Last week I talked about the early history of religion in D&D, and how this discordant mélange of influences eventually led to a weirdly incoherent metaphysics in which:
- Gods are arranged into pantheons, a word literally derived from the Greek name for a temple which worshipped all gods, and yet…
- People (including the clergy) almost universally choose just ONE god to worship because…
- Every civilized god gets slotted into a church based on monotheistic Christian rites, architecture, and organization. (With “evil” gods being slightly more likely to get primitive fanes and the like.)
As we look across the vast landscape of roleplaying games in the modern world, of course, we can see that any number of efforts have been made, many based on real world mythologies, to break fantasy religions out of this box. But if we’re being honest with ourselves, we can also see that D&D’s religions, by default, remain heavily influenced by contemporary Christianity (probably because that’s most of the audience’s only practical exposure to religion): Monotheistic religious practices awkwardly grafted onto a pantheistic mythology.
And this tends to bleed over into other fantasy religions and our own worldbuilding.
FAITH & BELIEF
Here’s a common, yet also complicated, example of this: In a world where gods obviously and observably exist, why do we talk about people believing or having faith in their god? If you have proof that your god exists, you don’t need to believe in them!
In large part, this paradox exists because it’s how we think about God in contemporary Christian society: We think of the divine as something you have to “believe” in, and that way of thinking just kind of elides naturally into the fantasy world. (Often without any close examination.)
But this is also why I keep talking about contemporary Christian society. Because it turns out that this is not inherently how people think about gods in the real world; the idea that the existence of God is something you need to have irrational belief in is a way of thinking that developed over time. In fact, our very understanding of the words “belief” and “faith” have been shaped by that evolution of thought.
If you look at the etymology of “belief” (from Old French) and “faith” (from Old English), you’ll discover both words originally meant basically the exact same thing: To trust someone; to have confidence in them; to be loyal to them. (The last could perhaps better be understood as a mutual exchange: You trust them, they trust you, neither of you would betray that mutual trust, and therefore you are loyal to each other; i.e., you share or keep faith with each other — a phrase which survives into modern usage while maintaining the older sense of the word.)
The meaning of the word first bled from people into ideas: To have faith or belief in a particular idea meant that you trusted it; you believed it to be true. But just writing the word “believed” is misleading to a modern sensibility, because the meaning was still fundamentally rational: You believed something was true because you had evidence for it.
What caused the meanings of the words to glide into the irrational was, in fact, their application to God. People had faith in God the same way they might have faith in their feudal lord. And obviously the Church wanted them to believe in the ideas that the Church taught them. And so “faith” and “belief” became deeply tied to the worship of God.
(“Worship” itself was a word which originally meant one who was worthy of honor, glory, renown, respect, etc. The noun was turned into a verb – i.e., to worship was to give honor, glory, renown, respect, etc. to the worshipped – and then applied to God, who was obviously worthy of those things. You can see the remnant of the original sense of “worship” in honorifics like Your Worship.)
As time passed, however, European thought became more rational – in fact, the words “rational” and “irrational” were invented, along with concordant understanding that something could only be rationally thought of as true if you had evidence that it was true.
The trick, of course, was that there was no rational evidence for the existence of God.
It took centuries, but eventually this idea became so strongly enmeshed in European thought that it was actually reflected back into the Church and inverted: Sure, there was no rational evidence for God’s existence. But you still needed to believe in God; you still needed to have faith that God’s word and his love for you were true.
At that point, through religion, “faith” and “belief” were deeply connected to something which could only be irrationally accepted as truth. Give it another century or so and these words come shooting out the other side; they’re now applied to other irrational truths that must be believed without evidence and their modern sense. In the case of “belief” the meaning remains mixed (it can apply to both rational and irrational conclusions), but when it comes to “faith” the transformation is more or less complete.
FAITH IN A WORLD OF FANTASY
So one way of understanding how the relationship between worshipers and their gods would work in a world where gods actually exist is to basically turn back the clock on our understanding of the word “faith.”
In a fantasy world, to have faith in a god doesn’t mean that you believe the god exists: It means that you are keeping faith with them. (And I think, furthermore, that it’s worth the effort to truly grok the way in which “faith” described a two-sided relationship: Not just to trust someone, but for them to also trust you. For you to be able to count on each other.)
Once you’ve made this fundamental realignment, it’s interesting to see the impact it can have on other aspects of religious thought.
For example, consider the divine right of kings. In the real world, without any actual evidence of God’s existence, a king’s position as king was essentially “evidence” that God must want them to be king. (Otherwise, of course, they wouldn’t be king.) But the whole thing gets turned on its head if gods exist and are literally endorsing temporal rulers.
- Why would a god do that? It more or less turns “god” into just another tier on the feudal hierarchy: Counts swear to dukes; dukes to kings; kings to gods. And what are the feudal duties of a god to their kings?
- How can this be compatible with multiple gods being worshipped in a kingdom? Perhaps this is the function of a pantheon? It’s more or less a committee of gods who collectively agree who’s going to be king?
- What does this do to the concept of succession? Feels like the god(s) might endorse anybody to be the next king, not just the last king’s eldest son. Does this concept “trickle down,” so that you don’t really have any inherited nobility?
- What does this mean for the hierarchy of the church? In the real world there could be a struggle between the Holy Roman Emperors and the Popes because both could argue that they were the one with divine right, but if you can literally just dial up your god and ask him that sort of thing falls apart (and, assuming your gods are, in fact, endorsing kings, the division between temporal and religious power structures seems likely to collapse or never exist in the first place.
And so forth.
On the other hand, the concept of keeping faith with someone doesn’t necessarily require a one-true-way. You can be friends with Susan in a way that’s different from being friends with Debbie, and it might be the same way with gods. (Particularly if your gods are sufficiently ineffable.) Thus, for example, in my D&D campaign world both the Imperial Church and the Reformists worship the same Nine Gods in different ways… and the Nine Gods grant spells to all of them.
CODA: ATHEISTS
On thing I rather dislike is when “atheists” show up in a fantasy world where gods verifiably exist. An atheist is someone who rejects the existence of gods because there’s no rational evidence that gods exist: If you live in a world where there IS rational evidence that gods exist and you refuse to believe that they do, that doesn’t make you an atheist. It makes you a crazy person.
In some cases, the mythology of the world is that it’s not that “atheists” don’t believe that the gods physically exist; it’s just that they don’t believe that the gods are anything other than really powerful people and/or they simply don’t pledge themselves to any god (they refuse to keep faith with any of them). But even this is a perversion of what the word “atheist” actually means and what atheists actually believe. If you want characters who reject the idea that gods are worthy of worship or faith in your fantasy world with verifiable gods, I’d recommend using a term like “heretic” or perhaps inventing a new term like “godless.”
Bret Devereaux has an excellent blog series on ancient polytheistic practice.
https://acoup.blog/2019/10/25/collections-practical-polytheism-part-i-knowledge/
A big part of it is ritual is empasised over understanding – orthopraxis, not orthdoxy. You don’t even need to understand how understand how anythng works, let alone believe in the unseen powers involved — you just do the ritual, exactly as required, and things just work. Boil the water before drinking (lest you anger the God of Shits) and so on.
One takeaway for me is that malevolent powers still need to be appeased.
Even evil and malevolent powers will have public shrines and such — not so much for ministering to a worshipful following, but instead being the place where offerings are made by those beseeching to be left alone. For example, before setting on a sea voyage sailors and such will make offerings to Aelwin the Deep Lurker, asking forgiveness for their trespass and praying to be left alone.
These hated baleful powers exist in the cosmos and the world, they hold dominion in their domains, and must thus be appeased.
Lord Ferro of the Nail is a malevolent power that concerns itself with minor metal work, such as hinges, nails, latches, bolts etc. Failure to respectfully appease this spirit will result in rust, fractures, snapping, bending, and worse. In most every blacksmith one can find a post or beam studded with a great multitude of nails, each one a daily offering grudgingly made. Ferro hungers, Ferro must feed.
It would be wise to spend a nail if you rely on blade or armour for your vocation.
I’m really tickled by the idea that a God might have some sort of Feudal duty to a King. Perhaps in such a world we might see Kings publically threatening to convert their kingdom to a neighbouring religion if they feel their God is insufficiently supportive.
One thing I try to do in my games is insert a sort of class divide in how gods are worshipped. Nobles have a strong tendency to have patron gods, whom they worship near-exclusively and whose church they send their younger non-inheriting sons and daughters to serve in. When most of your problems can be solved by your own mundane resources, you don’t need to pray for divine assistance to solve them, so worship is about general “divine favour” and concentrating donations in a single church lets you make those donations more ostentatious (why spread a thousand gold among twenty gods, when you could spend a thousand gold building one god a new church with your name on a plaque next to the door?). Poor commoners, on the other hand, absolutely can’t afford to put all their eggs in one basket, so explicitly pray to all gods as the situation demands.
In regards to atheism, atheist characters can claim the “gods” are merely beings who just happen to have extremely strong magical powers that give them control over certain domains and the ability to grant spells to their servants, but in most settings I think the response back would be “Yes, that’s the definition of the word ‘god’, what’s your point?”. I agree with you about using a different term, I’m rather fond of Faithless, from FR.
Concerning atheists, I checked if maybe there was a word already describing a mindset like that, because of course humans manage to schism and argue about distinctions and wording even when rejecting the supernatural, and I think the best fitting words are Apatheism (“I don’t really care about gods”) and Irreligion (“I’m disagreeing not with the god, but with the institution”).
I also can’t do better to link to the blog somebody already linked last time: https://acoup.blog/2019/10/25/collections-practical-polytheism-part-i-knowledge/
This points out something very important for religions which we nowadays have forgotten: For the longest part of history, the belief is not the central part, the rituals are. A ritual is performed to have a specific real-world effect, and the question of what the performer thinks about the god the ritual is for doesn’t matter, as long as it is performed correctly. (Side note: While the blog talks specifically about polytheistic religions, the same remained true for Christianity for a very long time. The Reformation was among other things about the question of how important the very fixed Catholic rituals were for the worship of god, how much of being a Christian is about belief, and how much is about drinking wine and eating a wafer every Sunday.)
And I think concerning the question of “How do kings work with active gods?”, we shouldn’t forget how easy it is to argue interpretations. Divination (which etymologically literally means speaking with god) was a huge part of old religions, so this whole “let’s ring up god and find out what they want” to some extend did happen. Nowadays we can of course point out that this divination was basically finding coincidental patterns in random data, but let’s be honest: If the Abrahamic God one day showed up and proclaimed loudly: “John Sampleman shall be ruler of the world henceforth”, it would take less than a day for people to start arguing about what God actually meant. Does this make John ruler for life? What should the distribution of power look like, where do the presidents/chancellors/most exalted supreme fathers of countries fit in? Does this include non-Abrahamic places? Actually, which John Sampleman, given that there’s two in the US and one in Uganda? And so forth.
Your older definitions of ‘Belief’ and ‘Faith’ are essentially how we in the church still use them, and their hijacking to mean baseless or unfounded beliefs was a masterstroke of the work of those in rebellion against God’s kingdom.
Regardless of the assertions of the “godless”, as you term them, There is good and sufficient rational evidence for the existence of God, that God being the God of the Bible, who became man and made his dwelling among us.
In fact the epistle to the Romans speaks clearly on this subject in its first chapter, verses 18-20:
18 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 19 since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities–his eternal power and divine nature–have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.
I think another big part of this mess is that there is a fundamental, qualitative distinction between a capital-G God such as Christians or Jews or Muslims believe in (an omnipotent, omniscient, self-existent deity who rules over and brings forth all things) and small-g gods (powerful, but created and limited entities). The two are so fundamentally unlike each other that when Christianity first began to spread through the Roman Empire, we were called “atheists” because we refused to worship any other god and because we worshipped ours in a manner so completely alien to the practices of the surrounding culture.
“The trick, of course, was that there was no rational evidence for the existence of God”
Now, the fact that you can say that is interesting. Because I believe that there is a tremendous amount of rational evidence for the existence of God. There are hundreds if not thousands of stories of miracles. There is overwhelming historical evidence of people seeing God walking the earth, both in more supernatural shapes and in the person of Jesus Christ. There is a universe that exists, and that must have come into existence in some manner. There is irreducibly complex life of incredible variety (and all the science and evidence I have access to says that it could not have arisen of its own accord). And so on.
The point being, the fact that you can say “There is no rational evidence for the existence of God” and I can say “There is overwhelming rational evidence for the existence of God”, while neither of us is lying or a gibbering loon, helps demonstrate how easy it would be to have controversy over religion and theology, even in a world where gods walk the earth.
You said, “it’s not that “atheists” don’t believe that the gods physically exist; … they simply don’t pledge themselves to any god (they refuse to keep faith with any of them). But even this is a perversion of what the word “atheist” actually means and what atheists actually believe.”
Ironically, in ancient times, the word atheist (“atheo”) carried the sense, “one who rejected the gods worshipped by the wider society.” As Aeshdan said, the crime the Romans accused the early Christians of was being “atheo.” This wasn’t because they did not believe in any divine beings but because they refused to make the offerings required by the Roman state religion. So, the word atheist has shifted with history. In ancient times, it was more like you describe it would need to be if the evidence of gods was as incontrovertible as the evidence for the existence of other countries besides your own.
Great post. A few comments:
1. Believing in the existence of God vs. Keeping Faith with God
This point is absolutely crucial. The model for the D&D Cleric should not be the local parish priest questioning the existence of God; it should be Abraham, speaking to Yahweh regularly and pledging himself to His service. (Or Van Helsing, of course.)
2. Feudal Hierarchy – Royal Succession
The Greeks have plenty to say about how gods and kings interact, and how lines of royal succession may be blessed or interrupted by divine intervention. The gods largely let mortal rulers do their thing as long as they make regular sacrifices, govern their people to do the same, and don’t talk any smack about the gods. But of course kings are regularly murdered and usurped by the gods’ favourite demigods and heroes. Putting this wrinkle aside, by and large, the Hellenic model seems to be much like the feudal hierarchy you describe in your post: kings are expected to keep faith with the gods and govern their people to do the same, in exchange for which the gods provide protection and prosperity. Individual city-states usually have divine patrons. A king may piss of one particular god and find his kingdom cursed by rampaging beasts, tidal waves, plagues, or what have you, which may lead to usurpation. Other gods may continue to support the king and act against the angry god; thus, e.g. Perseus (son of Zeus) saves Andromeda’s Ethiopian city-state from the wrath of Poseidon, and Poseidon apparently accepts this because he’s Zeus’s son.
3. Atheists
“Godless” sounds good to me, but as someone pointed out above, that’s really all “atheist” means. It’s not originally a term about factual beliefs; it’s about someone who refuses to honour the gods (or at tleast refuses to honour OUR gods).
Have you ever tried having competing sects of the same deity? It doesn’t really change the game a lot where the gods are at least semi-removed, because a deity might have dozens of localized variation of their faith based on local traditions on one or more prime worlds. Our group had had a lot of fun with it over the years, and three of my players even founded their own Syncretic cult in my current campaign
You make some really excellent points here. I personally love to take a deeper dive into other belief systems during games, although I’m always worried what that does to accessibility.
I don’t think your atheism point quite follows, though. There are plenty of people who claim to be gods (or are worshiped as such without their consent, like Prince Philip). Atheists on Earth think they’re just normal people. That’s exactly in line with how you’re rejecting atheists treating gods in your coda.
Similarly, the Sun very clearly exists, has immense power, and provides for us in a multitude of ways. Most people (atheists included) just don’t consider it a god. The fact that we can use its power to cook meals, purify surfaces, and even power space stations doesn’t change that.
One of the best examples of in-world explanation for how the pantheons work in a fictional setting comes from Rich Burlew’s Order of the Stick. You have a reason to have different pantheons working together to build a world, and this also explain why some gods are worshiped in different parts of the world, and what are the limits that the Gods themselves have to obey to make the whole thing running
Of course you can’t mention religion without the cultists showing up in force to insist that their religion is absolutely true and real, with page number citations to their own poorly-written sourcebook.
On atheism, I’m partial to the Weatherwax Principle: ‘”But [gods] exist,” said Nanny Ogg. [Granny continued,] “That’s no call to go around believing in them. It only encourages ’em.”‘
The pantheist notion of orthopraxis rather than orthodoxy is an interesting one. Of modern major religions, Judaism is AFAIK the only example that’s kept to that model, though there’s some viewpoint bleed-through from conservative Christianity, particularly among the ultra-orthodox, orthodox communities in conservative-Christian areas of the USA, and the unmoored-from-society Israeli communities which have benefited from the subsidy on Torah study. It might be interesting to ask around for their views, or examine settings written primarily by Jews. (This is of course related to the phenomenon where “Atheist Jews”, i.e. Jews in good standing who don’t believe in God at all, exist and are not considered a paradox.) Other modern religions which may be orthopraxis-based might include Shinto, the amorphous cluster known as “traditional Chinese religion”, and Zoroastrianism.
Pathfinder/Golarion actually does a good job here: the main country where a god explicitly endorses the monarch is Infernal Cheliax, because Asmodeus is tempamentally inclined toward rule. Asmodeus provides soldier and advisor devils, and endorsement, and House Thrune gets as many citizens as possible damned to Hell. The church and state hierarchies are parallel, but intermixed, and seem to be separate mostly so there is built-in opportunities to betray others for without violating the letter of the law (which naturally forbids disobeying your superiors). Nidal has a different Lawful Evil theocracy, where the immortal cultists who swore their people into service millennia ago are still around and ruling directly in Zon-Kuthon’s name.
I think an interesting question this turns on is, “how many clerics are there?” If clerics are less common than wizards, I would expect the average arcane layman to be open to the possibility that a cleric is just a religious man who has studied wizardly powers. If clerics are less common than professional athletes, most people probably go their whole life and never meet one, but they know someone who met a cleric once when he went to the big city two years ago on a festival day.
One in five American Christians believes they have met a cleric in real life (they have seen a miracle occur, they have summoned an angle, etc.). And that’s far from enough people to make the case purely empirical. If clerics were as rare as astronauts, it would be totally plausible to believe it was all a con job.
> A big part of it is ritual is empasised over understanding – orthopraxis, not orthdoxy.
> One takeaway for me is that malevolent powers still need to be appeased.
Tangentially relatedly, in my WIP setting there’s a pantheon of fifty gods, most of which are openly worshipped in most places in the world. Including the evil ones, because they all have complex portfolios, e.g. the evil goddess of poisoning, spiders, and weaving, who has public shrines anywhere there are professional weavers. (Most significant aspects of life also have multiple gods; there’s another god who presides over weaving, sewing, doorways, bridges, and crossroads. But a weaver who doesn’t offer prayers to both is a fool.)
Given this lengthy discussion, I’m surprised you haven’t discussed Eberron at all – it head-on confronts all of these issues!
What about those who fight against the gods? Unfortunately, I gave away my old copy of the Book of Vile Darkness, but there was an evil Cleric-variant called the Ur-Priest. I’m probably misremembering some points, but they believed that the gods in some way hindered or harmed humanity. So they sought relics and secrets that would allow them to destroy the gods forever. Their class abilities stemmed from various techniques that allowed them to steal spells being granted by the gods to their Clerics. I never really got to use them, but they seemed like a really awesome variation on the basic idea of the Cleric class.
You’re usually very careful with words and definitions, but I think the use of “irrational” here misses the mark, unless it is your intention to say that belief in God is objectively incorrect. If it wasn’t your intention, perhaps consider rewriting in order to avoid inadvertently inviting off-topic comments that seek to defend belief in God.
Re “Lord Ferro of the Nail”: that’s a great bit of world-building (and a most apropos name!).
I second (third?) what Protokletos and Aeshdan said; I’d also note that the early church placed a strong emphasis on eyewitness accounts. (For instance, Luke 1:1 “Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word.”)
To be fair, the Bible does define faith as “being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see,” but that doesn’t necessarily make it irrational. You can have faith that it’s safe to get on a plane even if you don’t understand how it flies, and you can have faith in the results of an election even if you didn’t personally count all the votes. The people whom this was written to were not eyewitnesses of the resurrected Christ, but they trusted the testimony they’d received.
I was also going to mention that the early Christians were accused of atheism, but Eric II beat me to it.
@Kinak: I didn’t know that about Prince Philip. Fascinating!
@Igor Campelo: Would you mind elaborating, for those of us who haven’t read Order of the Stick?
@Wyvern the basics for the way pantheons work in Order of the Stick are explained in https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0273.html and the next 2 strips.
@Sableheart much obliged
I, the Great God Znack, do declare that I require this of all my patriarchs:
They must from this day forth to midnight of the dark moon, vie with one another with all the resources at their disposal. On that final night I shall award to they that have made the greatest gains a year of power as a reward for their greatness and endeavors in my name. The weakest among them shall I strip of my favor for 1 year and 3 days. Those that sway many who worship my foe Fluth to consider a bond with me, those shall I bestow a crown of solid gold that they be seen as my worthy Paladins. Any that turns to Fluth for aid or comfort, or shows Fluth any hint of congeniality, shall I cast out of the civilised lands with naught but the clothes on their backs! Thus sayeth the Great God Znack!
(Actually, it’s ‘belief’ from Old English and ‘faith’ from Olf French)
https://www.etymonline.com/word/beliefhttps://www.etymonline.com/word/belief
@Reveilled In French Monarchy, the King was considered feuded to God in exchange for legitimacy.
And there are instances of people trading their faith. For exemple, the famous “In this sign thou shalt conquer” : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_hoc_signo_vinces. Old testament too is full of blackmailings.
“On thing I rather dislike is when “atheists” show up in a fantasy world where gods verifiably exist.”
As Protokletos points out, this is still the majoritarian view in this world. I live in Australia which is, arguably, one of the most secular countries in the world – a country that as early as the 1980s elected an openly atheist Prime Minister. Yet, even here, less than 1 in 3 people identify as “no religion” on the census, compared to more than 1 in 2 who identify as Christian.
The vast majority of people in this world believe that their faith in a higher being is completely rational and based on empirical evidence. I don’t, and I suspect you don’t but we could be wrong and are simply denying the evidence that is plainly there. I don’t think so, but I’m not the best judge of being wrong when I’m sure I’m right.
Which brings me to the point that ina world with powerful beings, some of whom can literally magic your mind to perceive anything, how can you tell the difference between divine intervention and powerful illusion? You can’t. Therefore atheism is just as rational in that world as it is in this.
Thanks for the food for thought!
One remark on your point about succession:
>What does this do to the concept of succession? Feels like the god(s) might endorse anybody to be the next king, not just the last king’s eldest son. Does this concept “trickle down,” so that you don’t really have any inherited royalty?
Gods as supreme feudal overlords don’t preclude primogeniture. There could be a compact between some god or “board” of gods, and a certain mortal bloodline. In fact that’s how feudalism worked in continental Europe once titles became formally hereditary (as per the Capitulary of Quierzy in the former Carolingian Empire) as opposed to de facto renewed upon the death of the previous holder. As long as the bloodline upholds its duty to get its patron gods duly worshiped through the realms and enforces divine law, the patron gods keep their end of the bargain and enforces the succession rules defined in the compact. That’s two-way trust!
The blog series by Bret Devereaux which keeps being referenced is very good (as are many of his other posts), but one thing that it doesn’t mention is that while individual worshippers in Classical polytheism wouldn’t restrict themselves to a single patron deity, priests and priestesses often would (in their priestly capacity – privately they were like everyone else). To some degree then, it makes sense that individual gods & goddesses have distinct priestly hierarchies and that they would somewhat resemble each other – they are responsible for keeping different gods happy, but are really part of the same religion.
This article does a good job of showing how this might work in the context of the Greyhawk campaign setting:
http://www.canonfire.com/cf/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1085
The same gods may be worshipped across different religions, and the same religions may include temples and organizations devoted to different gods, even if they don’t have any legal affiliation with one another.
This post was recently referenced on your Twitch stream, and in combination with that reference was a bit of discussion about how religious people ought to act if gods are known to be real, to take active interest in the world, etc.
It reminded me of this interesting lecture from Alec Ryrie, about atheists in the premodern period, and how it expressed itself before it had any sort of solid philosophical backing, but was merely the property of the authority-questioning uneducated person: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eb5mYqnKFlI
I like to think of fantasy gods as analogous to interest groups, in their interaction with temporal power; and of churches as analogous to nonprofits. So, a peasant might sacrifice to both Medixîl and Libram in the same way that you might donate to both Doctors Without Borders and ArXiV; and a king might seek to appease Chtholeos in the same way that a senator might pander to the oil lobby.
Likewise, a higher-level cleric is more likely to be (mostly) dedicated to a particular church — someone whose full-time job is working for Doctors Without Borders might still donate to other organizations, but they have a single clear primary focus.
Furthermore, the kind of transactional relationship that Bret Devereaux talks about can be seen as analogous to engaging with *for*-profit organizations — a Pandora subscription, or protection money to the mafia.
So I figured I’d pop in with some definitions I find useful to know:
Atheist: Does not believe in the existence of gods
Agnostic: Believes that any god is unknown and probably unknowable
Alatrist: Believes in the existence of gods, but does not worship them/consider them worthy of worship
Misotheist: Hates the gods
Henotheism: Belief in one god/religion, while acknowledging the existence of possible existence of others
Christianity from the time of St Justin Martyr until the age of late scholasticism had a strong tendency toward negative theology and a broadly Hellenistic ontology that permitted them to discuss determinate things within indeterminate means (“Dogs bark” is indeterminate but is proximate to actual dogs) and to discus an indeterminate God who is not a possible object of thought to be discussed within determinate means, if only in misleading analogy (“God is good” is useful only to say that what we call good in creation is preexistent in our Creator). In this sense it is fundamentally rational because any object of reason, such as “humanity” or “softness” or “truth” is therefore workable in the divine grammar, even if we cannot locate God as material. The distance from God to the created order is only rivaled by God’s immanence in it; things exist and participate in the divine predicates like strength or, for that matter, existence, but they do not pass along any positive knowledge that allows humanity to comprehend God as even we might comprehend love, soul or saltiness.
As such, the world that fell out underneath the European Church and became “rationalist” merely took to task a failed project to locate God in the created order, and object in the universe, and failed. The two dark roads of Descartes and Kant are muddy and treaded over by our own days, and so little hope is there for those who come to the RPG world and see material entities of great power and consider them in line with the god of the philosophers or the god of their ancestral nations. Oftentimes these entities are not really gods in any sense, more as tyrants who ascended into power by some nascent might that they inherited from primordial chaos. Platonists in antiquity referred the word for god, theos, as an emblem and title belonging to a creator, since theos has roots etymologically as something which puts or places. This is why many of them rejected Zeus and usurper gods as illegitimate, when the world demonstrates its own artisan’s handiwork by one Theos above intelligibility.
Given you have read Will Durant, I’d thought you might have read some of this in his works.