Imagine there was no religion…
In March, Daniel Everett spoke about endangered languages at a Long Now seminar (audio, summary). In 1977 Everett, then a Christian missionary, went to work with the Pirahã tribe in the center of the Amazon. A tribe that
numbers only 360, spread in small groups over 300 miles. An exceptionally cheerful people, they live with a focus on immediacy, empiricism, and physical rigor that has shaped their unique language (Brand, 2009)
What I found most astonishing was that they have no creation stories or myths. While this would seem to be fertile ground for a missionary it actually had the opposite effect. The ultimate empiricists, the Pirahã believe only what they can see, what their elders have seen, or what others have told them that they have seen. When unable to provide evidence for his god the Pirahã lost interest in discussing it further. Moreover, in that failed effort Everett lost his faith as well. During his presentation he tells a rather charming story about this experience which he evidently expands in his book Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle.
I had always thought that all peoples had creation stories, that all peoples had created one or more gods. It is most refreshing to know that is evidently not the case.