Okay don’t take mg argument:
Donald E. Brown in Human Universals (1991) identifies religion (in some form) as a human universal—present in all documented cultures.
George P. Murdock’s cross-cultural work (Ethnographic Atlas) found no society lacking religious beliefs or practices among those sufficiently described.
Archeologcal evidence:
Even before written history, material evidence shows symbolic and ritual behavior:
Burials with grave goods (suggesting afterlife beliefs), e.g.
Skhul Cave (~100,000 years ago)
Ritual or symbolic structures like
Göbekli Tepe (~9600 BCE).
Absence of counterexamples:
No clearly documented pre-modern society (hunter-gatherer, tribal, early agrarian, or early state) has been shown to lack:
supernatural beliefs and ritual practices and symbolic meaning systems tied to them.
Even cases once proposed as “non-religious” (e.g., some interpretations of certain groups) were later found to include:
animism - animal spirits / power / speaking animals
ancestor reverence - respecting dead people - believing in afterlife
ritualized cosmology - cave drawings, sun gods, spirit of rain.
These may not look like organized religion (no temples, no priesthood), but it is the same.
Just because someone publishes a book about their opinion does not make it a fact. The fact is, both Donald and George were inaccurate. Daniel Everett was an evangelical missionary that tried to convert the Pirahã tribe in the '70s/'80s. He ended up becoming an atheist after seeing how everything he was taught about the world in church was a lie, that there are people who live without religion and are content. Murdock studied ~1200 societies for “Ethnographic Atlas” but he has never been documented to have met the Pirahã tribe. All that means is he gave insight based on the information available to him. For Human Universals, try googling “Human Universals outdated” you’ll find that it’s not a trusted source at this point and considered outdated even at release.
Your archeological discovery part, I mentioned trying to find evidence of which predated which would be difficult. If people were around to leave evidence of their existence, that means they were there at that time, it gives no proof as to how long they were around prior to leaving evidence.
Your statement about lack of counter arguments is as wrong as Donald and George confidently stating religion is ubiquitous to all societies. It is provably incorrect based on current knowledge.
Okay don’t take mg argument:
Donald E. Brown in Human Universals (1991) identifies religion (in some form) as a human universal—present in all documented cultures.
George P. Murdock’s cross-cultural work (Ethnographic Atlas) found no society lacking religious beliefs or practices among those sufficiently described.
Archeologcal evidence:
Even before written history, material evidence shows symbolic and ritual behavior:
Burials with grave goods (suggesting afterlife beliefs), e.g.
Skhul Cave (~100,000 years ago) Ritual or symbolic structures like Göbekli Tepe (~9600 BCE).
Absence of counterexamples:
No clearly documented pre-modern society (hunter-gatherer, tribal, early agrarian, or early state) has been shown to lack:
supernatural beliefs and ritual practices and symbolic meaning systems tied to them.
Even cases once proposed as “non-religious” (e.g., some interpretations of certain groups) were later found to include:
animism - animal spirits / power / speaking animals ancestor reverence - respecting dead people - believing in afterlife ritualized cosmology - cave drawings, sun gods, spirit of rain.
These may not look like organized religion (no temples, no priesthood), but it is the same.
Just because someone publishes a book about their opinion does not make it a fact. The fact is, both Donald and George were inaccurate. Daniel Everett was an evangelical missionary that tried to convert the Pirahã tribe in the '70s/'80s. He ended up becoming an atheist after seeing how everything he was taught about the world in church was a lie, that there are people who live without religion and are content. Murdock studied ~1200 societies for “Ethnographic Atlas” but he has never been documented to have met the Pirahã tribe. All that means is he gave insight based on the information available to him. For Human Universals, try googling “Human Universals outdated” you’ll find that it’s not a trusted source at this point and considered outdated even at release.
Your archeological discovery part, I mentioned trying to find evidence of which predated which would be difficult. If people were around to leave evidence of their existence, that means they were there at that time, it gives no proof as to how long they were around prior to leaving evidence.
Your statement about lack of counter arguments is as wrong as Donald and George confidently stating religion is ubiquitous to all societies. It is provably incorrect based on current knowledge.