Atheism in DnD Campaigns

[am181d]

Real world atheists don't generally believe in ANYTHING supernatural, but a D&D atheist would presumably have to.

In a standard D&D game, it's hard to deny the existence of really, really powerful beings with the power to grant spells. But that's a long way from being gods. Did these "beings" create the universe? Do all natural phenomenon and ideas flow from them? Do they determine mankind's destiny?

BUT the much more common archetype in myth and fantasy is the Heretic. The one who defies the god. Who questions whether they are deserving of worship. Especially in world's with capricious Greek-style gods, this view can be extremely compelling.

 

[Black Omega]

Sooo.... isn't the aforementioned Bob the Wizard a god?

If not, why not?

When he can grant divine spells to his clerics, I'd say he's probably a god. Just being powerful doesn't seem to do it or Elminster would be a god, instead of an annoying old man. But this also depends on the campaigjn world. In Forgotten Realms and other games where spells are granted by the Gods, it's easy to answer. In a game where the power of faith produces the spells, it's a bit trickier.

Frankly, B in the hypothetical discussion is a bit dense and falling prey to all the classic cheap debate tricks. It's a good chuckle, though.

 

[Sir Whiskers]

*Ever had someone play an atheist?*

Not that I can remember, but I once played a superhero who didn't believe in magic (even though the group included a hero with arcane powers). There are always people who are exceptions.

*How do you have the clergy of various Gods react to them?*

Depends on the specific religious organization. For example, early christians did not believe in other gods and refused to participate in any such ceremonies. Most pagan temples had no problem with this, but the roman emperors - who claimed to be gods - certainly did. Also, to flip things around, christian churches throughout much of the last 2,000 years have not taken kindly to those of other faiths, including atheism. It really comes down to the specific institution.

*I am curious because I have seen many people argue that atheism is an impossible concept in DnD since there is quite obviously gods. One could easily argue though that the gods are merely extremely powerful beings who can be wrong and can be killed, thus are not really gods.*

Two points here:
1) There are always individuals who dispute things that everyone else sees as self-evident, e.g., the moon landings were faked. If gods exist and interact on a regular basis in a particular campaign, atheists are likely to be very rare and not always rational. The more distant the gods, the more likely atheism, or something similar, would exist. I suspect it would still be very much a minority view - if you look at the real world, I don't know anyone who's seen a real god walking down the street, but atheists are consistently less than 5% of total population. Active intervention by deities doesn't seem to be a prerequisite for belief in them (at least among humans).

2) The typical DnD setting presumes the constant and active presence of "gods" (whatever definition we use). But the game system does not require them. As others have posted, a campaign can be run without gods - in my currrent campaign, arcane and divine spellcasters draw power from the same source (the world is alive and full of power), but in different ways, which explains their different spell lists. There are creation myths, legends of powerful beings, and so on, but no active deities. A DM just has to rule zero a few of the core rules on clerics to make this work.

 

[Kahuna Burger]

well, I'll throw in my 2 cents, I suppose. Dream topic for me, you could say... In no particular order of general points :

Even commune, does not (IMO) require an actual diety. Mechanically the spell can work exactly the same with the flavor text changed. The cleric expands his mind into the realm of omniscence, kept focused and sane by the mental exercise of "talking to his diety and asking a question". Considering the overlap in effect, but complete difference in flavor text between meditation, hypnotism, prayer and easy listening music, its not a stretch at all. In fact, atheism could easily be the default for non-alligned clerics. "Yes, I suppose its easier in some ways for you to form your powers out of a premade framework and the belief that you are merely channelling another... Intellectually lazy and spiritually stunting, but if thats what you need to do the work, well, it works for you...."

Atheism does not require an explaination for "supernatural" events. It requires only that one consider "god" to be a less satisfactory one than "I don't know".

I would boil down the major confusion over definitions of gods and call a god "a being worthy of worship". Atheists do not disbelieve the sun or the emporer of Japan when encountering people who worship them as gods. And yet, even when someone defines "god" to them as "the sun" they don't stop being atheists. So a person in a standard D&D setting who veiwed the gods as "merely" powerful beings who mucked in human affairs would IMHO be an atheist. Anyone who thinks that's too much spliting hairs on the semantics of the words should spend half an hour on alt.atheism. Or not, your head might pop from the layers of definition that go on there.

I'm a big fan of the "gods created by their worshippers, not the other way around" theology as a basis for fantasy. Most of the populous and even the gods themselves don't have to be aware of that relationship, of course. (Small Gods is a must, IMHO if you are looking at alternate theologies for your worlds.)

If you haven't heard of the God of the Gaps theory, its very applicable to this sort of conversation. If one is inclined to believe in g/God(s), one will find that unexplainable gap to put it/them in. If one for whatever reason is not so inclined, no gap it too big to hold open with an "I don't know yet" to stop g/God(s) from slipping in. To assume that an atheist in a D&D world must be a crackpot is quite frankly lack of creative thought. It could easily be the default of wizards and druids.

Final thought - From an internal D&D world view, how could you convince a sorcerer who thought his powers were divine that this wasn't the case? Or a Bard who psychologically could not cast spells except through hymns?

Kahuna Burger

 

[Kahuna Burger]

Real world atheists don't generally believe in ANYTHING supernatural, but a D&D atheist would presumably have to.

I'm afraid you're wrong. I've known many atheists both in person and on line, and there are those who believe in psi, ghosts, reincarnation, Reiki and a whole host of other things. "Fundamentalist atheists" may attempt to deny them "membership" ut they are perfectly possible and all out there.

originally posted by Sir Wiskers
I suspect it would still be very much a minority view - if you look at the real world, I don't know anyone who's seen a real god walking down the street, but atheists are consistently less than 5% of total population

On the subject of atheism in what we laughingly call the real world, the 5% figure is based only on america and is low for there (Since, IIRC several non beleiving groups are listed seperately, even if they are functional atheists.) Please don't take it seriously. Also, the more humans can "suplant" the role of the gods, the more atheism you're likely to get. It could be much higher when someone can say "there are no gods" then fry a cleric with a fireball.

Kahuna Burger

 

[willpax]

In the Medieval world, a common definition of atheist was "someone whose actions reveal that he or she does not think there is a God." That is, the matter of the existence of God was not in question for most people, but some people acted as if Divine Judgment was not something they needed to be concerned about.

I think that kind of atheist is very possible in a D&D world: "there may be Gods, but why should I care? I won't bother them, and they won't bother me."

Incidentally, in the Mediterranean basin in classical times, tolerance levels varied. Many polytheists believed that most gods were local, and it was accepted practice to appease the local gods, even if you personally were deveoted to another god. That model doesn't work so well with D&D, where there are multiple Gods who are more or less universal (in most campaigns).

By the way, one reason the early Christians got into trouble was their refusal to pay the proper respects the the local gods (which would have had about the same significance as the pledge of allegiance has for most American school children, if my sources are correct). The Jews, by strength of their ancient faith, could be forgiven for not participating (as well as doing strange things like not working on one day out of seven), but the Christians were newfangled, and their refusal to appease the gods placed the safety of the entire community in danger (according to contemporary Roman thinking).

So, as a longabout answer to the original question, the attitude that other worshippers would take would depend on their understanding of the role of the god. If this god is responsible for getting the crops in and keeping the town from perishing in a catastrophe, and someone not participating would risk the wrath of the god, then people will be much less accommodating than they would be otherwise.

For those campaigns that have racial gods--I imagine that Garl Glittergold might be hard pressed to care less what non-gromes think, and that attitude might be shared by the followers.

 

[AEtherfyre]

When he can grant divine spells to his clerics, I'd say he's probably a god.

And if Bob found a way to grant spells to clerics?

If the supernatural abilities are what make a god, the term "god" doesn't mean much - it's just a measure of power. Which brings us back to the "Do you believe in kings?" analogy. If there's something beyond the powers - granting spells to clerics, smiting people - what is it? And what makes it beyond Bob the Wizard's hypothetical reach? Why does it demonstrate that Gods are more than pumped-up outsiders?

I'm not saying that there aren't such things as gods in a given campaign - but that, for the most part, the only thing a person will see is a demonstration of power. If their definition of "god" extends past the demonstration of power, and in many cases it easily could, than they can be an atheist quite easily.

This is, of course, especially true for such individuals as Bob the Wizard - who could easily believe themselves capable of assuming the power and positions of the putative gods, and so believe the gods to be no more than powerful beings, and rivals.

 

[fusangite]

Many of the points I wanted to make already have been but I'll wade in and make a few of them slightly differently, risking possible repetition.

Clearly, it is impossible for a character to deny the existence of very powerful magical entities but this is not the same as atheism. In refuting Roman polytheism, Saint Augustine argued that the so-called gods were not so much non-existent as misunderstood -- they were not, in fact, gods with the power to create but rather created beings -- fallen angels (demons and incubi). Thus, the divinity of these gods was denied without their existence being denied.

But one could go even farther and deny the existence of these gods, arguing that, in fact, religious rituals -- spells and liturgy are, in fact, remnants of a powerful kind of magic, the knowledge of which has been lost. Both arcane and divine magic could be viewed as vestiges of a great science that understood how to manipulate the basic energies of the universe through specific rituals and procedures. One could look at the relationship between divine magic and real magical science in much that between medieval alchemy and modern chemistry. Thus, the various somatic motions, material components and spoken words that comprise spells might be a combination of the vestiges a scientific procedure intermixed, over time, with random mumbo-jumbo that has nothing to do with them.

Thus, I don't see a reason to state, even with the existence of the cleric class, to argue that gods must exist in D&D on a mechanical level.

All that stated, however, there are no atheists in my campaign world. This is because religion has various other vital functions that a pre-modern culture cannot do without. Religions define the social contract; they provide the structural backbone for cultures; they are portable mutual aid networks; they offer necessary parallel hierarchies to the purely secular; they provide not only cosmological explanations for the world but also explicate social realities, etc, etc.

Thus, I would argue that while D&D campaigns might be able to survive without gods, they really cannot survive without religion. Thus, returning to the subject of philosophy in the Classical world raised by others, Platonism had to give way to Neoplatonism.

 

[s/LaSH]

How much supernatural activity does the average citizen see in their life?

How often is the average citizen told that gods with supernatural abilities exist? (What is the cultural baseline? Is there any foundation whatsoever for atheism?)

Factor these two elements together, and you have a fairly good model for the proportion of atheists in a population. My reckoning is that there will be hardly any - there is no social basis for atheism to get people started on atheism; there is little experience with awe-inspiring deeds of supernatural power; most things that are incomprehensible to the average peasant get described as Acts Of God/s.

Further, as gamers we're naturally a little blase about the supernatural. But imagine for a moment that a celestial walks past your window. Do you say, "Gee, a man with wings, I wonder how he made them?" or "Ahh! The light! My mind is ablaze with supernatural terror! This thing is surely more than mortal!" Simply seeing things doesn't make them normal; divine deeds, in particular, will speak to the souls of all those present. It's rather hard to deny something's divinity when evidence of it is staring you straight in the soul. (Aura of menace ability. I'm sure it would affect mere mortals to some degree or another.)

Which brings me to my third point: metagaming. Players know that gods have limits on their powers. Some might even know what those limits are. But should their characters know this? There is no in-game reason for a god to admit to anything less than total invulnerable omnipotence (perhaps tempered by some deity higher in the pantheistic heirachy).

So to sum up: From the perspective of the man on the ground, there are gods, they can do whatever they want, and there's no evidence to show otherwise. The case isn't good for atheism.

 

[Umbran]

How much supernatural activity does the average citizen see in their life?

Good question - remember that by the DMG, a small town of 1,000 people is going to have a wizard and a sorcerer in it...

Factor these two elements together, and you have a fairly good model for the proportion of atheists in a population. My reckoning is that there will be hardly any - there is no social basis for atheism to get people started on atheism; there is little experience with awe-inspiring deeds of supernatural power; most things that are incomprehensible to the average peasant get described as Acts Of God/s.

Oh? What about an act of the Necromancer of the North Tower? You seem to be forgetting that people of power are going to be living in the major communities. Stories of these people will propogate. If anything, this will water down the tendency to ascribe things to the gods.

When 500 workmen at the kings new castle site have seen Whizbhang the Wonderful use stone shape and move earth spells, why do we need so much attributed to the gods? When adventurers are running around slaying dragons (rather than having Marduk do all the dragon wrestling), then I'd expect people to start to wonder where the line between great adventurers and the gods is drawn...