In my experience.
I learned D&D via 1e enthusiasts.
1e officially requires DMs and players to create new worlds, new settings, new cosmologies. We use core books only. No gods have ever happened.
The Cleric class has minimal suggestions for flavor and can be anything that anyone wants. LOL, the Cleric illustration has a medieval Christian bishop on it, holding up a cross. All flavors are explicitly optional suggestions. Our settings keep religion cultural, and let each player do religion whatever way they want for their own character. Whatever they find interesting, are personally comfortable with, and makes sense to them.
I play a Druid who is animistic. At first he was a typical "nature hippy" sotospeak. But after campaigning in the underdark, he developed into a full-on earth elementalist with spell-research spells.
We killed Lolth. She was an ancient drow who became a demon and started a personality cult to worship her. A demon with useful idiots.
In 4e, the astral sea has no Wheel. There can be any kinds of domains there, whatever seems useful for a campaign. The Cleric class flavor actually is a problem, but 4e designs its mechanics to officially reflavor easily, and gods have never happened to our 4e divine characters.
In 3e, I play a philosophical Cleric, whose bow shoots arrows of light and serves as his religious symbol (and 3e quasi-4e cantrip).
Now, 5e emphasizes narrative, and bakes it into the mechanics. The polytheism is a nuisance. But with Xanathars, I have the official narrative to play D&D Clerics the way that I am comfortable with, the way I have always played them since the beginning when learning to play D&D 1e.
As DM, gods dont exist in my setting, not in any important sense anyway, and are irrelevant. I generally give the different kinds of religion, the Eberron treatment. If necessary each religious community can create its own domain in the astral plane, creating any gods or anything else they care about to populate that unique astral domain.
I guess, because I learned D&D the 1e way, I learned to create my own worlds. I have never depended on an official setting. I use the core books. The gods have never been a thing in my D&D experience.
I find an obsession with gods to be bizarre and unappealing. And to try peer-pressure them on other players is highly problematic ethically.
The official gods seem unfun, and optional, and optional anyway. Unless one is slavishly serving the Forgotten Realms setting, they dont matter.
The official rules support my enjoyment of the D&D game, without gods interfering with my enjoyment of the D&D game. From the beginning. Since 1e.
