Where most cultures shamanic or mystical pre-(all this)?

Question

Were there athiests, and where ? I'm very curious. I'm not trying to make a point but haven't read of many ancient atheistic cultures

Yes, it is vague, but it leaves room for lots of info.

Answer 1

This depends on how far back you want to go. Pre-civilization, or tribal, peoples were spiritual and mainly believed in earth based spirits or gods. The specifics of the belief structure would vary from tribe to tribe although there are similarities. The general term for the tribal religions/spiritual beliefs is animism. It wasn't organized, it was part of every day life. A respect for all life around you and how you interact and belong in that life. More of a circle of life thing that a religion. You thank your spirits for the life of the pig it sent you so you could continue to live. Organized religion is definitely a civilization invention.

Answer 2

One fairly popular group of atheists I can think of were philosophical Ancient Greeks who rejected traditional Greek religion. Well, I don't know that they were *atheists*. Maybe more like agnostics (note both terms are Greek.) But the dominant culture was pagan.

I wouldn't say that everybody was particularly spiritual in the ancient world--some people participated in state religions (like, where the emperor was "god") but didn't really "worship" that much. Confucianism is the major atheistic religion in the world. I guess that's about all the atheism you're gonna find on a large scale (and not everybody in and around China was Confucian, so it competed with Buddhism and Taoism and Hinduism.) You haven't read about many ancient atheistic cultures because there weren't any.

Answer 3

I don't suspect that there were many athiests back then. You've got to remember that most ancient societies were polythestic. Each God/dess represented something specific - fire, water, the sun, crops, animals... there was a God/dess for everything. They believed that not worshipping would cause problems or curses; your crops would fail, there would be sickness or death, your flock would become ill - I don't think there would be too many people to go against the grain and not partake regularly in their societies standard form of worship.

Answer 4

I have read about lots of different pre-historic cultures and they all had spiritual beliefs of some kind - whether or not everybody believed them, I'm sure it was much like today. If a thousand years from now people saw evidence of all the churches around here they would assume we were all Christians; how untrue!

Answer 5

Your question is a little vague.

For an example of a pre-Christian atheist, consider Euhemerus.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euhemerus

Answer 6

nope... sorry... even the most advanced societies believed in some for of mystical stuff. Aka china/japan.

Answer 7

Nope, sorry. Not that I know of. If there were, they weren't documented. But we Pagans did come first. <3

- 16 yo Pagan