Is atheism even possible?

[dren]

Atheism

Just because you see the workings of divine servants doesn't mean you would necessarily venerate them. Rather than the Athar's take on the power structure, I like the Guvners. In their viewpoint it's all about understanding the laws of reality and the loop holes, in a very pseudo-scientific or magical kind of way. The gods are just extremely powerful sods who have learned the powerful loop holes, given enough time, the Guvner's learn them too.

In fact, I have a group of like-minded individuals in my campaign who have rejected magic and the gods, believing they only need to believe in their own selves rather than the false faith of a god. They are called PSIONS!

 

[trancejeremy]

To quote Sartre

"Existentialism isn't so atheiestic that it wears itself out showing that God doesn't exist. Rather, it declares that even if God did exist, that would change nothing."

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

I would imagine that the real question for Atheists in DnD isn't how could one be an atheist, but why?

The advantages of having religion and prayer in your life in DnD are so obvious that they really outweigh many of the percived disadvantages of institutionalized/hierarchical religion in our world or theirs.

But, that doesn't mean that those disadvantages aren't still there.

Being an Atheist in DnD probably gives you a lot of the same benefits that being an Atheist in real life gives you. There is a less reason to pay attention to a wide variety of codes and institutions if one is an Atheist and the arguments are cool and you have less of a compulsion to pay money to or for various things, and being an Atheist enalbes one to be anti-clerical.

Think about it, clerics have got to be even more annoying in DnD than they are in real life. They are most likely even more inflexible over obviously subjective issues and more equipped with resources and good will by which to enforce their version of these issues on others.

An Atheist in this sense is godless in that he or she holds no allegiance to any god and is hostile to the very concept of doing so. Belief or disbelief is only secondary.

The one great difference between an Atheists situation in DnD and an Atheists situation in the real world is that in DnD an Atheist might experience the sort of existential doubt that almost universally plagues the religious in our world.

Or you could flip it the other way and look at the advantages a religious person sees in holding his or her point of view in an Atheistic society and then ascribe those to an Atheist in a similarly unpopular situation.

 

[Alzrius]

Second Edition had quite a few alternatives to god-worshipping clerics, and quite a bit to say on the subject of atheism as well.

The most famous example is Planescape's Athar faction, which denied that the gods were gods. Oh yes they were powerful beings who could smite you, but they weren't really deities. How could they be, when they needed worship to live, and could kill each other? The Athar factioners had powers allowing them to resist divine abilities, since their belief in the faults of the gods empowered them (on the planes, belief translates to reality). Its a secret that some Athar worship the Great Unknown of the Astral Plane and receive divine spells for it.

A slightly-related example was the offshoot of the Athar, the Godslayers. This Astral Plane-based group is dedicated to slaying deities, despite never having actually accomplished such a goal.

The old Cleric's Handbook for 2E mentions that clerics can worship a god, a force, or a philosophy. Forces are things like nature or entropy, and philosophies are things like the notion that mankind is divine in nature and must ascend. Examples of these came up again and again in the game.

Finally, the Guide to Hell reveals that any mortal who dies not only disbelieving the gods, but also disbelieving in any sort of afterlife has their soul go straight to Ahriman, where he slowly, painfully consumes it over the centuries to heal his wounds until he can crawl out of Hell and bring down the planes themselves.

In 3E, we haven't seen so much of any of this, but the seeds are there. Clerics don't need to worship a specific god; they can just be a godless cleric and still pick two domains.

The trick here seems to be in wondering if D&D-style atheism means denying the gods, or denying all divine spellcasters. It's one thing to shun the gods specifically, its quite another to turn your back on anyone who can cast a divine spell, whatever the source.

 

[Vargo]

I'm remembering something from Terry Pratchett's "Feet of Clay" - there was a clay golem that became it's own master, and refused to believe in the gods.

Now, if you remember anything about Discworld, the gods LOVE smiting mortals with lightning. Any excuse, they'll drop a bolt on yer butt.

Guess what doesn't conduct electricity?

 

[Olive]

To quote bakunin, from _God and The State_:

"If god was real, it would be neseccary to destroy him"

In D&D you'd bre silly to be an athiest, but being an anti-theist would be pretty reasonable, especially in a world where the gods interfered.

 

[Celtavian]

Re

Without turning this into a religious discussion, let's just say there wouldn't be much atheism nowadays if a gods power were so blatantly obvious as it is in a D&D world.

I don't think atheism is possible in a D&D world save for the insane. You really can't argue where the world came from and you really can't say people are deluded about miracles. There is no question that miracles and power are given by the gods. There is no question that there is an afterlife or a soul.

The basis for Atheism is science. Since science would show that gods do indeed exist with 100% certainty, there would be no basis for atheism to exist. I say with absolute certainty, that Atheism would not exist in a D&D world.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

Now there's an interesting question:

Could science in a DnD setting demonstrate the reality of the gods?

I'm not certain that it could as even in DnD, with the possible exception of clerics, divine interference is still interference in the natural order. Science as we know it cannot really account for such abberations too much of theory relies on constancy.

The more I think on it, the more it seems possible to me to be an atheist in a DnD world, though you'd have to have a fairly radical epistemology.

I mean chances aren't that high that you'll actually see a divine being. The priests get there powers from somewhere but they can't convince you it comes from that different a source than the wizards powers. Maybe there are things that priests and wizards can talk to, but again there is no proof that such things really affect peoples' lives except in the rare circumstance that the priests get together and put on a show for the people. Even the testimony of the dead could be cleverly faked or just represent the point of view of a few dead who got shunted off and/or simulated someplace.

There's no real reason to believe in deities since all of the physical and magical laws of the universe function without their constant intercession, least as far as you can see.

All a scam by the churches to take power and keep their secret magics away from the free-thinking wizards.

This might be a little more difficult stance to take in Faerun where some of the magical laws of the universe do have personification, but in most places you could hold this position. Scarred Lands would also be very difficult, but these are lands with exceptionally high levels of divine interference in their recent history.

You'd probably end up being a jerk about it from time to time, but that's true of most deeply held beliefs.

 

[haiiro]

One of the 2e games I ran during high school was set in a homebrew world wherein the existence of the gods was a matter of debate. Priests still got their spells, and their magic worked in the same way, and they believed their magic came from the gods -- but they couldn't prove it. There were no clear manifestations of divinity (as there would be in the average D&D world), and certainly no avatars wandering around or other direct interactions with the gods. Most people believed in the gods, but there were some (mostly scholars) who did not.

I wanted this to be mainly a flavor change, and it had no practical bearing on the game (which didn't last very long in any case). I hadn't thought about this in years, and remembering it now gives me all sorts of much more interesting ideas to play around with if I were to try something similar again -- particularly after skimming through Monte's Requiem for a God. Neat.

 

[GiantInThePlayground]

-There are no gods, but magic itself is flexible. Some people channel their power through arcane words, whereas others channel it through prayer. Presumably, a magically-inclined person who believed hard enough could channel their magic through tap-dancing. Oh yeah -- that's a bard! (scientific atheism)

This is exactly the situation of my home campaign world. I'd always hated DMing gods and churches, so I when I returned to playing D&D with 3E, I jettisoned the gods entirely. Clerics gain their powers from the strength of their belief and in the collective belief of others in a single philosophy, as defined by their Domains. So a cleric with the War domain spreads the teachings of waging war among the populace, because the more warlike people there are, the more magical power they can tap into. Anyway, I've been running it for 3 years now and it works just fine. If anything, it keeps me from getting lazy and making the BBEG yet another evil cleric of an evil god.

Also, even in a standard D&D world, one could disbelieve anything one wanted to. Few people have ever stood face-to-face with a god; it could all be a huge trick by the clerics. In fact, the more gods make themselves known, the more some people would adopt the "antitheist" point of view. The existence of real provable gods almost guarantees the existence of antitheists; there's always someone who wants to bring down the guy on top!