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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8348815" data-attributes="member: 42582">This thread, including my post 126, has been treating existentialism as atheistic. But that isn't necessarily the case.Kierkegaard is generally interpreted as an existentialist. One of his basic concerns is that most people inherit their faith/religion from their community - and so will normally be Christians if Danish (as he was), Muslim if Afghani, etc. Hence their conviction is in a certain sense not genuine but a product of convention. He saw the existential "leap" as required not because of the valuelessness of the universe as such, but because of the gap between conventional religious conviction and genuine faith.And there are other forms of Christian existentialism - eg one of my favourite authors is Graham Greene, and I see his work (especially in novels like The End of the Affair) as Catholic existentialism. Part of his concern is how we come to engage with God - which (consistent with existentialism more generally) he treats as a problem of being and of relationships between beings (especially being for others) rather than just as a problem of knowledge.[spoiler=The End of the Affair]The protagonist is trying to work out why his lover has left him. It turns out that, when she thought he was dying, she prayed that he would live, and promised God that she would give up anything, even him, if he were to survive. Which he did. The protagonist begins the story as an atheist but over its course encounters representations of God as he engages with various aspects of his (former) lover's life. And at the end he realises that he hates God for taking her from him. And hating God, is in a theistic relationship with Him and hence no longer an atheist.[/spoiler]In the context of FRPGing - not necessarily S&S - I think it should be possible to put these matters of faith or conviction front-and-centre. Burning Wheel has some aspects of the way it handles the Faith emotional attribute that do this. Thinking about it, it could also be something to explore in Dark Sun (given the premise of the abandonment by the gods rather than that they never existed). The challenge in D&D would be to handle this as more than just GM fiat, because GM fiat doesn't have the right element of coming to recognise oneself (ie the PC as played by the player) as a being in relation to the divinity.</blockquote>

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