Not sure they have gone extinct. If you consider the deep seated religious inclinations of most farmers, you have to take into account the randomness of their livelihood. When your existence revolves around weather, insect populations and genetics of animals, hoping there is some kind of supernatural force out there protecting you from the worst of those random issues, I would guess, provides a certain amount of comfort. Praying for rain or anything else may have the same effect as doing a rain dance or flipping a coin to a realist (which I feel describes my outlook), I can understand where it might give solace to someone who's very life depends on it.

@Matias -- With assertions such as this, what sort of discussion do you hope to elicit? Let's look at what you said and see how much if any sense can be made of it.

"Having a sense for reality and believing in gods, goblins or spirits of ancestors may be mutually exclusive from a scientific or logical point of view, but it is NOT contradictory from a more practical point of view."

Those two conditions; one of having knowledge of reality and the other of believing in imaginary things are not mutually exclusive scientifically. The posit you make has a built-in failure. Science deals with observation of what is, then attempts to explain the observation.

Observation: That human being chops and stacks wood for fuel to heat its habitat during the coming winter months. That human being is a realist. After finishing the task, it thanks the wood gods for providing the trees. That human being is now being unrealistic; superstitious. It is obvious from those observations that our sample is capable of being realistic and superstitious simultaneously.

As the sample is increased we find a range of observations from those who are total realists to those who are totally superstitious. We also find that we are unable to either falsify or quantify the differential in condition. All we can do is provide a means to quantify the group and we wind up with a curve that shows exceedingly few of each extreme at its ends and an average demonstrating a fairly even distribution of both traits. The best prediction we can hope to make is to suggest that the average of any random group will demonstrate this duality.

So, if we look at the definitions of the words we can find a logical exclusivity between them, but the observed condition eludes both science and logic. You would have been better off leaving out the science element and simply seeking a discussion on this aspect of the human condition. I was responding to the assertion, not the notion.

@Matias
If not fear, then I don't know the greatest aspect draw to Religion. What is the greatest aspect draw to Religion?

Once Pope Francis canceled hell. There has been a great shift or decline in Religious thinking to critical thinking.
Can't imagine a worst concept than Hell. Going to war, is not that much of a fear for Religion.

@Matias

When I talk to most Christians or when Pope Francis is denying the existence of hell. It's nonsense to me when hell is written as much as heaven in the Bible. The doctrine of hell is so frightening that numerous heretical sects end up denying eternal hell or modified the doctrine of hell so radically that it is no longer a serious threat.

My thoughts have change too. The doctrine of Nationaism is more dangerous than Religion, quoted by Richard Dawkins. Much of the world is run by fear, not in my world, it is run by love.

Slow clap to you, sir, for having the patience to rebut that silly statement in a careful and well-reasoned manner.

@Matias They do have myths, but no supreme being as stated. Also noted in the spirit belief system (animisim), it is not to be taken as the old form european one, or as the asian one, and is very different in affect.

While what your saying is true “Xigagaí, one of the beings that lives above the clouds, was standing on a beach yelling at us, telling us that he would kill us if we go into the jungle.”
That was in fact the Shaman, who lived oputside the tribe.
No one took his words as factual, that is no one actually believed that a being lived above the clouds and told him things
However they DID take into account that he had knowledge.

The Piraha have a truly alien perspectivce, a unique language, social structure and cultural motif which lacks a supreme being, a God.

Warnings like the one Everett mentions are oft used to warn people off from something they FEEL is dangerous and are unable to articulate why.

ALSO, I did not present them as "the example of a culture without religion"
I said "The Piraha people live in the Amazon and NEVER created any Gods for themselves"

You are reading God as Religion and conflating the two.

@Matias Unfounded?
You--"I was absolutely sure that someone would come up with the Piraha people! Because they are always presented as the example of a culture without religion."

My intiital point - "PS The Piraha people live in the Amazon and NEVER created any Gods for themselves.
Read "Don't sleep there are Snakes" The traditional "good night" greeting of the Piraha"

I did not mention religion. I mentioned Gods, as in Supreme beings.

NOR did I say that people cannot be both realist on one hand and magical thinkers on the other, I said it requies a compartmentalized mind. Belief in Enteties is THE explantion for all the things they do not grasp (like modern humans in developed countries) It is a God of the Gaps filler.

That does not make them Realists. It makes them, and modern Christians Muslims, or what have you, capable of realistic thought.

@Matias
If they claimed the were non believers the were burnt at the stake. Case closed !

@Matias
Curiosty killed the cat, did you not know ?

@Matias You are absolutely right, the rituals are useful, it creates community, but we can have the rituals without religion and spend the resources with the correct purpose and not because the guy that have a direct contact with the cosmic nany said so,