Joshua, glad to see (re the other part of your message I'm not quoting) that we are more generally on the same page than I'd imagined. The point you raise here I find intriguing and basically correct. It does seem that the majority of work within the fantasy genre is about people with modern minds grappling with modern questions in fantastic and/or primitive worlds.
I suppose I do have more of a tendency to try to depict societies that are more 'authentically' 'other' than mainstream of the fantasy genre does. But this is why I guess I jump enthusiastically into debates that try to be a little more historical or anthropological in nature.
Well, I don't have the kind of knowledge of Shintoism that I do of Mormonism and Roman Catholicism, or medieval Eastern Orthodoxy. However, my understanding in that a large portion of Shintoism is a "hyphenated religion" -- combined, in many cases, with Buddhism and increasingly with Christianity. However, given that all the research I have time to do these days is for school; I'll just retract my statement about Shintoism and replace my reference to it with a reference to Roman polytheism and medieval Eastern Orthodoxy. Given that you have recognized the correctness of my point as it pertains to Roman Catholicism, I don't feel the need to squabble over minutiae. The point is that faiths with living Gods or equivalents thereof to whom worshippers have access are still prone to a plurality of views.
Actually, one of the funniest episodes in my current campaign comes from a character obtaining a custom magic item that allowed him to Commune once a week with a god. As it turned out, the god was Ishai, God of the Magi; this fellow was a multiclass cleric/wizard who while a member of the Guild of the Magi which Ishai stood at the head, was a cleric of a heretical sect worshipping a new god called Lucky Jim. The god of the Magi figured this out in their conversation (after already being pissed off about being disturbed by someone bothering him with a found item) and promptly reported him for this heresy via the god's avatar on earth. The next time the character went to the guild to get some spell training, he found he'd been blackballed -- and couldn't get any more spells from the guild until he renounced the heresy.
Obviously, for this kind of thing to be significant, this kind of thing can't happen very often in a campaign but I personally find gods' interest in minutiae quite fun. Many polytheistic systems have very petty gods whose vanity and sense of self-importance is to some degree contingent on their mortal followers. I find that enjoyable in a god.
I don't find that this follows at all; gods aren't saying "should I let Jim have cure serious wounds today?" Spells are a way that gods don't have to be active; they don't directly oversee how magic is employed in their name and more than the god of light directly intervenes every time someone turns on a lamp. Spells, in my theory of magic, are about tapping directly into the god's reservoir of power -- something that is passively available for those sanctioned to use it.
