So by your "logic" in this country where Atheists are shunned and mocked, at least half who believe in God pretend to be Atheists so they can be outcasts. Wouldn't it be more logical that it is the "believers" who would be more likely to pretend they believe for social acceptance when they actually don't believe? So if 50% of Atheists will pretend for social rejection, at least 99% of believers will pretend for social acceptance. So all those successful "spiritual" civilizations are actually mostly Atheistic and all the failed Atheistic civilizations are at least half spiritual.The problem, though, is that there's no reason to believe we've actually seen a human civilization in which the people were not religious or spiritual in general. In fact, according to your own stated beliefs, this is true.
What you really seem to be saying is that governments which punish or attempt to prevent spirituality fail. That is an entirely different proposition.
But there have been civilizations where spirituality was squelched, not allowed, punished by death, etc. They all failed. Humans are intrinsically spiritual, so that's the only way you can have a non-spiritual civilization. Now, I am all for rounding up you atheist non-believers and shipping you off to your own deserted island somewhere to see if you can make a non-spiritual civilization work... but I am willing to bet you'd fail. Of course, we'd have to first sort out the true non-believers from the ones who claim they don't believe but really do. That's at least half of the Atheists by my estimation.
most of who we see posting here are not true Atheists, they are God-haters who claim they are Atheists but actually just have a chip on their shoulder about God. They resent God and the people who worship God, for various reasons.
The 33% Atheists include about 17% who believe it's possible something may exist greater than self. Another 10% are not sure one way or the other, and the remaining approximate 6% were willing to state they do not believe it is possible that anything greater than self exists. This seems to coincide with study after study which show only about 5% of the human population are Nihilist.
Now there are lots of civilizations recorded in human history, but we have no example of a long-term civilization existing without spirituality. If there were such an example, it would be the very first word out of every Atheist's mouth when entering these type of debates.
Why do I resent god?
Sure it's possible. Anythings possible. Just not likely or probable.
So every society that has failed was spiritual?