h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I don't mean that there is any thing wrong with it, just that it is inherently something that happens in small numbers or for specific periods of time but never becomes the norm for societies.

Are there, or have there been, any atheistic societies or cultures?

And for the sake of argument 'atheism' in this thread means the belief that the divine aspect of reality doesn't exist. So it's not restricted to the belief that the Christian 'man with a big white beard in the sky' God doesn't exist, but includes the belief that all forms of spirituality are false or not real.

Off the top of my head, I can't think of any but I'm sure someone will be right along to contradict me.

Religion serves two functions in society, especially small ones. It gives a "Father Figure" or "Authority Figure" and it provides an explanation for the unexplainable.

The human condition almost universally recognises the existence of a "self" outwith the physical. The fact that the "self" seems to be unaffected by bodily injury lends credence to the idea that it is something seperate from the body.

I'm quite prepared to be shown I'm wrong though.

>>"The fact that the "self" seems to be unaffected by bodily injury lends credence to the idea that it is something seperate from the body."

Really?
What about brain injuries, dementia, lobotomies, stroke, etc?

I'm not sure that many religions reckon 'soul damage' is possible in a pseudo-clinical sense, whereas in reality it doesn't seem like there's any aspect of human selfhood, memory or personality that can't be ****ed-up by one kind or another of plain old organic damage.

It'd be interesting to see a theological take on what happens in Alzheimer's or CJD - is the soul perfectly intact somewhere with all its memories and personality, hanging around waiting for paradise, just unwilling or unable to inhabit the body properly for however many years?
If the soul is fine, for *whose* benefit exactly is the charade of a distressed person with a collapsing memory enacted?
Does the soul get old and feeble, only to be rewound to a competent state after death. What age does it get rewound *to*?

In fact, the soul/mind/brain relationship doesn't seem to be something that even people who believe in a soul seem willing or able to expound on in any kind of detail. Questions seem to lead to vagueness in replies at best.

Could it be that until very recently, no-one had any cause to question the existence of God at all? All people had to do was to look outside the door and be confronted by mysteries that could only be explained by some sort of higher intelligence? Now that knowledge has progressed - and we are only talking about the last 250 years or so - there are natural explanations to what we see. Before that most of the workings of the universe would have seemed utterly miraculous, to the extent that atheism would have seemed ridiculous to most people.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding your terms of reference, but wasn't Communism, a la the USSR, officially atheist? Ditto for the People's Republic of China.

Fair point Potholer, but it works in reverse too. Madness is taken as a sickness of the soul that leaves the body almost entirely unaffected.

Hmm... An interesting one, that - I can't think of any off the top of my head, either.

I guess another reason is that religion (which is not the same as spirituality, but tends to be closely bound to it) provides an organising and identifying force, whereas lack of belief is only identifying if it goes against the grain. To borrow an argument from U42, we are a society which as a rule don't believe in pink unicorns, but that isn't a very meaningful identifier, because it isn't distinctive. What's more, if that's all we had in common, we wouldn't be much of a society - there would be no coherence (except against an 'enemy' of pink-unicornists...)

Perhaps what I'm trying to get at, in my rambling way, is that there may have been societies where a lot of individuals didn't really take spiritual matters very seriously, but *as a society*, religious structures dominated, and so the stereotype, as it were, is of a society of "believers".

Am I trying too hard to "defend" atheism here? Maybe. But I do often wonder how many people who are "religious" are also "true believers" - i.e. not just "going through the motions", or accepting the *social* concepts without really believing the *spiritual* ones.


[As for the comment about the self being unaffected by bodily injury, I think witnessing a few instances of severe brain injury would soon disabuse anyone of that argument. Not that that proves there *isn't* a "self" or "soul" outside the body, just that you have to be a bit more philosophical than physiological in reasoning for it...]

I think the Czechs come as close as any to a strongly atheist society. There were some political reasons for this: during the Austro-Hungarian empire the Czech language and culture was suppressed. The Catholic church sided with the Austro-Hungarians and actively prevented any moves towards independence and nationalism. This lead, upon achieving independence, to a hatred of religion amongst Czechs with parents and grandparents actively dissuading their kids from going to church. Once the bonds with religion were broken, they didn't easily come back.

Just popping in quickly to add that I meant atheistic cultures not secular ones.

>>"Fair point Potholer, but it works in reverse too. Madness is taken as a sickness of the soul that leaves the body almost entirely unaffected."

I think you are possibly conflating 'soul' and 'mind'.

Even then, much 'madness' does seem to be down to definite organic imbalances in neurochemicals or problems with identifiable structures and pathways - it's arguably as much a plain brain issue as a 'mind' one.

Is the casting out of devils accepted psychiatric practice these days?

JCNSmith: Communist (and various other totalitarian) regimes may be *officially* atheist, but this is generally an aspiration on the part of the rulers, not an actual achievement. Organised religion is a challenge to the rulers' authority, so like any such challenge, totalitarians suppress it.

Now, they may well achieve a *secular* state, in which organised religion has no effective power or rights, but actually stopping people *believing* is an entirely different matter. I'm sure there are plenty of citizens of the PRC who have retained and inheritted traditional faiths, because spirituality is a very basic "need".

For a society to be atheist, I guess, would mean they were united in their atheism, and I'm not convinced Communist society passes that definition.

I certainly can't think of any off the top of my head beyond the Communist ones. I suppose Classical Greek philosophy showed a fair bit of disbelief. Socrates was executed for impiety after all.

Its difficult, because our evidence is pretty limited. We have religious symbolism in archaeology, but there is not really such a thing as atheistic symbolism. Secular symbolism abounds, however. There are also written accounts, but these are generally focused very tightly upon important individuals. For the parts which I'm most familiar with, almost all of these accounts come from monks or clergy, which probably makes things even tougher.

Its a rather hard thing to demonstrate absence of belief. There is the odd cynical voice that comes down to us. Other than that, there are simply people who appear to have acted as if they didn't believe or didn't care. Things along the lines of "people make their own fates".

I suppose the accusations the pious levelled at the secular authorities might be some sort of evidence? There are certainly frequent repeated allegations of chasing after wealth, honour, power and lust rather than defending the churches and giving alms to the poor like they were obviously supposed to be doing. Even this is hard to demonstrate though: many secular rulers have earned such criticism by claiming divine appointment for themselves.

Oh hell I don't think we can answer your question.

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Religion serves two functions in society, especially small ones. It gives a "Father Figure" or "Authority Figure" and it provides an explanation for the unexplainable.
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>>>Could it be that until very recently, no-one had any cause to question the existence of God at all? All people had to do was to look outside the door and be confronted by mysteries that could only be explained by some sort of higher intelligence? Now that knowledge has progressed - and we are only talking about the last 250 years or so - there are natural explanations to what we see. Before that most of the workings of the universe would have seemed utterly miraculous, to the extent that atheism would have seemed ridiculous to most people.
<<<


Providing an explanation for the unexplainable? What, like science does? The idea that people in pre-Western science cultures were awed by the big mysteries and had to make up stories to make sense of them is ethnocentric and patronising. Many cultures have had systems of understanding reality based on empiricism and development of theory that are no less valid than western science.

The idea that atheism would have been ridiculous is an interesting one though. Maybe atheists were considered insane?


I'l reiterate, atheism in this thread refers to the belief that no *spiritual* reality exists (not that no religious reality exists).


>>>
Even then, much 'madness' does seem to be down to definite organic imbalances in neurochemicals or problems with identifiable structures and pathways - it's arguably as much a plain brain issue as a 'mind' one.
<<<

Contrary to contemporary popular opinion there is no definitive evidence that such things as neurochemical imbalances *cause* mental illnesses rather than being concurrent, or secondary to something else. Organic damage like brain injury aside of course.

Kea, what exactly would an atheistic as opposed to secular society look like? We disbelieve in the supernatural, so we...do what exactly? Generally its get on with our secular lives.

Admittedly there does seem to be a lot of shouting about it these days, but if the society was broadly secular then there wouldn't be any need for that.

I think it might be more true to say we are more likely to see agnostic societies than atheistic ones. Kinda like hedging your bets.

Difficult question really, but certainly one that gives pause for thought and introspection.

I was meaning secular in the sense of the State and other institutions not having a religious base or structure. As has been mentioned that doesn't mean that the people are necessarily predominantly atheists.

I would see an atheistic society/culture as one where the majority of people believe there is no such thing as spiritual reality*. That would be fairly obvious I would have thought - it would be reflected in all aspects of society especially things like literature and the arts.


*that doesn't imply necessarily the 'supernatural' btw.

I'm inclined to say that we haven't seen atheism until recently because of recent huge advances in knowledge and technology. I should think that for civilisations with very primitive technology it's fairly rational to believe in there being at least something like a god (just think about what their experience of the world is like - think about things like lightning storms and eclipses). If then someone comes along and insists that what he calls god has revealed himself to him, and stated that he is the creator, well why not believe him? You don't have a better explanation after all.

In the western tradition, I think it was still the most sensible and rational explanation for the nature of the universe until Darwin, because the complexity of biological structures was fairly incomprehensible in mechanical terms. I'm not saying that after Darwin it was rational to be an atheist, but that Darwin created the necessary conditions for atheism, and that before Darwin theism was probably the most rational explanation.

That said, it has always been the case that it is rational to question religion. Any clear sighted person can at least admit the possibility that a given religion is the work of people rather than god, and so it could be wrong. Despite my being an atheist, I rather suspect that Martin Luther was a very rational man.

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No. Science provides explanations of the explicable. It doesn't (can't) explain the inexplicable (ie why the rules/laws which we use to explain things are what they are).

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Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that western scientific cultures still do this too? And one could also question how scientific most western culture actually is.

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Such as?

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By "spiritual reality" here I assume you mean the belief that there is a second order of reality that operates with fundamental rules that are different from those of the material universe? The problem with this is that of an interface between two different sets of rules, and the impossibility of empiricism in that situation.

And in answer to the original question - yes, it is.

Noggin

SWL: >I think it might be more true to say we are more likely to see agnostic societies than atheistic ones. Kinda like hedging your bets.<

I don't see agnosticism as hedging bets in the slightest; I see it as the only totally honest position. I have no more evidence for the non-existence of a god than I do for the existence of one. This leaves me with agnosticism, unless you can point out another tenable alternative.

What does spiritual mean?