Has There Ever Been a Non-Religious Civilization?

CSCrimson · 1時間前

The sans-culotte during the French Revolution was the first economic class to push for state atheism. Once they were politically organized and had large numbers of elected on the National Assembly, the sans-culotte strived to tear down every established institution including the Catholic church. This was in reaction to their poor economic and social status. The san-culotte's aggressive and reactionary reign became known as the Reign of Terror.

However, the sans-culotte's dreams of an atheism were never fully realized. During the French Revolution the other more influential political party was the Jacobins. This party headed by Robespierre channeled the want to overthrow the old religious orders by making a state-sponsored cult of the Supreme Being. This cult glorified the virtues of the French Revolution.

amavritansky · 1時間前

Apparently the only recently contacted Pirahã tribe who live in the Amazon Rainforest do not have religion as a part of their society. They're a really fascinating group of people. A lot is not known or understood about them yet, and from what I understand one should take what we know about them with a grain of salt, because Daniel Everett, the antropological linguist who has lived and studied them most closely has been called into question for the integrity of his research and methodology.

toxicroach · 1時間前

I've heard the Ionians were pretty skeptical and tended to disbelieve religious explanations of natural events. That's about as non-religious as it gets in the ancient world.

BarneyBent · 2時間前

Could maybe argue for the Mongols under Genghis Khan? There was no real central religion, they were tolerant of (even encouraging) multiple religions. So in that sense, they were secular, even if religion played a fairly large part in their society.

CatNamedJava · 1時間前

Communist nations are atheist. They banned alot of reglious activities.

tommywood93 · 1時間前

You'd probably get better answers over at /r/AskHistorians

Sean_G_B · 56分前

I believe the first concepts of Atheism was established by a branch of Hinduism that stated that they "do not accept a God exists". Later on, Atheism was practiced in Northern Asia, more specifically by those in the Ural mountains and some Mongolians.

Also the term 'Atheism' was coined by the French

Edit: I realize now that you were asking for non-religious, not Atheist. Sorry.

Lost50 · 1時間前

The social mores that religion brings to the table actually really enable civilization. Religion exists for a reason, as social control. Social control helps build civilizations.

whatabear · 52分前

There was the Cārvāka school in India. But to what extent it was something practiced by regular people as opposed to an academic position is subject to debate.

jegoan · 3時間前

I think the very separation between different spheres of state, religion, private life, etc... are very modern and specifically post-Christian phenomena. In short, no there never was a civilization that had no religion - in fact removing religion, most civilizations would be shrivelled versions of themselves, as religion was typically central of almost every activity.

billyblue22 · 1時間前

To add to the technical definition of religion:

The fear of desecration is a vital element in all religions. Indeed, that is what the word religio originally meant: a cult or ceremony designed to protect some sacred place from sacrilege.

Mikeyisroc · 1時間前

Werent the Huns infamous for being atheist?

zigglezip · 2時間前

Religion is/was a way to keep order

To have any sort of organization, those that would seek to keep order would need authority, therefore, religion

LaputanAcademy · 59分前

The Chinese? I mean, there is Confucianism, Daoism, Buddhism and so on, but none have been dominant through its history and none are religious in the same way as Christianity and Islam, though I suppose they are 'a system of codified beliefs specifically regarding human existence and supernatural involvement'.

But there's never been a state religion, or an institutionalised religion with Church etc. In East Asia, they mix and match belief systems in a way that Christians and Muslims do not.

GrayOne · 36分前

Why does the sun disappear at night? Where does fire come from? Why do plants grow? Why do some people get sick and die?

How would any pre modern science civilization answer basic questions without religion?

Would they just say "We don't know what causes illness at the present time, but we're looking into it and in several hundred years we expect to have a better understanding."

helpmytiresflat · 27分前

Do the soviets count because I believe they made religion close to illegal.

palebot · 15分前

A famous anthropologist of religion (Asad) once wrote that as soon as social scientists define what is and what is not religion they cease to be scientists and have become theologians.

lusamut · 11分前

Sort of related: I recently saw a lecture by anthropologist David Graeber about his book (Debt: the first 5000 years), where he claimed that the big religions of the world -- the Abrahamic ones, Hinduism, Buddhism, etc., followed the introduction of token-based money (i.e., physical currency). His claim was that when the traditional transaction model of trading favors based on (implicit or explicit) credit is replaced by a purely quantified instantaneous like-for-like trade (i.e., stuff for coins), it creates a vacuum of spirituality because the nature of people's relationships while trading loses any sort of feeling of communal activity.

That's a shitty paraphrasing of a brief side comment he made in his lecture, so take it with a giant grain of salt.

boomboxchina · 11分前

The period of the Antonines in the Roman Empire describes an interesting relationship to religion. The multitudes were devout, but not fanatical, and worshipped actual Roman war heroes more than the gods; the ruling class thought it was hogwash but allowed it anyway; and the academics and philosophers were outright atheists. Even barbarians in conquered lands were allowed to essentially practice their religion untouched. Maybe not non-religious per-se, but the Pax Romana period seems to have been partly so peaceful because of this casual approach to faith and live-and-let-live attitude.

Historyguy81 · 9分前

If by religion you mean to focus only on super natural involvement then only in modern times.

The Enlightenment Philisophs abandoned supernatural involvement as much as they could. Several of them demoted the Christian God's activities to that of a clock maker, who established the universe and then had kicked back for drinks.

Now, there still isn't a whole civilization that has abandoned supernatural influences, but there were and still are states that forbade supernatural belief systems. Many have pointed out the Communist states that disavow supernatural based religions.

However, they were/are unable to squelch them simply because supernatural forces (animate or not) are very helpful for humans to make sense of the world.

There are many people who worship mundane things that are not supernatural, such as logic, the state, the truth, or people they are infatuated with, like lovers, potential lovers, or some celebrity.

Many times in US history, people have actively rejected mundane sources of reverence for supernatural revivals. We have examples of several great awakenings, and in the 1950s and 1960s many baby-boomers openly embraced approximations of eastern religions as a form of rejection of western culture which they saw as corrupt.

Even on Star Trek the fictional Vulcans who are arctypical of logic worshipers even have supernatural powers. Even our mainstream fictional hyperlogical aliens are written to have supernatural worship.

I think the supernatural is too engraved in our collective psyches to easily be extracted.

chrisps989 · 7分前

/r/Askhistorians will probably give you a good, well-sourced answer to this instead of "I've heard" and "could argue"

JDRGudlov1 · 3分前

I think it kind of depends on how loosely you are willing to define 'religion.'

For instance, Stalin blamed religion for many of the problems that faced Russia in the lead-up to the revolution and when he took power he persecuted religious institutions in Russia brutally all the way until post WW2, so technically it was a civilization that was founded as atheist.

However, as Stalin eventually learned, religion is really just a systematic ideology and you cannot found a civilization without a shared ideology. Whether that ideology is a religious one (as in the majority of the older civilizations) or a political or economic one (as in the United States or Stalin's post revolution Russia), I can't think of a civilization off the top of my head that isn't based on shared ideologies

The problem we face now is that we imagine that the ideologies are the enemy, instead of the idealogues

uber_kerbonaut · 2分前

Well, you probably know already, but Japan very non-religious. While they do have Shinto and Buddhism, those kind of serve as traditions for weddings and funerals and don't have much sway over the Japanese' existential beliefs. of course, this is worldwide trend in liberal democracies, and not a unique feature of Japanese history.

cjandstuff · 1分前

In my studies, any nation that tries to be non-religious, ends up worshipping their leader.

Nikkujaga · 2時間前

First you have to ask yourself 'What is religion?'.

Origin stories, beliefs, traditions, rituals, philosophy etc; these not only make up religion but also the culture of a people. You cannot separate these from a people and therefore could never have a truly nonreligious society.

In the same light, someone who claims to be athiest may not believe in a singular God but are not nonreligous.

orthocanna · 1時間前

So a few commenters have alluded to the difficulty of distinguishing "religion" from "civilisation". We should add another term in there: "spirituality", meaning (for me) a faith-based knowledge of a realm beyond the physical as practiced in daily behaviour. Throughout time, various "civilisations" have had no distinction between the religious sphere and the temporal. The priest-kings of ancient Egypt or Mesopotamia are a good example of this. For them, material laws were simply an instantiation of spiritual guidelines, usually clearly defined or interpreted by experts from primary source material. How and when to plant crops, the domestication of animals and rules governing incest were all emanations of a spiritual belief in supernatural lore and knowledge. Mesoamerican civilisations could be grouped into this kind of theocratic system: the planting of corn was as much a spiritual action that had a tangible effect on the realm of the Gods as it was a material one. Most large civilisations would probably fit somewhere along this spectrum up until the creation of the European nation-state.

Now, as we move away from settled, agricultural civilisation we find more and more interesting cases. In the Amazon (for example) are groups of indiginous people for whom the idea of "religion" as an organised set of codified practices might be alien. We see that they have civilisation, rules and customs governing the execution of daily life. But these rules are not dependant on their spiritual beliefs. This spiritual aspect is experiencial, based on their living assessments of the world around them. I wouldn't call this religion, because evn though there are some customs mediating the way that experienc is acquired (depending on which group you're looking at it could range from meditation to ingesting psychoactive compounds) the actual content is generated from personal experience rather than handed down through an oral or written history.

This is not to say that they are "atheists" in the way a Westerner might conceive of it. Their environment is filled with a multitude of incomprehensible forces. But these do not have set parameters, and the individual experience of them is not mediated by the authority of a priest.

In short, i think that it is true that there are civilisations (historical and in existence) who do not have religion as we define it. They may hold "spiritual beliefs", but these are not codified in a religion which controls the individual as part of the civilisation. So to answer your question: no, religion is not an essential part of founding a cvilisation. However, it seems to be a common characteristic of settled, agricultural ones.

separys · 1時間前

Perhaps the Huns? It's possible they followed something, but they're never mentioned as being particularly religious, that I can recall.

Tjrzz · 1時間前

Yeah Maoist China and Stalinist Russia. It was great except for the 100 million killed.

Hatlessspider · 1時間前

I think you would be very hard-pressed to find a purely non-religious civilization. Not only because it didn't make logical sense for a person to look at the world and decide that it came from nothing, but also in a practical sense in that organized religion is, and always has been a good means to control the population.

When man stops worrying about the necessities of life, he can turn to thinking about how the world was formed and who or what did it.

Another argument could be made that many of the old civilizations all had creation stories, some that sounded rather similar. These stories likely were passed down from generation to generation and could have been formed from a real truth.

qcp · 1時間前

Many Amazonian tribes have(had) no concept of religion.

dftitterington · 42分前

By "no religion" do you mean no music, no folk-stories, no myths, no arts, no dance, what falls under the catagory "material religion"?

3時間前

[deleted]

Graypower · 47分前

Isn't atheism a religious belief as well? You believe there is no god and that you must do good for the good of society. Any set of moral rules would be considered religion, i guess.

baldbert · 1時間前

I know you have edited and offered a definition of "Religion" but this is a problematic term for a few reasons. Firstly, the term "religion" carries with it western connotations of belief. That is, a "religion" for many, can only be so only if it maintains the western model (i.e. a holy set of scriptures, deity, etc.). So what about cultures (in India for example) where this isn't a term that exists in any language before the arrival of western orientalists?

Second the term itself, religion, comes from the Latin religio which before Christianity meant tradition. It was a way to honor the family traditions and house customs/gods. It had NOTHING to do with belief in anything.

The modern notions of these terms, even the broadest of definitions, is limited by not understanding the historiography of the terminology itself.

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