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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5726794" data-attributes="member: 4937">Religious questions play a big role in my own campaign (not surprisingly, since I'm religious in real life).  Atheism per se doesn't really exist in my homebrew, as there is manifest daily evidence for the existance of the gods.  However, the fundamental questions related to atheism like uncertainty, rejection of the divine, the nature of the divine, and the proper relationship of man to the divine are huge parts of my campaign.While everyone knows that the gods exist, lots of fundamental questions about them don't have definitive answers in the mortal sphere (and to some extent in the immortal sphere).  For one thing, just what are the gods, and where do they come from?   There are standard explanations, but not everyone accepts the standard story.   The orthodox story is that the gods created man, but some believe that the relationship is the other way around.  There are even bigger debates about the proper relationship to the divine.  Some suggest that well, they are just a higher order of nobility and essentially the relationship ought to be as you might have to your leige.  Thus, a mortals authority could concievably overrule divine authority.  Others argue that the station of the gods is so much higher than man that there is no comparison.  Some on the other hand say that power ought to be no basis of judging authority, and therefore mortals and gods are in a philosophical sense equals and should treat each other as such.  A few groups believe that the gods are basically tyrants and that mortals would be better off without them, and failing that, should at least try to have as little to do with them as possible.There are also questions even in the orthodox community about whether some or even all gods retain their legitimate authority.  After all, its accepted by even most of the orthodox community that the gods are also created beings.  If the gods are in rebellion against their own rightful leige, whether this is another god or the unknown creator, then is it right for mortals to swear allegiance to a traitor.   Some groups accept that basically all gods are worthy of worship (or at least useful to worship) while others pronounce various factions of the gods to be anathemas and unworthy of worship.   Which prompts other groups to say, "Who are you to be passing judgment on the gods?"  Some groups claim all the gods are anathemas.The problem is complicated by the fact that the various gods for their own reasons promote each of these different views.  If there is a trickster god out there going, "No we aren't real.", is he lying or telling the truth?  If one god says, "Don't worship me; all relationships should be peer relationships made on the basis of mutual advantage." and another says, "I am your rightful king.", then you have to make a choice about what you are going to believe.As a result of all of this, religious contriversy is no less of a problem and maybe even more of a problem in the fantasy world than it is in the real world.  Simply knowing the existance of the gods for a fact doesn't in fact turn out to help answer the question, "Who am I and what is my place in the universe?", if only because there is more than one god out there and none that seem definitive.</blockquote>

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