towards believing in deities evidence of the existence of an actual deity? I would say no.

There are far too many historical advantages to belief (from those who practice it to those who peddle it) to jump to that conclusion.

seamus

Explaing the unexplained isn't limited only to deities. It's the very problem of understanding that has given us the wider mythos - fairies, ghosts, demons, etc etc. I'm pretty sure that if you were to examine such tribes, you would find that they all also attribute certain natural phenomena to non-deities as well as deities.

So does a tendancy to believe in fairies indicate that deep down we know that they do exist, but society as a whole just refuses to accept it?

I would argue that ironically the same thing which causes us to believe in deities is the exact same thing which also causes us to destroy them.

That is, as a species we have a drive to develop an explanation for the world around us. So at first, God fits that explanation perfectly. But we also strive to continually improve that explanation, and as we do we realise that the God explanation is either insufficient or incorrect. Which leads to atheism.

I'm loath to say it (purely because it sounds arrogant), but I'm starting to lean towards the idea that atheism is the next level in human societal development.

Beruthiel

For people like that the unexplainable needs to be explained so they can sleep better at night. The sun, the moon, a god, whatever works.

Hagar

Strange all the same that they all come up with a similar rationale for everything.

pwd

i think some or most of the american indian tribes did not have gods, though they did believe in spirits.


This suggests to me the sioux were spiritual agnostics:

http://philtar.ucsm.ac.uk/encyclopedia/nam/sioux.html

seamus

Hagar wrote: »

Strange all the same that they all come up with a similar rational for everything.

But I don't think they do. Where we are now is a long leap from tribal times; the concept of a single God in the abrahamic religions has been a few thousand years in the making. We still have religions which worship multiple gods, others which worship/preach spirtual beliefs, and all sorts of other permutations of belief.

The rationale of there being "something else" that we can use to explain stuff, I would say is perfectly natural. Children do it as soon as they can think about stuff. The definition of that "something else" is varied in millions (if not billions) of ways.

oeb

seamus wrote: »

But I don't think they do. Where we are now is a long leap from tribal times; the concept of a single God in the abrahamic religions has been a few thousand years in the making. We still have religions which worship multiple gods, others which worship/preach spirtual beliefs, and all sorts of other permutations of belief.

The rationale of there being "something else" to explain stuff, I would say is perfectly natural. Children do it as soon as they can think about stuff. The definition of that "something else" is varied in millions (if not billions) of ways.

Do you mind if I sum this up with :

Have they ever found a tribe of practicing christians in the jungle that have never met with other christians?

robindch

oeb wrote: »

Have they ever found a tribe of practicing christians in the jungle that have never met with other christians?

PDN mentioned a book a few months ago in which an american preacher in the jungles of PNG came across such a thing, but the details didn't materialize unfortunately.

oeb

robindch wrote: »

PDN mentioned a book a few months ago in which an american preacher in the jungles of PNG came across such a thing, but the details didn't materialize unfortunately.

Supprising!

Dave!

I seem to recall in the God Delusion Dawkins outlining some research relating to morality. I believe the researcher found some tribe with no religion to speak of (perhaps it was no ORGANISED religion) and gave them the whole 'push a fat man in front of the train' test (and other related ones), of course finding no significant difference between them and god-fearing christians...

Perhaps I'm mistaken, it was a good while ago

JimiTime

oeb wrote: »

Do you mind if I sum this up with :

Have they ever found a tribe of practicing christians in the jungle that have never met with other christians?

Honest question here, but what is the relevance of that question?

Zillah

Hagar wrote: »

Strange all the same that they all come up with a similar rationale for everything.

They come up with a similar explanation because they're presented with similar questions. Why is the sky shouting at me, how do the crops know when to grow, are those my feet, why did little Billy die while little Susie was fine etc.

These answers are literally beyond the ken of primitive peoples, so any answer they invent will have to also be beyond their ken (and Barbie too) to be satisfactory. And the easiest way to create an answer you can't understand is to make it magic.

Anyway, even if all of humanity had a strong bias towards supernatural explanations for the world, thats evidence for their having a bias towards supernatural explanations for the world, nothing more.

Galvasean

JimiTime wrote: »

Honest question here, but what is the relevance of that question?

Well if they existed (without outside interference/influence by other people) that would go a long way to proving that Christianity is correct.

JimiTime

Galvasean wrote: »

Well if they existed (without outside interference/influence by other people) that would go a long way to proving that Christianity is correct.

I don't think so. The arguement would probably be, 'At some stage one of their tribesmen had contact with a christian or something, and brought the faith to the tribe'. Something like this would in no way be satisfactory as evidence to non-believers IMO.

robindch

JimiTime wrote: »

Something like this would in no way be satisfactory as evidence to non-believers.

I don't think you should be so cynical about what we accept as evidence.

I'd be completely fascinated if some jungle tribe came up with an identical story to christianity's if there was a good chance that the tribe had never been contacted by missionaries, which is why I was disappointed that PDN didn't follow up on his quite-extraordinary claim.

Such a finding, if it were confirmed, or even if it were strongly likely, would suggest that entire branches of how we think about ourselves and how we communicate ideas and much else is inaccurate. Ans this would open up the distinct possibility that there's something much most interesting going on than the inevitable side-effect of nothing more complicated than people telling stories to each other.

pH

Hagar wrote: »

Is it possible that god exists in spite of all the claptrap that the various religions spew forth? Are Atheists and Agnostics turning their backs on god because of issues with religion and not because of a real certainty that god is just a myth?

I think those two sentences sum up for me the problem with the Deist position. Yes it's possible that god exists, but that god is not one that you can turn your back on.

God could exist and be busy looking after the inhabitants of another planet in another galaxy or countless other possibilities. There are as many possible gods as your imagination can construct, some might even have given us souls and a set of rules to live by and will judge us when we die, they are however a tiny subset of the set of all possible gods, and we have no good reason to believe that one of *those* exists.

So lets imagine a god that doesn't care about us, he exists and is busy tending to his real creation somewhere and we're a chemical accident on a small planet he doesn't care about. How can we turn our back on that God? For us, the life we lead and the decisions we make, his existence is irreverent.

So it's only when you get into the Gods which have been proposed by various religions that their existence matters. If Christianity or Islam is right then my non belief in God matters. If some other possible God exists that makes no difference either way to me then so what?

It's a big step from "some god exists" to "and by the way he says don't eat pork". You've not only got to surmise the existence of god, you've got to show how his existence matters.

Dades

robindch wrote: »

I don't think you should be so cynical about what we accept as evidence.

I'm actually with Jimi on this one.

If a tribe that seemingly had never been contacted by the outside world developed Christianity I would immediately favour another, non-supernatural explanation. Like maybe a plane carrying missionary supplies crashed and was never accounted for.

Believers may claim this as an example of atheist stubbornness, but in reality the situation given just doesn't really lend itself to proof of anything.

Occam's Razor, Extraordinary Claims, etc etc.

JimiTime

robindch wrote: »

I'd be completely fascinated if some jungle tribe came up with an identical story to christianity's if there was a good chance that the tribe had never been contacted by missionaries, which is why I was disappointed that PDN didn't follow up on his quite-extraordinary claim.

I'm sure you would be facinated and find it very interesting etc. But would you consider it evidence of Christianities truth?

BTW, I may be mistaken, but didn't PDN mention that he read that somewhere, but that he forgot the name of the guy or something? The way you're presenting it seems to be saying he refused to deliver. If I recall that particular conversation, he couldn't remember the details of the claim etc. i just wanted to clarify that for anyone reading who thought PDN made up a story and then didn't produce the evidence. Maybe you should ask over in Christianity or send him a PM? Wouldn't mind finding out more myself.

Such a finding, if it were confirmed, or even if it were strongly likely, would suggest that entire branches of how we think about ourselves and how we communicate ideas and much else is inaccurate. Ans this would open up the distinct possibility that there's something much most interesting going on than the inevitable side-effect of nothing more complicated than people telling stories to each other.

But it would not be evidence of the validity of Christianity?

Zillah

Dades wrote: »

If a tribe that seemingly had never been contacted by the outside world developed Christianity I would immediately favour another, non-supernatural explanation. Like maybe a plane carrying missionary supplies crashed and was never accounted for.

Indeed. Which is more plausible; the entire Christian spin on the universe is correct or a Christian made contact with a tribe without our current knowledge of that encounter?

pH wrote: »

How can we turn our back on that God? For us, the life we lead and the decisions we make, his existence is irreverent.

That's an interesting typo.

JimiTime

Dades wrote: »

I'm actually with Jimi on this one.

If a tribe that seemingly had never been contacted by the outside world developed Christianity I would immediately favour another, non-supernatural explanation. Like maybe a plane carrying missionary supplies crashed and was never accounted for.

Believers may claim this as an example of atheist stubbornness, but in reality the situation given just doesn't really lend itself to proof of anything.

Occam's Razor, Extraordinary Claims, etc etc.

yeah, that is pretty much what I would see happen. I suppose its like Jesus Death and Ressurection. There are those that accept the posibility that the story is true, and those that don't. Those that don't, see many other more plausible explainations that satisfies their atheist worldview.

robindch

JimiTime wrote: »

But would you consider it evidence of Christianities truth?

If they had a story similar or identical to christianity, then I'd suspect that something like the (discredited) Hundredth Monkey Effect had taken place. If they claimed that they had their own copy of Jesus who said exactly the same things, did exactly the same things, then that would certainly indicate something unusual's going on. But it wouldn't change much the value of christianity's central truth claims for me, since there are plenty of other non-christian religions which have similar or identical claims to christianity's.

As I've said a few times before, there's nothing either very startling or very original about what christianity says and history shows that most, if not all, of its ideas existed long before Jesus and his successors created the broad and intensely varied cultural phenomenon that we currently refer to under the umbrella-term of "christianity".

JimiTime wrote: »

I may be mistaken, but didn't PDN mention that he read that somewhere, but that he forgot the name of the guy or something?

I recall that he mentioned the name of the guy who wrote this book in which it was described, and, afair, he said he'd see if he could find out some more about it, but that didn't happen. I'm with you on this one -- I'd like to hear more about this.

JimiTime wrote: »

But it would not be evidence of the validity of Christianity?

No, for the reason above -- there are plenty of other non-christian religions which make similar claims. And christians, in my experience, ignore these claims at least as much, an possibly more, than I do.

Out of interest, are you aware of these similarities, and if so, why do you not seem to accept them as evidence for the validity of the philosophy or religion from which they were derived?

Galvasean

I remember asking for more detail at the time. I'd imagine it was a fairly obscure text* (considering no one else had heard of it) so I wouldn't hold it against PDN for not being able to find it.

*I'm sure it would be more well known if it presents a convincing argument. The fact that it doesn't pop up more often (even in strictly religious circles) suggests that it does not.

JimiTime

robindch wrote: »

If they had a story similar or identical to christianity, then I'd suspect that something like the (discredited) Hundredth Monkey Effect had taken place. If they claimed that they had their own copy of Jesus who said exactly the same things, did exactly the same things, then that would certainly indicate something unusual's going on. But it wouldn't change much the value of christianity's central truth claims for me, since there are plenty of other non-christian religions which have similar or identical claims to christianity's.

So I think that settles it. I would be right to think that this evidence wouldn't do anything to convince. That was my original point

JimiTime

Galvasean wrote: »

I remember asking for more detail at the time. I'd imagine it was a fairly obscure text* (considering no one else had heard of it) so I wouldn't hold it against PDN for not being able to find it.

*I'm sure it would be more well known if it presents a convincing argument. The fact that it doesn't pop up more often (even in strictly religious circles) suggests that it does not.

I'd have to say that this would be by thinking on it also. Surely if such a tribe were discovered, there would be a bigger deal made of it. Still love to have a gander at it though.

robindch

JimiTime wrote: »

I would be right to think that this evidence wouldn't do anything to convince.

Well, yes, having an uncontacted jungle tribe show up as bible-holding christians would weird, but wouldn't suggest that christianity (or their particular variation of it) is true. There are simpler explanations and in any case, if it were true, such an occurrence would throw up some more difficult questions about the nature of the deity.

Out of interest, if this tribe turned out to be uncontacted catholics, or uncontacted muslims, would that change your opinion about your own variation of christianity (protestant, if memory serves)? Or would you say there's an alternative explanation?

Galvasean

I'd say it happened like this.
Tribe: "We worship lord Ungabunga who came from the stars."
Missionary: "Why that's simply Lord Jesus descending from the heavens!"

PDN

robindch wrote: »

PDN mentioned a book a few months ago in which an american preacher in the jungles of PNG came across such a thing, but the details didn't materialize unfortunately.

I mentioned a book by a Canadian missionary, Don Richardson, (a book I read some years ago) in which I believe he referred to members of isolated tribes who had received visions of Jesus. I did not say that they had become practicing Christians.

I've tried googling for any online version of the book or websites that might confirm my memory but have been unable to do so. I normally have an excellent memory but am certainly open to the possibility that I am wrong - after all, it was many years ago and it has only taken 5 months for Robin's memory of reading my post to become garbled to the extent that he represents me as posting about a tribe practising Christianity.

Dades

PDN wrote: »

I normally have an excellent memory but am certainly open to the possibility that I am wrong - after all, it was many years ago and it has only taken 5 months for Robin's memory of reading my post to become garbled to the extent that he represents me as posting about a tribe practising Christianity.

I find it shocking how inaccurate a messiah-related story can be when passed on by word of mouth!

JimiTime

Dades wrote: »

I find it shocking how inaccurate a messiah-related story can be when passed on by word of mouth!

Ha Ha, Touché:D