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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Cristian Andreu" data-source="post: 6692248" data-attributes="member: 23822">We are speaking about magic that is uncommon, performed by people that are uncommon, in worlds with extremely limited and unreliable means of divulgation. Furthermore, we're speaking of Medieval levels of scholasticism here when it comes to spellcasters and their knowledge, and that's in the very best of scenarios, not post-Industrial Revolution peer-reviewed intellectual networks with an established and expansive reach within a society that has adopted Empiricist values at its core.The degree of exposure this type of information could get to the general public would be minimal (certainly not something most low-level PCs would get, unless they happen to be in particular contexts that propitiate it), and even then there's the barrier of credibility: How does a regular person, or even a mildly heroic low-level PC, get any assurances that the information they read on a grimoire written by a guy called Spectaculor the Magnificent is to be trusted? And we're not just speaking of cooking recipe levels of trust here; we're talking of enough credibility as to make someone change his worldview regarding divinity.The social paradigms within the typical pseudo-Renaissance -in the more sophisticated cases- or borderline Neolithic -in the more primitive ones- D&D realms could hardly be said to place the same level of trust in intellectual authority as our current one. It would be reasonable to expect there would be groups and elites in most D&D worlds were the word of an important Magister in Artribus of a magical university would be considered authoritative enough as to treat as law, but those would remain in the minority. And even in those cases there's still the Athar argument that the gods are not necessarily divine, but instead immensely powerful. Traditional magic would not be sufficient to entirely discard that view.Considering the above, I cannot agree that a regular person, nor a low-level PC, would have to be delusional to consider an atheistic perspective. There is enough room not just for justifiable doubt in divine-supporting data, but for said data to not even reach the person in the first place.</blockquote>

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