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Message: <blockquote data-quote="s/LaSH" data-source="post: 900994" data-attributes="member: 6929">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.</blockquote>

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