Has There Ever Been a Non-Religious Civilization?

It's quite amusing. From an interview with Everett:

What in the philosophy of the Pirahãs made you abandon your faith? When did that shift happen?

It affected me immediately—going there as a missionary, I thought they needed my message. But they had their own views and were not convinced by anything I said. They would ask me: have I seen Jesus? Then they would say, “So why do you tell us about things that you have never seen?” What struck me was their lack of superstition, their contentment with life as they found it. And their happiness. I have never seen people facing so many difficulties, with so much grace: it deeply impressed me. One day, after a few years, one of them told me, “We know why you are here—you want to tell us about Jesus. We like you, but do not want to hear any more about Jesus. We are not Americans.” And I thought, What right do I have to be here, telling them about my beliefs? It made me think about the missionary enterprise in another way; that was in 1980, three years after I arrived. And I got the same response in all the other villages. So I was struggling with my faith.

It sounds like it's plausible they were already sick of missionaries imposing their irrational beliefs, and were actually trying to reason with him as to why it's all nonsense. Everett claims they as a people only believe things they personally see, but maybe it's just their general skepticism towards Everett, and their bullshit-detector going off every time he tried to teach them about his own superstitions. At the very least it's a clear case of a personal agenda interfering with objective observation.

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