Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="fusangite" data-source="post: 786902" data-attributes="member: 7240">The only convincing FRP atheistic worldview I've seen was Greg Stafford's concept of the Malkioni sorcerors in Runequest. The sorcerors do a particular kind of magic which they consider to be "pure" magic; the other practitioners of magic in the world have essentially hit on rituals and procedures which allow them to channel magic without understanding why and how it works. This is akin to our recognition that medieval alchemists synthesized mineral acids and other chemicals premised on a completely erroneous understanding of chemistry. They just "lucked in" to a set of procedures which produced the right chemical reactions, reactions they, in fact, misinterpreted. But through sheer rote memorization of the procedures which brought about these reactions (sometimes containing unnecessary and unrelated steps), they were able to reliably synthesize mineral acids. Such, in the view of Malkioni sorcerors, is the lot of the foolish clerics who believe that their rituals are actually communicating with a so-called God. Perhaps the clerics are communicating with a powerful scientific practitioner of magic who is deigning to do them the favour of answering their prayer; but more likely, the clerics' combinations of somatic gestures, material components, concentration and vocalizations are simply harnessing the natural forces of the universe and directing them. It's pretty easy to have an atheistic religion that believes in some kind of equivalent to "the force" from Star Wars and deny the existence of gods. They might, for instance, know that the creation myths are a fiction -- the universe is eternal and was never created.</blockquote>

Verification