D&D 5E Atheism in DnD

[transtemporal]

I'm working on a pantheon for my new campaign and one of my players asked if a deity is mandatory and could he be atheist. He's Christian IRL so it's an interesting response.

Do you think its possible to be an professed atheist in a setting where there are clerics running around? You don't reject the gods and you're not sitting on the fence - you outright don't believe they exist despite hard evidence to the contrary.

If so, what does that mean when you die? Does the carpet get pulled out from under you and you get allocated to a plane anyway? Or do the gods get all petulant and send you to the hells?

 

[Mistwell]

Yes, I think it can work and be fun.

Does he think deities don't exist, or does he instead think they are frauds - mortals who achieved enough power that they are posing as superior beings when really it's more about their spells and magic items and minions and other elements of accumulated power? If he thinks they don't exist, does he think all magic is arcane in sourcing?

As for what happens when he dies - there is an interesting interpretation of the Prime Material Plane being an entity in it's own right. It's not a deity, it's just sentient. It knows it exists and can see itself. This is a concept contained with the Angels section of the "redoing the Monster Manual" articles that Zak Smith wrote. I think you can tie a post-mortality fate to that concept for an atheist. You can read it here.

 

[Andor]

It depends, on both the world and the GM.

For example in Eberron the gods exist but are very distant. Atheism, particularly in response to an event like the Mourning, is entirely defensible. What happens to you in the afterlife is probably no different than what happens to anybody else.

In the Forgotten Realms otoh there is a 50% chance that some god is crashing on your couch on any given tuesday. Furthermore it is explicit that in that world your soul goes into the godwall to be tortured and destroyed, because the gods are just cool like that. So in the Forgotten Realms atheism in the "I don't believe Torm exists." sense is unlikely. However it is defensible to acknowledge the existence and power of the gods, but to deny their divinity. They are just super-high level adventurers or some other powerful beings like dragons.

In Dark Sun the gods are dead. To believe in them get's you nothing but mockery. Note that there are gods elsewhere in the Cosmos, but their link to DS has been severed.

So... in summation, it depends on the campaign.

 

[Scorpio616]

If so, what does that mean when you die? Does the carpet get pulled out from under you and you get allocated to a plane anyway? Or do the gods get all petulant and send you to the hells?

In a typical D&D cosmology, souls typically go to the appropriate ALIGNMENT plane, so those who think Clerics are deluded magic users would still go to wherever they belong.

Specifically Forgotten Realms does punish the faithless.

TBH you might want to use your Real Life Sense Motive to get a feel if the player has any hang ups about even playing a character that believes in a deity other than his RL one. Or perhaps the player is projecting his own doubts onto his character.

 

[Nikosandros]

It really depends on the specific setting. In Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms an atheist character would be a delusional individual. You could however play someone who refuses to worhip any deity (even though in FR, nasty stuff happens to such characters after death).

In a setting such as Eberron, there's no direct evidence of the gods' existence and so an atheist character is feasible.

 

[Crothian]

Does he just not believe in gods or does he just believe that these so called gods are not really gods?

There are a few different ways to make this work. He could believe that there are no gods and the cleric gets his power from similar places that Wizards do. Magic is magic and it all really comes from the same place no matter what the caster believes. Just because clerics cast spells does not prove anything.

 

[Arial Black]

Unlike in real life, in most of our game worlds the gods exist and make a habit of going round to the houses of atheists and breaking their windows.

In our history, before 'monotheism' was a thing, different peoples believed that there were loads of gods, some in your pantheon and others in other pantheons. But who you actually worshiped was up to you, albeit influenced greatly by your culture.

For example, if you were an ancient Greek (known at the time as...'Greek'), then you most probably believed in the existence of all the gods/demi-gods etc. of the Olympian pantheon, but you paid respects to different gods at different times, depending on what you wanted at that moment. You probably believed that the gods of other pantheons existed (you may have thought that they were the same gods by different names), but the Egyptian gods were for the Egyptians, the Etruscan gods for the Etruscans, and so on.

I'd see this as an opportunity. Have a two-way conversation with the player, and thrash out what you both want to be true in your campaign, based on fun and fairness.

 

[Remathilis]

Tell him we're recruiting

https://planescape-center-of-all.obsidianportal.com/wikis/athar

 

[Shiroiken]

There are many ways to do this, depending on the setting. Most settings don't have the gods show up regularly (Realms is a notable exception), so doubt in the gods wouldn't be unheard of. Even in the Forgotten Realms, there is a wall in the underworld built of the souls of those who died without a divine patron. If the gods undoubtedly exist, they may not be believed in as true "gods," but simply powerful extra-planar beings. Some worlds, such as Dark Sun, have "gods" that few believe are real gods, so atheism would be more common.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Do you think its possible to be an professed atheist in a setting where there are clerics running around? You don't reject the gods and you're not sitting on the fence - you outright don't believe they exist despite hard evidence to the contrary.

Sure, people are fully capable of holding beliefs in the face of evidence that conclusively refutes those beliefs.

A more nuanced version of Atheism might accept the D&D the realities of divine spellcasting and extremely powerful extra-dimensional beings worshiped as gods, without believing they were actually everything they claimed (didn't create the world, for instance, or don't have a 'right' to be worshiped, or otherwise just play-acting the part, like Zardoz).

If so, what does that mean when you die?

Not much. You're dead. You still might come back: It's mostly the mortal casting the Raise Dead spell that's making the decision to bring you back, the gods probably aren't much concerned about your irrationality in life. Your corpse could still be animated or subjected to Speak w/Dead or whatever.

Does the carpet get pulled out from under you and you get allocated to a plane anyway? Or do the gods get all petulant and send you to the hells?

Devils would probably consider you unclaimed property and try to make off with your soul, sure. There also might be some merciful good-aligned deities inclined to forgive your disbelief if you were good enough in life. Limbo (the plane of Chaotic Neutrality) also strikes me as a likely destination - not sure why, it just does. Haunting the earth as ghost or other undead might be a possibility, too, if the gods are petulant enough to reject you from the afterlife, entirely.

Really, there's a broad range of possibilities that you, as DM, can decide upon. But the basic idea that the PC can willfully dis-believe in the gods in a universe where they objectively exist is not that much of a stretch.