Posted by:
Finally Free!
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Date: February 08, 2016 03:48PM
A quick google search for "tribes without religion" turned up this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirah%C3%A3_peopleGranted it's a Wikipedia article and I don't have time to check all the sources, but it's described as an "indigenous hunter-gatherer group of the Amazon Rainforest"
According to the article they have some interesting characteristics:
"the Pirahã have no concept of a supreme spirit or god" (in my book a concept of a supreme spirit or god is usually a requirement for religion)
"They require evidence based on personal experience for every claim made"
"However, they do believe in spirits that can sometimes take on the shape of things in the environment. These spirits can be jaguars, trees, or other visible, tangible things including people."
One might be able to argue that the last point means that they have some form of "religion" but I think that might be debatable as most atheists will tell you that lacking a belief in a higher power doesn't necessarily exclude spiritualism... So It might depend on how you define "religion".
I did think that "... they lost interest in Jesus when they discovered that Everett had never seen him" was an interesting statement.
I think with more time and research, more/better examples of religion free cultures might be found.
Along those lines, some might argue that some forms of hinduism and/or Buddhism might be "religion free" as they don't all require a belief in a higher power, but are more moral codes, which also, in my book, doesn't make them a "religion" any more than day care teaching kids not to hit each other is a religion.