Kahuna Burger writes:
hmmm... Since the term atheism was coined in a defitily premodern age, I'm not sure this is a valid concern historically. You don't need to know the answers, simply feel that "I don't know" is a better one than "g/God(s) did it".
This statement is fair enough, in a sense, but I would argue, etymology aside, that the "atheists" of the past were more "religious" than most self-styles Christians today. While Epicurean belief in an unintentional, ageless, chaotic universe based on conincidence rather than intent goes back to the 6th century BC, I would argue that these views were so marginal outside of an isolated intellectual elite as to be irrelevant to people who were anything other than full-time intellectuals.
Also, outside of the classical period, such views have held little sway in the rest of the history of the West, despite the continued transmission of the views of Democritus and Lucretius down through the ages.
Certainly, the mainstream Platonist and Aristotelian philosophies which sought to compete with polytheism had a more concrete sense of an ordered, intentional universe than mainstream European and North American Christians do today.
One could also, I suppose, make the case that the major Eastern philosophies of Taoism and Confucianism are not per se, polytheistic.
I would argue though that the Greek and Chinese philosophies could only have emerged in a the highly ritualistic and polytheistic cultures that these were. These non-theistic philosophies could only function as a social overlay over polytheism and not as stand-alone belief systems for societies.
Therefore, I go back to my original qualifier -- the only people I allow to be atheistic in my games are Wizards ie. full-time students of the written word. This is because such people appear, from my reading of history, to be the only atheistic pre-modern people.
However a 'pre modern' soceity with working divine magic would certainly put the kibosh on either worldveiw. Regular exposure to both clerics and wizards would certainly lead to one theological worldveiw, and it would be a situation where the old cannard was true - atheism or agnosticism would require far more mental gymnastics than religion.
I was personally very taken with Greg Stafford's Glorantha and the Malkioni sorcerors who believed that they had discovered the scientific laws by which magic worked whereas those practitioners of other types of magic had "lucked-in" through trial and error ritual to harnessing the same powers through ritual, much as we now look back on those who treated the swords which inflicted wounds instead of the wounds themselves as having procedurally lucked-in to not infecting wounds with unhealthy poultices.
On the other hand, failure to WORSHIP any of the known gods would be a completely valid mindset in such a world. (especially amoung adventurers who have seen gods and their followers at their worst). Such a veiw wouldn't be called atheism or agnosticism in the modern uses, but some cultural term (unalligned?) would be common.
Oh yes -- as I mentioned in my original post, I do not require that my players' characters be observant or devout.
I almost look at it more like political allegeinces. You can be "same allegience" which is good, "allied allegience" which is ok, or "opposed allegeince" which would be bad. But a person of "no allegience" would certainly be less offensive than opposing. Think carefully before you can create a world where you're more friendly to someone whose god put your god's eye out than someone who doesn't worship your god or any other.
"Better the infidel than the Pope" as they used to say in Constantinople.
This very much depends on how you set up oppositions in your theology, though. In my lawfully-aligned state-ist religions, the followers of the two gods that hate eachother are knit together through the civil service bureaucracy which has ritualized the two gods' conflict by drawing all inquisitors and prosecutors from the evil god's church and all opposing counsel from the good god's church.
The D&D Players' Handbook gods are truly terrible, though. For me, a formative influence in understanding polytheism in gaming was Greg Stafford's Runequest which is very much focused on organizing the other religions into a hierarchy of evils -- because the evils are organized into a hierarchy, it does allow for normally opposing faiths to band together to deal wiht a greater evil, though.
I must say, Kahuna Burger, it is a always pleasure to read your posts (don't worry I'm not expecting a return of the compliment); it is always a pleasure to see such reasoned argument.
!
These gods I'm assuming are real in your world, how do the observances effect events, if at all?
