Losing Religion to the Amazonian Piraha Tribe – Daniel Everett
Written by admin on July 25, 2010 in Chair
Tags: Amazonian, Daniel, Everett, Losing, Piraha, Religion, Tribe
Complete video at: fora.tv Linguistics professor Daniel Everett explains the idea of “xibipiio,” a way of life he encountered while studying the language of the Amazonian Piraha tribe. Everett, a former Christian missionary, was challenged to rethink his faith after learning the Piraha’s concept of experiential liminality. —– Professor Daniel Everett, author of Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes, discusses the importance of preserving dying languages. He describes his experience living with the Piraha people in Brazil, and explores what Piraha, both the people and the language, can teach us about human nature. – The Long Now Foundation Daniel Leonard Everett (born 1951 in Holtville, California) is a linguistics professor best known for his study of the Amazon Basin’s Piraha people and their language. He currently serves as Chair of the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures at Illinois State University in Normal, Illinois. He previously taught at the University of Manchester and is former Chair of the Linguistics Department of the University of Pittsburgh.
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@angryafghan It says that christians are well educated and can get good paying jobs! o.O
Hell, I renounced Holocau$tianity(tm) back in 2003, so I don’t believe in the Holocau$t(tm), nor are the self-chosenites the Chosen People.
xtianity is another passing fad for me. Odin is All! 14/88!
great book, i am brazilian and would love to meet this guy.
Any thinking person can see that religion is just a bunch of lies used to control people. Only 15% of the world are thinkers. The rest have the less evolved brains like retarded people or small children. The real heroes are the ones who break away from this racist sexist homophobic religion that is based on a book written 2000 years ago by people who are even dumber than they are today.
Why is this tribes culture worth more than other tribes. Why is it wrong to drag them into this century? My tribe are curently beeing draged into sharia with the blessing of the UN. I say give them some muslim immigrants, if not they are rasists. Can’t have dubbel standard just becouse they got brown eyes.
@highwind8124
yeah I was expecting something more stimulating than what he pushed out his mouth.
but Highwind Im curious to hear your research about the bible/religion
I would like to read his book now. Interesting hw religion evolved into our culture.
I love their mastery of logic!
converting means changing the religion from one to another, but if a people doesnt have any religion this is a different situation and implies changing their culture in a fundamental way. we are talking about atheism vs religion instead of one religion vs another. amen
I wonder what is about the Piraha that makes them completely impervious to all missionary attempts to convert them to christianity, There have been many times throughout history where people have demanded proof for the claims of Christianity but still managed to be converted and successfully assimilated into Christianity.
Shouldn’t some people wake up and be sober after watching this vid?
@angryafghan lol so true
Again, what good would that information do them? They live satisfying lives by taking natural phenomena as “always-so things,” like the Fuzzies in H. Beam Piper’s stories. Religions which send out missionaries to harass people to convert not only violate the right to live your own peaceable life, but they also promote bad manners.
But Piraha aren’t the unique people without god.
LOL. EPIC. I want that language concept to become a part of every language. With it, we wouldnt have had the crusades, inquisitions, we wouldnt have the Muslim fundamentalists blowing each other up, or the Christian fundamentalists becoming teabaggers, and we wouldnt have professional liars. FOX (fake)news, most politicians, spin doctors or advertising companies couldnt survive for a full day! ^^
A note on Washington: We can look at this grave, or open his cryptic, this would certainly be technical information of his existence.
@conradjulian
Everett didn’t walk up to these people with a magical leprechaun type theory. He’s approaching an ignorant people with a possibility of how the world came to be which they have no scientific knowledge to controvert. I’d ask them how they know it didn’t happen, and then start from the point: “Oh, so it’s possible? Then, we should explore this to avoid possibly burning in hell, right?”
@conradjulian
Thank you! You take in data and try to account for exactly how you got it.
I’m not Christian. I actually do know a lot about how the Bible came o be. But the Piraha don’t. I could have pushed a ton of arguments on them. I don’t like how Everett uses none. The Piraha would be hard pressed to explain how the Gospels came to be. If Jesus didn’t say those profound things, then why would someone else come up with them and give him the credit for them?
“Hide your hand behind your back and ask them if they believe it exists.” The Piraha have that covered because they can deduce your hand’s existence behind your back from empirical evidence.
What good would a knowledge of “history” do for the Piraha, much less a foreign god belief? In their world, they live well adapted to their environment, and in harmony with their natural cycles. (They don’t need to buy and consume “energy drinks” when they get sleepy at the office in the afternoon, for example.) Their way of life isn’t broken, so it doesn’t need to be fixed.
@senateb
I’m an atheist, and I can do a shitload better
job debating the Piraha than he did.
Maybe we’re supposed to buy his book to
see how the Piraha handled other arguments
he posed.
I can’t believe he traveled all that way just to say
“Jesus made me happy”. That’s his best argument?
@senateb
Obviously, Jesus isn’t God, but come on,
use some arguments. Talk about how Jesus
had the toughest stance on materialism by
telling people to sell possessions and give to
the poor. Say something!
Old Testament prophecies, some C.S. Lewis arguments,
or ask them to explain how the religion got off the ground.
Ask them to explain if he didn’t exist, then why
would someone else credit an imaginary person
with his moral philosophies, rather than taking
credit for it themselves.
However if you were to logically examine evidence around you, a book by Plato, a picture of GW on a $, letters, carvings, pictures that mutually agree on the fact they existed, you can maybe believe it.
We don’t know that Plato existed. We technically can’t even know if Washington existed. There is evidence to suggest Washington, and maybe a man named Plato existed, tho
Whether Jesus was a historical figure is irrelevant, the Piraha’s wanted substantiation of his fantastic claims of divinity.
Well, like he said, you can see something, hear about it from someone, or deduce it from the evidence.
I honestly don’t think an unbiased person who researched the Bible’s origins and finds out that it was printed many years after the fact, by authors who never make their names known, who write AS IF they were present during said events, with historical errors and internal inconsistency would logically deduce this is an inerrant holy document. Without faith, it would not withstand logic.justIMO
“The Pirhas don’t believe what they can’t see.” Oh, bullshit. Hide your hand behind your back and ask them if they believe it exists.
Of course they fucking would. They use REASON, whether they want to admit it or not. Remember that, Everett? You can reason what happened in the past.
His argument for atheism is as fucking weak as his argument for Christianity to the Piraha. Even I wouldn’t do something as stupid as laugh at a possibility that had no evidence.