Christian Missionary Deconverted by Tribe

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13 Nov 2012, 4:07 pm

In 1980, a man named Daniel Everett went to the Amazon rainforest to convert the Piraha people to Christianity. He discovered that they had no word for "god" so he used the term "High-Up Father" when he was talking about the god of the Bible. He asked the Piraha "Who created the the earth?" The Piraha basically said "It was always there." Daniel then discovered that that the Piraha are so focused on surviving the present that they do not talk about the distant past, the distant future, unexperienced events or fictional topics. Daniel tried to explain that Jesus lived a long time ago but the Piraha lost interest when they found out that Daniel had never seen Jesus in person.

It eventually became clear that the Piraha were beyond conversion ... and Daniel became an atheist.

http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2016

This says many things about religion. Religion is only something humans created when they started having too much free time.

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ruveyn
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13 Nov 2012, 4:59 pm

DarthMetaKnight wrote:

The moral of the story is that theology is irrelevant.

ruveyn

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13 Nov 2012, 5:17 pm

I had my glasses off and I thought this topic read:
Christian Missionary Devoured by Tribe.

I was wondering how they cooked him and if they used a sauce,there's an eggplant that some cannibals use,I read about it in a seed catalog.

Jono
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13 Nov 2012, 7:18 pm

I've heard about this story before. Apparently, not only was Daniel Everett deconverted, he discovered that the Piraha's language challenged Noam Chomsky's theory of language as well. I initially came across this interview with Daniel Everett on Youtube:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXegoZrxcVk&list=PL22ACBE4911D671B8&index=1&feature=plpp_video[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzXRwbdlptA&feature=bf_next&list=PL22ACBE4911D671B8[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fT9IQK-P_Q&feature=bf_next&list=PL22ACBE4911D671B8[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCh7_DInrcU&feature=bf_next&list=PL22ACBE4911D671B8[/youtube]

PM
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13 Nov 2012, 7:33 pm

:lol: His handlers are probably scratching their heads right about now.

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13 Nov 2012, 7:49 pm

I read his book about this, "Don't Sleep There Are Snakes". I got the impression that he got no great insight from the Piraha into religion that he couldn't have from most other reasonably thoughtful people. I suspect the key factor in him losing his religion was simply going from an environment where everyone strongly shared his own beliefs or similar to one where people were questioning them. On the other hand the stuff about linguistics and culture are fascinating.

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ruveyn
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13 Nov 2012, 8:24 pm

mutley wrote:

Apparently his "faith" was not well glued onto him.

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13 Nov 2012, 10:19 pm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Eve ... us_beliefs

Sad that his interpersonal relations declined.

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Mukherjee80
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14 Nov 2012, 7:31 pm

DarthMetaKnight wrote:

Religion is only something humans created when they started having too much free time.

You could probably say the same thing about philosophy or science. Interesting story though. Thanks for posting.

Misslizard
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14 Nov 2012, 7:34 pm

^^^^^Like your avatar,Ganesh on a Lotus blossom,cool,remover of obstacles.

MarketAndChurch
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15 Nov 2012, 11:36 pm

DarthMetaKnight wrote:

This says many things about religion. Religion is only something humans created when they started having too much free time.

Philosophy has generally been pushed and progressed as well by those who have too much time on their hands.

A good number of philosophers came from a middle class or upper class standing in life.

Mother Teresa said that Depression is a disease of the wealthy, because the poor are too busy trying to survive to dwell in their sorrows. And in a sense... thats right. The meaning of life to them is very simple: How can I put food on the table.

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DarthMetaKnight
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16 Nov 2012, 12:00 am

MarketAndChurch wrote:

Philosophy has generally been pushed and progressed as well by those who have too much time on their hands.

The modern conservative movement was created by philosophers.

You're welcome.

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MarketAndChurch
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16 Nov 2012, 12:05 am

DarthMetaKnight wrote:

MarketAndChurch wrote:

Philosophy has generally been pushed and progressed as well by those who have too much time on their hands.

The modern conservative movement was created by philosophers.

You're welcome.

It's neither a judgement thats here or there, it just is.

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DarthMetaKnight
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16 Nov 2012, 12:32 am

The ultimate purpose of philosophy is to clean up the mess that religion started.

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blauSamstag
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16 Nov 2012, 1:40 am

Sounds to me like his faith was weak.

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16 Nov 2012, 2:24 am

An example that your geographical location plays a major part on your belief system.

To argue his faith was weak, is to ingore the reality of the situation he found himself in. Religion only works on "mob" mentality and his isolation from the mob resulted in true self awareness and you don't need faith for that.

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