In a recent post at the blog Astral Codex Ten, a writer reviewed a book written by a young Catholic missionary about his time with a tribe in the Amazon rainforest whose language and culture are structured around lived experience rather than a discussion of things that might have theoretically happened (the Piraha language has other peculiarities as well, including the fact that they use no numbers or names for colours):
The men listening to me understood that there was a man named Jesus, and that he wanted others to do what he told them. “The Pirahã men then asked, “Hey Dan, what does Jesus look like? Is he dark like us or light like you?” I said, “Well, I have never actually seen him. He lived a long time ago. But I do have his words.” “Well, Dan, how do you have his words if you have never heard him or seen him?” They then made it clear that if I had not actually seen this guy (and not in any metaphorical sense, but literally), they weren’t interested in any stories I had to tell about him. This is because, as I now knew, the Pirahãs believe only what they see. Sometimes they also believe in things that someone else has told them, so long as that person has personally witnessed what he or she is reporting.
In the end, Everett never converted a single Pirahã. But he did even worse than converting zero people according to Scott Alexander — he lost his own faith after coming to believe that the Pirahã had a good point. After keeping this to himself for many years, he revealed his loss of faith to his family, which led to a divorce and his children breaking contact with him for a number of years afterward.