Calling “warding off spirits” a “religion” is splitting hairs in my book. Fear of evil spirits is not the same thing as praying to a supernatural being, believing in Heaven and Hell and life after death IMHO.
Sure about that?
Also from your own link:
they do believe in spirits that can sometimes take on the shape of things in the environment. These spirits can be jaguars, trees, or other visible, tangible things including people.[[link deleted]) Everett reported one incident where the Pirahã said that “ 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.” Everett and his daughter could see nothing and yet the Pirahã insisted that Xigagaí was still on the beach.
Here’s some more:
https://pib.socioambiental.org/en/Povo:Pirahã .
They possess an elaborate naming system intimately connected with their cosmology. Even before birth, while still in the maternal womb, they receive their first name: this name is believed to be responsible for the creation of their bodies. During life, they receive further names from beings dwelling in higher and lower layers of the cosmos, responsible for the creation of their souls and destinies, as well as names from war enemies.
[ . . .]the abaisi beings who inhabit the cosmos. While the names linked to conception, origin names, are responsible for the creation of its matter, its support, the ibiisi (body), the names linked to the abaisi beings are related to its ‘soul,’ ‘destiny’ names.
The dead have an important role in the naming process. While the abaisi compete to provide names to give to the ‘soul’ or the possibility of a posthumous destiny, the dead in general compete for the responsibility to appear in the shamanic ritual, representing the name of the abaisi and passing them, via the shaman, to the ibiisi.
[ . . . ]
There are two types of ritual: shamanism and festivals. Both have the intention of placing the social domain into relation with the supernatural domain, but shamanism is the society’s most important ritual, while festivals, qualified as ‘big’ and ‘small,’ are complementary rituals.Shamanism materializes the interactive process between the ibiisi and the abaisi and/or between the ibiisi and the abaisi, kaoaiboge and toipe. It is through the shaman and his performance that the encounter gains dramaticity and durability. The shaman ‘swaps places’ with the abaisi or with the dead by visiting their respective levels while the latter come to the Pirahã level. The shaman’s performance allows the society to increase and recuperate its onomastic legacy. Shamanism is a possible means for supplying society ‘new’ names. Their insertion in the onomastic is achieved by presenting abaisi names to the ibiisi for these to use them later in naming. Thus, the shaman is the base of the ritual, the only being capable of representing the entire cosmology in each session.
The ‘Big Festival’ and the ‘Little Festival’ have the same reason for existing: placing the cosmos in operation. In Pirahã perception, both rituals are performed with the intention of provoking sounds, making a noise, sufficient for the demiurge Igagai, dwelling on the second celestial level, to hear them, becoming aware of their existence and of the exact place where they are found.
Sure. You win. The Pirahã people have what might be considered a primitive “religion”. I’m not going to argue the point since you can define religion to be anything you want it to be. What does that have to do with feral animals having some kind of religion? As you suggesting that wolves get together at night and perform similar rituals to Amazonian tribesmen?
Leaving aside any discussion of the word “primitive”, or the problems with defining ‘religion’ as ‘exactly the type of religion the definer is used to’, I’m just going to repeat myself for the third time here:
No, I am not saying wolves have the same rituals as Amazonian tribesmen or New York women or any other group of people. I’m saying that, for instance but not limited to wolves or to this example, we don’t know what they’re thinking when they howl together, and that for all we know there are similarities to what people do when they sing hymns together. Similarities. Not the same thing.
As a zoologist I studied wolves in Northern California and learned that their howling,whether at night or during the day, is a common canine form of communication. Some dogs howl, and coyotes will yelp loudly when two packs meet up at night near my home in Montana.
The wolves are letting other wolves know where they are as a sign of territorial dominance (stay out of this area), or to attract a potential mate, or to signal to a lost pack member where they are. Has human singing been used at some point as something similar to canine communication? Perhaps. Human singing may have started by mimicking wild animals such as birds or wolves, but I’ve never seen any proof of that.
The fact that many different species of birds and mammals make sounds doesn’t signify anything special. Many terrestrial animals use both visual and audio cues to communicate with each other. If that was the only point you were trying to make then that has nothing to do with any non-human animals having any kind of religion, whatever you meant by “religion”.
And you know that none of that includes howls directed to a wolf ‘god’ how exactly?
Because there’s no reason to believe that’s happening, or that the howls are directed at a cat ‘god’ or a horse ‘god’. Since you can’t prove one way or the other you can make up any ‘god’ you want, but that doesn’t make it true.
@Jim_B, I’m curious about your thoughts in response to the dialoge, commentary and opinions presented in this thread.
I don’t see much support for your “scientific theory” presented, and I don’t think that you coming back would be a hijack.
Have you done any scientific experiments to support your theory? Still curious.
And humans go to church in order to confirm their group membership, to learn what other group members have been up to and where they are, to meet potential mates and to officially recognize such matings.
That’s the only sort of thing some people are doing there. But it’s not the only thing that happens there. How do we know that it’s the only thing that happens when wolves howl together?
I’m not going to bother quoting myself a fourth time here; though I’m beginning to doubt that different words will help, but I’ll give it a try. The point I was making about communication is that humans didn’t evolve language out of nowhere, but out of the forms of communication we share with other animals; and that I doubt we evolved religion out of nowhere either, but out of states of mind we quite possibly also share with other animals. ETA: Which does not require supposing that such states of mind must include belief in a specific entity definable as a ‘god’.
Has the OP ever returned to a thread he started? Maybe there was a time, and I just don’t recall it; otherwise I’d be curious to know why he doesn’t and whether he reads the responses.
Perhaps, but it seems to me that we need to find evidence that show animals doing acts on a regular basis that benefit other members outside the immediate group an animal belongs to, while it also benefits their own members too.
This is because IMHO to have religion humans in early civilizations had to transcend items like the Dunbar number.. Our big brains really did not need to get organized religion until we had to gather in big numbers and then to get assurances that the town next door had the same or similar codes of behavior.
Thing is that in small numbers members of a tribe did not need to have religion or have one with little complications because they really do not need faith about a member doing his/her duty or not. Because they knew already how he or she was likely to act. Once the number of members increased, then a problem arose: how did they know that a new member or new neighbors would follow the codes of the clan? Then rituals, prayers and other items had to be demonstrated to be known to assure others. This shortcut to maintaining cohesion among a numerous group stood until big nations with more secular outlooks became the norm.
But before we digress further.
I only wanted to mention that before going back to the issue about any budding religions among animals, because I do think that we need some evidence of animals showing behavior that besides not being genetically coded; it also points at something or someone bigger than what they are, and that transcends the number of beings their brains allows them to relate to.
Who here has said that non-human animals are likely to have anything we’d call “organized” religion? Certainly not me. Are you even reading what I am saying?
I wish critters had religion, so all coyotes could Go To Hell.
I think you did miss that I was referring to the human case, but then after looking at that, that we had to go to the more simplified animal world.
Ok, do not use “organized”, what simple items (like the Pirahna people using amulets) are observed among animals?
Remember, grokking the concept that there was someone bigger than you out there, and that it can squash you like a grape if you do not follow some group rules, is something even primitive religions had.
I’m not talking about tool using. I’m not talking about human religion. I have tried my damndest to make that clear. I’m talking about emotional states that may be connected to those involved with human religions. They may well have to do with connections within groups. They may well have to do with developing feelings of trust within [ETA: and sometimes between] groups. That doesn’t require either amulets or awareness that something can “squash you like a grape”; which in any case are two separate issues.
And there is no such thing currently existing as a “primitive” religion. All current human societies are the result of exactly the same number of years of evolution. Different religions and different societies have developed in different directions; that doesn’t make an amulet more “primitive” or more “simple” than a cross.
Me too, I’m only checking if you can point at what you are talking about with connections within groups or feeling of trust, because that in reality is not religion. The reason why one has to look back at what Humans did go trough with their evolution of religion is to then see what behavioral evidence we can see in animals that could be similar to what Humans did go trough or evidence of what you call animal religion.
@Omar_Little Oh, on the contrary, I have found the responses to my OP very enlightening (though I have to tell you, my attention drifted a little on the more intellectual posts).
No, my theory is purely an internal one. In other words, I haven’t tested it or done much experiments along those lines. I think that I read somewhere that the ancient Greek scientists said external experiences are treacherous at best. I don’t know if that would apply here. But that’s interesting.
BTW, I might as well say. Wasn’t there an experiment with Pigeons and religion? I couldn’t find the link. But I recall, Pigeons were somehow randomly rewarded for something. And that they somehow turned into a religion? Does anyone know what I am talking about? This is not exactly what I was talking about. But it could more generally answer the question if animals are capable of religious beliefs.
Oh, and I always monitor my threads. I may not always reply. Frankly I might not always understand your replies. But that is perfectly alright too. And I am sure that I am not the only one 
.
@GIGObuster: I can’t tell whether you’re agreeing with me or disagreeing with me. I’m talking about a primarily emotional phenomenon within the mind that is useful for connections and trust within groups but is not identical with them, and which I strongly suspect but cannot prove exists in some form in other species as well as in our own, though quite possibly not in an identical form. Whether you call that religion or not I suppose is up to you, because we don’t have a clear definition of human religion. To me, it’s an essential original component of human religious response, though some organized religions may wind up just going through the motions without having it and certainly some practitioners of organized religions do that. And I’m not calling it “animal religion”.
I don’t think it’s possible to settle the question of what form, if any, of this exists in which other species by looking at behavioral evidence. It’s not possible to look at a human who’s gazing into the distance, or gazing at something in particular for that matter, and tell whether they’re in a religious trance, or consciously thinking about theology, or wondering where they’re going to find dinner, or daydreaming about last night’s dinner, or what. Because humans have human language, we can ask them. Because other species don’t have human language, we can’t ask them; though we can presume that whatever they’re thinking about, it doesn’t have to fit into human language. Studies of neurology and brain chemistry may eventually give us some clue; as they can give us a clue that a human and a dog nuzzling each other may have similar endorphin activity.
Is not disagreeing or not, we are in the “what are your definitions?” phase, remember that in this case it does depend on you as it is your Speculation, and in that reply there is more clarification.