Logic of being atheist in a default D&D campaign.

An atheist, especially in a fantasy world, would claim that deities are nothing more than powerful bully aliens playing master of puppets while dangling the string "if you try really, really hard you can be like me! [not..but it's funny watching you try and die as nothing more than my 'pawn' in a larger game! bu ha ha ha ha!]".

I"m currently dealing with this in a Pathfinder game in Osirion (Egypt), where it is almost comedically true. As D&D has long-since defined deities as such, it's not a stretch I think for a player or GM to use that as inspiration.





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jh
 
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There is one more possibility thats has been hinted at but not called out. In a lot, indeed most, polytheistic creation myths the gods are formed from the blood (at best) of some former entity or creation and humans then arise from left overs, or the spilled blood of the gods, etc.

So by implication humanity is formed out of the same stuff as the gods, merely lesser in stature and power and the difference is one of degree, not kind.

An atheist in such a system may be one who refuses to bow to his betters from pride or ambition. Probably he seeks to become a "deity" himself.

Indeed the simplest in world justification for the level system is that each level is a step on the road to apotheosis.
 

There's an atheist in Small Gods by Terry Pratchett. He even keeps up his atheism in the face of the god's appearance.

(Simony) looked up at the god.
"Will you help?"
V. You Don't Even Believe In Me!
"Yes, but I'm a practical man."
VI. And Brave, Too, To Declare Atheism Before Your God.
"This doesn't change anything, you know!" said Simony. "Don't think you can get round me by existing!"
 

I certainly don't want this topic to degenerate into any kind of real world religious/political discussion or anything. I'm just trying to to make sense out of a game about magic and dragons! :)
Just turn the question around: Why would anyone in a (naturally completely hypothetical...) world devoid of dragons and magic choose to ignore scientific evidence to invent supernatural explanations? It's basically the same answer: (willful) ignorance knows no bounds.

What still doesn't make any sense to me, would be the the 'casual believer' or the ones who only pay lip service to the gods. Say have a large village or town where most people worship Pelor and the Clerics help see to everyone's needs. I mean, wouldn't everyone eventually genuinely worship or be a cleric of Pelor until the goverrnment would basically be a Theocracy? Why aren't all governments Theocracies? I guess I'm looking for in game reasons. How would a couple of happy go lucky rogues justify raiding the temple of Paladine so they might have a night out on the town with their spoils (assuming they don't have kind religious thinking behind it whatsoever)?
Why should they? Try replacing 'gods' with any kind of mundane, powerful individuals. Why would anyone break a king's laws?
Because they think they can get away with it! There isn't really much of a difference between raiding a temple and raiding the king's treasury: In both cases you're likely to attract the attention of someone much more powerful than you. It may be risky, but it's a risk some will be willing to take. Just because a god or one of its servants (supernatural or otherwise) might intervene doesn't mean they actually will.
 

How do you logically justify being atheist in a default D&D campaign(not-Planescape either)? Just some straight up plain vanilla Greyhawk or Forgotten Realms where everyone *knows* that there are gods that grant their clerics spells and favor to their followers? What about Krynn? Especially on Krynn, where if everyone knows that if you deny or defy the Gods they can leave or just literally throw a mountain down on your head.
In the Dragonlance setting, Raistlin proved that Belzor was a false god, and when Caramon and Tasslehoff traveled to the future, they discovered that Raistlin had also destroyed Takhisis and all of the other "true" gods. Then there are the barbarian tribes that worship dragons, the Cult of the Worm that worshipped a huge worm, the Temple of the Forerunners who follow their ancestoral spirits, and so on.

I doubt many people would lack belief (a la atheism) in the existence of dragons, ghosts, huge worms, etc. But believing they exist is not the same as believing they are gods. They're more like personality cults, in the same way that certain pharaohs, prophets, kings, queens, heroes and emperors were/are considered deities. Is Takhisis a god? Some would say so, but then many said the same thing about Belzor until Raistlin proved otherwise. And the only reason Takhisis is still alive is that Raistlin chose to spare her life...

Of course it also comes down to definitions. If you use the Oxford Dictionary definition of a god as "a superhuman being or spirit worshipped as having power over nature or human fortunes" then that would cover all sorts of undead and magical beings. In that case atheism wouldn't make sense - just as the concept of faith ("strong belief in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual conviction rather than proof") would become redundant - when the proof is all around you.

In the Forgotten Realms setting there was a Time of Troubles where the gods were stripped of their power, and many of them were killed, only to be replaced by former mortals. Once again it's going to be pretty difficult to lack belief in the gods, but I envision it as being more like the Marvel universe; if some guy who used to hang around your local pub suddenly developed superpowers, would you consider him a god and start worshipping him?

I think the Eberron setting is also worth a mention, as it has a rather interesting stance on religion. The Sovereign Host have no interaction with the material plane, and there's no direct evidence of their existence, nor is there an afterlife for the faithful. There are also clerics who worship distinctly non-divine entities (such as a warforged terrorist leader, and a half-dragon lich) and apparently wield magical power as a result, strongly implying that their power comes from within. While there are certainly plenty of magical beings in Eberron, including some (such as powerful dragons, and outsiders such as Radiant Idols) who desire worship, there is nothing that couldn't be defeated by a band of heroic adventurers. I don't imagine many people would worship a creature that is demonstrably weaker than they are.

But in fantasy settings where immortal gods walk among mortals, a more appropriate stance might be misotheism or maltheism. Even in Norse mythology there were stories of mortals who turned away from the gods in disgust, preferring to trust in their own strength and virtue.
 

This reminds me of Victor Mordenheim in Ravenloft, who was a scientist and didn't believe in magic. In one of the novels they showed him seeing magic first hand and trying to come to terms with it as a "new science". I think this very much depends on how interactive the gods themselves are with the population. But there is also wiggle room for atheism even if they do interact because one could argue they are not gods, but just really powerful people in the setting in order to maintain an atheist worldview (maybe that god is really just a powerful wizard). Still I do think it is harder in a setting with magic and gods who have a direct hand in the world for characters to be atheists.

Another thing to consider, if someone simply means god as a creator of the cosmos, then you might have more room to work within. This is again treating the gods as merely powerful entities who can lord that over the setting, but one could still believe, I suppose, that the universe was not created by a god.
 

Atheism can also be defined as a life without god/s independent of belief in their existence. As mentioned, that can mean simply the lack of a deity that is considered worth worshipping, etc.

My favorite take on this is the one that I use for one of the cultures in my setting:

"If not for an accident of birth, I too would be a god." It acknowledges their existence, but as mentioned upthread, it's simply an acknowledgement of their power, not their right to it.
 

"I have seen a 17th level wizard appear from thin air, call down fire from the sky, and literally Wish things into being. What are Gods but particularly powerful spellcasters running a confidence trick?"
 


"I have seen a 17th level wizard appear from thin air, call down fire from the sky, and literally Wish things into being. What are Gods but particularly powerful spellcasters running a confidence trick?"

What a god has that a high level spellcaster doesn't, from an in-setting point of view?

It's not anybody running a confidence trick. Spellcasters above 10th level are gods by most definitions of this word. Above that it's only a matter of relative power differences between deities.
 

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