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<blockquote data-quote="FormerlyHemlock" data-source="post: 6691802" data-attributes="member: 6787650">But &quot;Atheism&quot; is a real-world term which doesn't exist in D&amp;D either, so we can apply real-world standards in evaluating whether it's appropriate in D&amp;D. I mean, maybe the Common word is &quot;Elot&quot; and we just render it as &quot;gods&quot; in English. And a player who says he's an atheist is saying he doesn't think that's a good translation into English, and he thinks Elot are just Elot, powerful NPCs with magic. He doesn't necessarily have to have a Common word for &quot;atheist&quot;, he just needs to convey an atheist's attitude towards Elot.But most people don't distinguish between in-game concepts like Common and out-of-game concepts like English, we just pretend that English = Common and that real-life definitions of things like &quot;atheism&quot; are directly translatable to in-character ideas.If you grow up in a world where normal people can produce hugely powerful magical effects through skill and experience, and someone tries to tell you that Pelor is not just a spellcaster but something qualitatively different called a &quot;god&quot;, how receptive do you think you're going to be to that argument? Which is why most wizards IME are not religious. Especially not the ones who pursue demi-lichdom. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":-P" title="Stick out tongue&nbsp; &nbsp; :-P"&nbsp; data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":-P" /></blockquote>

[QUOTE="FormerlyHemlock, post: 6691802, member: 6787650"] But "Atheism" is a real-world term which doesn't exist in D&D either, so we can apply real-world standards in evaluating whether it's appropriate in D&D. I mean, maybe the Common word is "Elot" and we just render it as "gods" in English. And a player who says he's an atheist is saying he doesn't think that's a good translation into English, and he thinks Elot are just Elot, powerful NPCs with magic. He doesn't necessarily have to have a Common word for "atheist", he just needs to convey an atheist's attitude towards Elot. But most people don't distinguish between in-game concepts like Common and out-of-game concepts like English, we just pretend that English = Common and that real-life definitions of things like "atheism" are directly translatable to in-character ideas. If you grow up in a world where normal people can produce hugely powerful magical effects through skill and experience, and someone tries to tell you that Pelor is not just a spellcaster but something [I]qualitatively different[/I] called a "god", how receptive do you think you're going to be to that argument? Which is why most wizards IME are not religious. Especially not the ones who pursue demi-lichdom. :-P [/QUOTE]

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