AMIA ARCHIVE • View topic - Religion, Patron Deities & Worship in the Realms

This is the story of a time long ago
A time of myth and legend
When the ancient gods were petty and cruel
And all up in everyone's business

Worship

Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting, pg 232

Religion

Why Choose a Patron Deity?

miracle

wish

miracle

wish

Choosing a Patron

Player's Handbook

Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting, pg 39

Changing Deities

atonement

Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting, pg 233

LetumLux wrote:

Of more concern to most adventurers, a character who dies without a patron deity cannot be raised from the dead by any mortal means short of a miracle or wish. When such a character dies, he is considered one of the Faithless, and his soul is used to form part of the wall around the realm of Kelemvor, the god of the dead. Mortal action cannot reverse this fate, so unless the character's friends can arrange direct intervention by another deity ( or expend a miracle or wish, spells symbolizing intervention by another deity), that character is unlikely to return to life.

This. This is something that I think everyone needs to keep in mind when they play a character with no faith. Being dead and faithless means that you're going to the wall. I know it's a bit absurd sounding for people who really want to play characters who are faithless, but why should you get the favor of divine intervention to bring you back to you life when you refuse to have any ties to it?

I know that its an impossible system to properly implement with the NWN engine being what it is, and a lot of people would cry about it or something, but that's the consequence of chosing not to pay heed to the gods that not only exist, but choose to intervene in your lives. Were you expecting them to be friendly toward your lack of commitment?

I won't try to dissuade anyone from playing faithless characters, but keep in mind that it puts your at a lot more risk than you would have to worry about with a faith.

And on that note, wonderful post Letum. I quite enjoyed reading it.

In extension of this: atheism does not exist in Forgotten Realms. Your character can choose to worship no gods (eg. being Faithless) or hate the gods as a whole, but someone in FR would be able to deny that the gods exist in as much as we would be able to deny that gravity exists; anyone who makes that claim is most likely going to be considered seriously deluded if not altogether mad. In FR, the gods are very real, very present, very active and enough individuals (especially elven and dwarven) would have experienced the Time of Troubles or other instances when gods (or their avatars) literally walked the earth.

To rather loosely quote Terry Pratchet: "Atheists don't exist in the Disc World because the Gods throw bricks through their windows with pamphlets attached to them."

I disagree. Skepticism is as old as thought, and there are plenty of highly intelligent people in the history of our world who don't think we're allowed to believe physical reality exists. To deny the gods, or at least their transcendent divine nature, is perfectly reasonable. But certainly not on the banal basis of modern secular, empirical atheism. Not every teenager punk who read Dawkins would go around smug in their newfound revelation that gods are stupid. It would be something more intellectual. You can actually see the chosen of Deneir doubt his god in the novels about him, though it's probably not the most sophisticated interpetation of the issue.

I'd love to post the bit about worship in the Realms from Faiths & Avatars too, to support Letum's quotes, but I can't be bothered to copy it by hand. Just check it out!

DISCLAIMER: The following post has nothing to do with your IRL religion, please don't post about it here because that is not the point of this discussion. I'm only using an applicable example to clarify the proper definition of a word and nothing more.

Thank you. Now that we've circumnavigated that potential derailing, onto my post.

____________

But concrete "those forces do not exist and do not grant spells" atheism, or at least the modern usage of the term, literally cannot properly exist in the any realm where the gods both exist and grant spells. Hell, my main character was drinking with the Herald of the Rider Beyond the other night. Just saying that you doubt the legitimacy of their power can't be taken as atheism.

But then I suppose we're taking into account the fact that we think atheism only means "not believing a god exists."

The literal definition, at least from the parts that make it up would probably be something similar to "Someone who doesn't have a theological connection" or "Someone who doesn't worship a god."

A - not, none, things having to do with the word "no"

theism - Gods and stuff

So when you say "I'm an atheist" You're just saying "I'm faithless."

So in the Forgotten Realms Atheism is literally just being faithless, but more pretentious. The common idea of denying that gods exist comes from our world, where they don't give people spells or send outsiders to screw with us from other planes, hence the common belief that they do not exist. Context and usage versus the word itself really.

That's still a terribly empiristic and non-intellectual take at it, though. (Not suggesting you're unintelligent, mind.) I mean, there really are people in our real world who would deny our knowledge of the real world and the evidence of our senses. Some would even extend their skepticism to include logical truths. And these people aren't some blind madmen, they're probably smarter and capable of more complex conceptual thought than any of us. Take someone like Hume, who denied friggin' causality (as a possible object of knowing, anyway).

You didn't even analyze the concept of "god" in your definition of atheism. You concentrated on the "a-" prefix, and there's certainly different ways to interpret that like you said, but the issue gets even more complicated when you analyse the "-theist" part of the word. To doubt or not doubt the existance of gods, you first have to have some idea what "god" even means.

I think people are selling the philosophers and theologians of the Realms short. It's somewhat arrogant to think they subscribe to all the empirical, secular and historically contingent concepts and forms of thought that just happen to have become prevalent in our modern society. Just because gods interact actively with the physical reality doesn't mean the ideological culture of the Realms would be a poor or narrow one.

Oh, I'm not arguing what Atheism means to our society. But that's only because we've given it a certain context. I would know, personally. I'm one of those people.

But I think that it has an entirely different meaning to a setting like The Forgotten Realms where the gods are constantly proving the exist. Simply saying "they don't exist at all" in that case would likely stem from a severe lack of intelligence and observational skill on the part of the person stating such.

So logically the word Atheist would take on the same meaning as the word Faithless in the Forgotten Realms. It's mostly a more literal definition of th word than we use it for than anything else. Not important to know that distinction to play the game frankly. It's all really just a matter of semantics as well as objective meaning versus the implied subjective meaning it ends up given. There are almost certainly people who think that gods don't exist there, just like there are people here that think the world is flat.

Unlike people who believe in their god, I have no regard for people who believe the world is flat, we have international markets based off of the most convenient trade routes by air of sea.

You're still missing my point, or I'm not getting yours. :lol:

Elor said this:

Quote:

Your character can choose to worship no gods (eg. being Faithless) or hate the gods as a whole, but someone in FR would be able to deny that the gods exist in as much as we would be able to deny that gravity exists.

And I find that thoroughly unconvincing. Like I said, perhaps the common pleb with college education would accept their senses without a grain of salt, but the esoteric intellectuals could viably doubt everything. There's a lot loaded in the word "god", and there's no reason people couldn't for example believe that the cosmos itself has an interest in mortals and it just looks like it's manifesting itself as personal deities. Or that the gods are the power of imagination. Or any number of possible ideas.

The thing about doubting reality or causality is that it's strictly an intellectual exercise. Try taking things from people because 'they dont really exist' outside of your own mind or stepping out of a 10th floor window and your armchair speculations will end soon after. Some people in FR may choose to believe that the gods are simply very powerful beings and therefore not worthy of worship (i.e. they are not divine), in which case they are simply Faithless, but to deny the existence of those beings to the extent of defecating on Bane's altar is not a good idea - even if you don't get an immediate lightning bolt up your ass, you'll at least have your existence terminated rather messily by his servants. I think those who declare that the gods are unworthy of worship will be humoured at best but more likely made to drink hemlock or the local equivalent. Those who declare flat out that those beings who are identified as gods do not actually exist will be seen as insane. Either way, the number of people likely to take such positions is probably very small.

Given that the time of troubles was only about 25-30 years ago, the idea that someone would be modern-day nihilistic enough ot see the gods as not gods but rather just the imagination of man or whatever silly other idea is just... .well... stupid.

Xaviera wrote:

The thing about doubting reality or causality is that it's strictly an intellectual exercise.

No doubt. I personally can't think of an exercise more valuable and relevant than the intellectual one, though Tormak would clearly disagree.

In the case of Forgotten Realms, yes because, oh I don't know.. within the corporeal Memory of the middle aged in Amia's timeline the gods walked the Prime effing Materium?

Sorry, it's a lot harder for me to see a Nihilist or anyone who doesn't believe the Gods could exist in Forgotten Realms. Not impossible, but a LOT, LOT harder.

Last edited by IronAngel on Sun, Sep 02 2012, 18:45 PM, edited 1 time in total.

Erm, no offence but if you people don't even understand what the discussion is about could you refrain from commenting? Because, I can assure you I'm right (with the kind of qualifications Xaviera rightly pointed out, of course), there's little point in arguing that.

Edit: Sorry, that is rude. But I seriously don't feel like educating you in Philosophy 101 on things that are widely accepted as obvious for the last 2500 years or so. There's no harm in sometimes beieving what you're told even if you're not 100% clear on why it is so.

Also, "nihilism" is not a very good term at all, and certainly not applicable here.

TormakSaber wrote:

Given that the time of troubles was only about 25-30 years ago, the idea that someone would be modern-day nihilistic enough ot see the gods as not gods but rather just the imagination of man or whatever silly other idea is just... .well... stupid.

And yet I've come across many many characters who espouse such beliefs. It was kind of... well, WTF? I didn't know much about FR when I started playing here, but one of the things I did know is that the gods are a lot more THERE than they are in many other worlds.

This is what the TV Tropes says about FR in regards to the issue:

TV Tropes - Flat Earth Atheist wrote:

In the Forgotten Realms, there are still atheists. This is despite the fact that gods regularly take physical forms and rampage around the country side, and that new gods rise while others die in every decade. Really, the existence of gods would be no more questionable then that of President Obama...

On the other hand, the maltheist is something I can see in FR more than the atheist.
Again, TV Tropes:

TV Tropes - Nay Theist wrote:

One notable Nay Theist in Forgotten Realms is Artemis Entreri, who knows the gods exist, its kinda hard not to after the Times of Troubles, but sees them as basically really powerful beings who go around pretending to be good or lawful when all they are is really a bunch of petty monsters, no better than anyone else. The fact his mother was raped by a priest of Selune, a good goddess, to produce him and the rest of that order manipulated the poor of the Slums of Memnon, where he was born, for money might just be part of his the reason he hates gods. The fact that every god, even the "good" ones, in the pantheon apparently helped browbeat Kelemvor into holding the souls of every mortal creature in the setting hostage doesn't hurt his argument either.

I see atheists all the time on Amia. I think I've only seen one maltheist. Which I think have more potential for RP than atheists who have no real reason not to believe in the gods' existence at least.

Atheism in FR world is a nonsense word. Basically everyone sooner or later witness the divine power - something you cannot (please, please, no arguments here) witness IRL.

Therefore, where Atheism IRL means "I do not believe in God(s)", in FR world I see it morelike "I do not care". Especially as Tormak pointed out, denying the Divine presence thirty years after ToT is on verge of ignorance.

I prefer not to hear term "atheist, atheism" in FR, for instance, "faithless" is more accurate.

You seem somehow stuck on empirical observation. Why is that? We're not comparing FR atheism to real-world atheism, after all. We're comparing it to severe forms of real world epistemic skepticism. Things like the brain-in-a-vat hypothesis which conclusively show that the traditional definition of knowledge is insufficent or incoherent. Theories that are sound, valid and not dismissable with the kind of arguments presented here, even if they don't guide the actual behaviour of the majority of people. If people smarter than us in the real world deny the possibility of knowledge about physical reality, it's not hard to believe many philosophers and theologians in the Realms would deny the possibility of knowledge about the gods.

We need to remember the distinction between denying a phenomenon, and denying the possibility of knowledge about that phenomenon. The latter is probably quite prevalent in any world where intellectual beings exist. (And no, that is not agnosticism in the proper sense of withholding active belief.)

But I'm not even so much interested in total skepticism as I am in various heretical metaphysics. The idea that there are people sitting in the sky can seem rather naive and unacceptable to many Faerûnian intellectuals. They'll be quick to devise theologies and metaphysics reminding neoplatonism, different pantheistic experiments (like in Durpar), cynical beliefs that the gods are not gods but powerful mortal outsider posing as transcendent lords (which you could say is true, but that's clearly a form of atheism considering most definitions of a god rely on the god being something completely different from mortals, on another level of comprehension and without need to justify his authority), and so on. It's very naive and straightforwardly empiricist to say that if gods appear in visions and give spells to clerics they must be what they appear to be. Don't force our culturally formed, historically contingent ideas about observation and truth on a setting to which they're potentially alien.

You're also dismissing faith entirely, in a very modern way that doesn't fit the setting. If the nature of the gods was readily apparent and unquestionable, there would be no need for faith. In a world where faith actually determines the reality of the gods and not vice versa (OK - in fairness it's a two-way street) that seems completely out of place.

You're the ones implementing modern, real-world ideas into the setting, not me.

Guardian wrote:

Atheism in FR world is a nonsense word. Basically everyone sooner or later witness the divine power - something you cannot (please, please, no arguments here) witness IRL.

Therefore, where Atheism IRL means "I do not believe in God(s)", in FR world I see it morelike "I do not care". Especially as Tormak pointed out, denying the Divine presence thirty years after ToT is on verge of ignorance.

I prefer not to hear term "atheist, atheism" in FR, for instance, "faithless" is more accurate.

This is essentially my take on FR and deities. The Time of Troubles really makes it hard to not believe in the existence of gods. The nice thing about a fantasy world like the Forgotten Realms is that things like this are cut and dry. It's like the alignment discussion.

What I believe Iron is explaining is that people in the Forgotten Realms can think up any sort of plausible (read: plausible does not mean they are right) explanation for divine acts. They believe what they want to believe, so it is possible that they are atheistic in the sense that they disbelieve that the deities exist or are actual gods (ie his example in the recent post). However, cosmically (mechanically) deities exist and if you do not believe in them you are in for a world of hurt when you piss one off or die. Iron is not disputing that, he is merely elaborating on ways that people can actually come up with arguments against the existence of deities. But again, they are still wrong in their beliefs.

Naivatkal wrote:

The nice thing about a fantasy world like the Forgotten Realms is that things like this are cut and dry. It's like the alignment discussion.

Well, I strongly disagree with this. Of course, phrases like "cut and dry" or "black and white" are just metaphorical expressions, so they don't actually mean anything specific. They tell more about how you see the world than what the world is actually like. There's nothing dry about the Realms, IMO. I know you don't necessarily mean anything specific by that and I might not disagree with the facts you have in mind, but it's this "everything is so simple about D&D lulz" attitude that I find too prevalent and rather harmful to RP. Forgotten Realms is a real world with its complexities and its constants, its laws of physics, magic and sociology, but also historical contingencies. In this, it's no different from the real world. Our world is pretty "cut and dry" at the end of the day if you mean we can make true or false statements about it and they don't arbitrarily change. And still that doesn't make it simple or easy to understand for the people living in it. But hey, that's just me.

Quote:

But again, they are still wrong in their beliefs.

Well, that's up to the DMs ultimately, and their mind could change tomorrow or they may have been lying to us all along. There's no reason to even think about distinctions of true and false, fact and fiction. Yes, you're probably right that these people would be "wrong" in their beliefs, but that's completely uninteresting to us as players. It simply doesn't concern us. It's our job to play believable characters who treat their peers as living beings of the same world, and not metagame our OOC knowledge about the setting. (Yes, it's knowledge our PCs may consider self-evident IC too, but self-evident beliefs can be questioned with convincing arguments. OOC knowledge can't.)

The only perspective that matters to us as players is the perspective of our characters. And to our characters, the world they live in is no less complex or perplexing (or simple and obvious, for the simpleminded) than the real world is for us. I dislike the smug superiority players often seem to feel for the characters and the setting we play.

Oh, this just occured to me: at least three of the Planescape factions could be considered different types of atheists. Athar, Bleak Cabal and Sign of One would all scoff at the "but I saw it during the Time of Troubles!" argument. And they have way more evidence than what's available to the average Faerûnian, considering Sigil is connected to countless words including Toril. Their beliefs won't be swayed by some gatecrashing stumbling from Waterdeep telling about the great gods of his world. That should be evidence enough that people living with gods and witnessing their deeds can and do still have many doubts about their nature, power, justification and existence. It is a much richer question than simply "do these phenomena seem to happen?".

When the afterlife and it's requirements are largely a non-mystery, the only justifiable excuse for godlessness, IMO, is clinical levels of insanity.

Clinical insanity does not exist in the setting. Please try to keep real world ideas and the D&D cosmology seperate. I also don't see the obsessive need to control IC beliefs with OOC argument. If someone's IC intepretation challenges that of your character, it can lead to fruitful conflict best resolved in game. No need to resort to crass OOC violence. (Classifying someone as mentally unhealthy is one of the most blatant exercises in power developed in the modern age.)

Also, it wouldn't take more than an Int score of 13 to refute that argument IC.

NinjaClarinet wrote:

When the afterlife and it's requirements are largely a non-mystery, the only justifiable excuse for godlessness, IMO, is clinical levels of insanity.

So just because someone told you that there is an afterlife means that it is definitely there? There is no reason that person cannot choose to disbelieve them. Otherwise everyone in the real world would opt to believe in one religion or another. Just because stories exist does not mean they are true, even if they are, people will still disbelieve them.

IronAngel wrote:

Naivatkal wrote:

The nice thing about a fantasy world like the Forgotten Realms is that things like this are cut and dry. It's like the alignment discussion.

Well, I strongly disagree with this. Of course, phrases like "cut and dry" or "black and white" are just metaphorical expressions, so they don't actually mean anything specific.

Arguments about phrasing aside, since we know what I meant, in the Forgotten Realms alignment and the existence of the deities are absolute. A character can believe that their actions are Good, but the cosmos deem them Evil. Similarly a character can believe the gods do not exist, but they do. Both are mechanical traits as to how FR works. There is no ambiguity about them, it is how things are. What you have to remember in what I said is that these things are how we perceive them because it is a game world and subject to the points of it's creation. However, I am wholly agreeing that the people living in that world can have different views of the game world because they are living in said world. I am merely defining the mechanical aspects of certain things.

Of course, you are right that the DMs could turn everything upside-down in a heartbeat, but that's entirely another matter haha.

IronAngel wrote:

The only perspective that matters to us as players is the perspective of our characters. And to our characters, the world they live in is no less complex or perplexing (or simple and obvious, for the simpleminded) than the real world is for us. I dislike the smug superiority players often seem to feel for the characters and the setting we play.

This is false, for at least myself but I'm certain it is untrue for others as well. I find both that both the OOC and IC equally matter to me. To my characters, however, only the IC matters. I'm able to separate OOC from IC extremely well, so in the end it doesn't affect how my characters act. Heck, my old original main knew the gods existed but he didn't give a rat's arse about them, believing instead that people were in control of their lives and destiny. His outlook changed somewhat, but he still prefers to be 'his own man' rather than turn to the gods for help. He is starting to see it more as a parallel road, where both he and his chosen deity can work together to achieve the necessary goals.

Making a separate post to address the newest posts:

NinjaClarinet wrote:

When the afterlife and it's requirements are largely a non-mystery, the only justifiable excuse for godlessness, IMO, is clinical levels of insanity.

IronAngel wrote:

Clinical insanity does not exist in the setting. Please try to keep real world ideas and the D&D cosmology seperate. I also don't see the obsessive need to control IC beliefs with OOC argument. If someone's IC intepretation challenges that of your character, it can lead to fruitful conflict best resolved in game. No need to resort to crass OOC violence. (Classifying someone as mentally unhealthy is one of the most blatant exercises in power developed in the modern age.)

Also, it wouldn't take more than an Int score of 13 to refute that argument IC.

jimbono1 wrote:

NinjaClarinet wrote:

When the afterlife and it's requirements are largely a non-mystery, the only justifiable excuse for godlessness, IMO, is clinical levels of insanity.

So just because someone told you that there is an afterlife means that it is definitely there? There is no reason that person cannot choose to disbelieve them. Otherwise everyone in the real world would opt to believe in one religion or another. Just because stories exist does not mean they are true, even if they are, people will still disbelieve them.

This is why it is hard to use our real-world reasoning for FR things. In FR, gods exist, there is no question about that. However, characters can believe whatever. They can have the same ideological quandaries that people IRL have. But, in the same sense, on an OOC level we are back to the absolute as to how things work. It's almost like a paradox, which is why in terms of character beliefs it has to be handled purely IC and dependent on the character's ideology and experiences.

Even clerics I have played have wrestled with doubt. Nothing is empirical and you really do take a lot of details on faith - where your powers actually come from, what actually happens to you when you die. Clerics don't get to have a conversation with their deities, even with the use of spells like Commune. And even if they did, there's always the question of, "Who am I really communicating with?" So much is based on the testimony of others, and even the gods who walked the earth in the Time of Troubles might not have been gods but anything from aliens claiming to be them at simplest or physical manifestations of our "collective core consciousness" regarding the metaphysical (not illusions, but literal conjurations of our own beliefs given reality through some unknown catalyst) at the complex end. This theory can extend even further into weird philosophies suggesting that gods exist, but are actually at the mercy of mortals, for it is mortals who conjure them through prayer, invocation, spellcasting, etc...which has a morsel of truth to it.

The fact is that it is human nature to play the "what if" game. You must separate what you as a player know to be true about the Realms because you read the sourcebooks and what the people of the setting know to be true. There is a massive divide there. And I would argue that even the player doesn't have a firm grasp on what is true from reading the sourcebooks because DMs can alter it and even the sourcebooks can be intentionally vague, contradictory at times, and open to interpretation.

What the Time of Troubles means is that it is very difficult for people to claim the Time of Troubles did not happen.

I would say that before the Time of Troubles, there were many people who could have easily doubted the existence of gods. I believe that after the Time of Troubles, it is harder for people to do so, but it isn't impossible. The intellectual can still come to alternate conclusions.

Naivatkal wrote:

I'm able to separate OOC from IC extremely well, so in the end it doesn't affect how my characters act.

I don't doubt it, but this topic shows not everyone is capable of such a feat. Humans have an almost irresistable bias for what they believe to be "true" (as if that had any meaning when said about a world that doesn't even exist). Usually, it requires you to actually want to play the sucker who "got it all wrong" if you're going to deviate from what you OOCly "know" to be "true". Frankly, I find OOC arguments in defence of IC "common sense" to be outright harmful. IC and OOC intertwine all the time in the discussion above. The statement "I think it would be stupid for a character to think X" is rather absurd in itself, because 1) what you think has no relevance to the reality the character lives in and you only risk contamination by actively having that belief and 2) the standards of rationality are not commesurable between two different worlds with different discourses.

I still don't agree or even quite understand your point about cut and dry, absolute world. How is that different from any possible world, ours or imagined? If condition X pertains, it pertains. (You could say it pertains absolutely, but that's just an emphasis that doesn't add to the meaning.) If something is evil, it's evil, in our world as much as in the Realms. If something isn't evil, it isn't evil. (This is probably the case in our world, as I doubt there's really something ontological called "evil" in our reality; but its nonexistance is just as absolute or "cut and dry".) If gods exist, they exist. This is "absolute." It's a tautology. Therefore I find the constantly repeated argument rather hollow. It doesn't actually say anything about the world, how we should interpret it or how we should play our characters.

EDIT: Dear gods, Yossarin put everything I was thinking about in believable, concrete terms! There's usually some detail that keeps me from agreeing with him completely, but he really nailed it this time. Right down to the "power of imagination" I didn't elaborate on. Read his post twice.

"What the Time of Troubles means is that it is very difficult for people to claim the Time of Troubles did not happen.""

I agree a lot with what both Yoss and Iron just said. Again, I just want to emphasize that I do believe that a lot of the IC stuff comes down to matters of faith.

IronAngel wrote:

Frankly, I find OOC arguments in defence of IC "common sense" to be outright harmful. IC and OOC intertwine all the time in the discussion above. The statement "I think it would be stupid for a character to think X" is rather absurd in itself, because 1) what you think has no relevance to the reality the character lives in and you only risk contamination by actively having that belief and 2) the standards of rationality are not commesurable between two different worlds with different discourses.

Right right, I just have been trying to get the understanding out there that despite the fact that we know absolutely how things work OOC doesn't mean that IC it's not still a guessing game to some extent.

IronAngel wrote:

I still don't agree or even quite understand your point about cut and dry, absolute world. How is that different from any possible world, ours or imagined? If condition X pertains, it pertains. (You could say it pertains absolutely, but that's just an emphasis that doesn't add to the meaning.) If something is evil, it's evil, in our world as much as in the Realms. If something isn't evil, it isn't evil. (This is probably the case in our world, as I doubt there's really something ontological called "evil" in our reality; but its nonexistance is just as absolute or "cut and dry".) If gods exist, they exist. This is "absolute." It's a tautology. Therefore I find the constantly repeated argument rather hollow. It doesn't actually say anything about the world, how we should interpret it or how we should play our characters.

I just realized I never really worded my explanation correctly. So, here goes:
When I say 'cut and dry' I meant it purely in respect to the OOC knowledge of the game. IC, there is nothing absolutely cut and dry with how the FR world works. I hope that clears up the unintentional misunderstanding I created with what I said.

I do have to ask this question, though: What does actually happen when a character dies? I know their deity takes them, but where? As far as I am aware it is to their deity's astral home. Is that right? I know it's an OOC thing, but it's tied to IC because, well, there would be a recognized classic belief in what happens, after all.

Sure, it's possible. But, so what? It's possible to deny the existence of *anything*. It's possible to believe that we're all just disembodied brains floating in jars being fed stimulus by our evil manipulative overlords (Descartes / The Matirx, etc.). It's possible to deny the existence of Kara-Tur: sure, it's on all the maps, and people claim to have been there and seen it, but that's all "based on the testimony of others" and maybe it's just some sort of huge and inexplicable ruse. It's possible to believe that there's no such thing as magic: that all the spells we've ever seen have simply been manifestations of some sort of elaborate gadgetry or technological trickery, and every wizard and sorcerer who's ever lived was a co-conspirator in some sort of elaborate fraud. The fact that there's no reason to believe those things, and the massive supermajority of evidence would contradict those beliefs, doesn't mean it's not possible for them to be legitimately believed.

But it does mean that believing them takes a special sort of willful head-in-the-sand ignorance. That anybody who does believe them would, and rightly should, be seen by the rest of the world as a far-fringe nutcase, an utter whack-job, not someone espousing a well-considered philosophical skepticism.

IronAngel wrote:

Clinical insanity does not exist in the setting.

False. It just wasn't referred to as that. In an OOC discussion, it's an entirely legitimate way to describe a character. There are very certainly characters that would be classified as such within today's system.

Naivat: The belief is that you go to your deity's realm in the planes and become his retainer, yes. Eventually you being to lose your individual personality traits and blend in with the plane and its general alignment, I believe. I could be confusing two cosmologies here, though.

I don't even agree that we know absolutely how the game works, because it's up to constant debate, re-evaluation, digging through lore, waiting for DM decisions, and a bunch of people disagreeing on matters that supposedly should have a clear answer to them. :lol:

We make the game as we play. But yeah, I get what you're saying, and I agree it's unlikely that we're too sorely mistaken about something as prevalent as the gods. (Alignment though, now that's a different question we'd better steer clear of lest I stay up typing all night.)

NinjaClarinet wrote:

IronAngel wrote:

Clinical insanity does not exist in the setting.

False. It just wasn't referred to as that. In an OOC discussion, it's an entirely legitimate way to describe a character. There are very certainly characters that would be classified as such within today's system.

This just shows you haven't read your Foucault, really. What do they teach in high school around there? It's certainly not legitimate to diagnose people with terminology alien to their discourse. Some psychohistorians (or more commonly, psychiatrists with a passing interest in history) who popularize the discipline may want to do that, but no professional, academically respectable scholar would.

Lizzie wrote:

But it does mean that believing them takes a special sort of willful head-in-the-sand ignorance. That anybody who does believe them would, and rightly should, be seen by the rest of the world as a far-fringe nutcase, an utter whack-job, not someone espousing a well-considered philosophical skepticism.

I's argue if you do not take the brain-in-a-vat/evil demon hypothesis seriously, then you're the far-fringe nutcase. You misunderstand it, though: it's not about believing it to be true, it's that the fact we cannot dismiss the alternative with certainty prevents us from acquiring justified knowledge about what we do believe to be the real state of things. Nobody in serious skeptical discussion suggests we are brains in a jar; they suggest that because we can't be sure we're not, we can't claim to know things that require us to first dismiss that possibility (such as the statement that we have hands).

As for faith in the Realms, I would be very suspicious of a priest who did not struggle with doubt. Such clerics clearly don't possess the wisdom so central to their class. False certitude leads to hubris, whereas the depths of doubt and despair lead to a stronger faith. Perhaps this is not a necessary developement, but to suggest few deeply spiritual priests actually have such doubts is to dismiss a huge aspect of faith and spiritual RP. The possibility of doubt is relevant not (only) because it's a constructive intellectual exercise, but because is an integral condition of faith.

I've never been a religious person, but I've experienced the skeptical revelation in my youth. If you've never been humiliated and humbled before Hume, Kant and Nietzsche, I'm not sure you'll quite understand where I'm coming from. But it is absolutely ludicrous to dismiss the power of these revelations in the Forgotten Realms, where they would hold just as much intellectual sway. Just as it would be ludicrous for me to deny religious conversion, even if I can't personally relate to it.

Besides, to our standards a cleric is a nutjob. We have to struggle to understand and sympathize with him.

IronAngel wrote:

To our standards, a cleric is a nutjob. We have to struggle to understand and sympathize with him.

Our standards aren't relevant in the slightest. What matters are the standards of imaginary people living in a fantasy world in which the gods are universally accepted fact. You're projecting a very modern real-world skepticism onto fictional people who just simply wouldn't have that mindset. Since I have great respect for you as a connoisseur of FR lore, I'll try to bring the discussion into that realm: can you cite a source that supports your assertion that in the FR, doubt is "central to the class" of cleric? Or even that it's significant in even the smallest way? I like to think I've done a lot of reading about the FR gods and religion, and nothing like that has ever stuck in my memory.

If I understand you, then, you're not saying that people think the creatures FR folk know as gods don't exist at all, but that those creatures may simply be very powerful beings but not actual divinities. I have no trouble with the fact that such people exist in FR (you've given a few examples), though I think they'd be a tiny minority.

As far as anyone who seriously questioned the existence of an external reality (outside of a sage constructing an academic argument), I suspect that, yes, a few such individuals might exist, but would be seen as simply deluded by pretty much everybody else. If your point is that they could exist in FR, I'll grant that. If you're saying that point of view would be seriously held by any more than a handful or a perhaps a score of people in the entire world at any one time, I am inclined to strongly disagree.

Iron, you're editing your posts, and I can't keep up.

Citing Foucault, Kant, Hume, Nietzsche, etc, isn't helping your case at all. They commented on the real world that you and I live in. The FR analogues of those thinkers would have drawn very, very different conclusions, since they'd be working off of a very different set of empirically observable data.

I feel the opposite: you're bringing your modern interpretations into the material. Maybe I'm doing it too, but I'm being inclusive. I'm not the one dismissing other people's interpretations as clinical insanity. That's outright offensive. You don't have to agree with me, and I'm happy to keep playing in a world of conflicting beliefs and diverse characters. I find it rather comical that people seem outright upset at the possibility that not everyone IC subscribes to their OOC view of the setting.

Wisdom score. That pretty much says it all. If you are wise, you will inevitably see the folly of hubris. This is my interpretation of wisdom and faith, anyhow. I'm not saying you absolutely have to follow it (though I would encourage everyone to read classics of philosophy, comparative religion and sociology to improve their RP) or that your character concept is unbelievable bollocks if you happen to have a more positivistic view of the world. We ultimatly role-play through modern concepts, bring theories and themes to life through an experimental interpretation in a fantasy world framework. That's what role-play and storytelling in genral is at its very heart.

I already did point out to the chosen of Deneir and his doubts, depicted in one of the Cleric Quintet novels. Those doubts were necessary for him to become chosen, despite the stiff disapproval of his clerical superior. Granted, RAS is just a writer of trashy entertainment so I'd rather put more stock in the creativity of Amians.

As for claiming real world philosophy doesn't apply, that's just nonsense. Philosophy specifically strives to reveal the relevance of contingent historical material and the rational structures by which they're constructed. To claim that philosophy does not help my case is akin to saying 1+1 isn't 2 or that the law of negation doesn't apply. Its truths aren't necessary or universal, but they're the only ones we're capable of comprehending and putting to use in our role-play. I find that people only use the "this isn't philosophy" argument when they can no longer keep up. Philosophy is nothing but a more systematic and refined form of everyday reasoning, and you're using everyday reasoning all over this topic. What else could you use? It's how we work. You can hardly begrudge me for using the more refined tools and authorities at my disposal, people who've made a life's work of commenting on things like this so that we wouldn't have to start over every time. (See my earlier paragraph about role-playing's relation to real world theories, too.) I do not feel empirical data is very relevant here at all, and I don't see which part of their philosophy wouldn't be perfectly plausible in the Realms (though Nietzsche would use somewhat different metaphors).

I agree with one of Iron's points that there's a very big difference between having faith and knowing something empirically, and that Clerics should tend toward the former rather than the latter. And should only tend toward the former if they want what they have to really be considered faith.

Think of it from a deity's perspective: Would you rather have followers who choose to follow you because they agree with your dogma and believe that you're out there, or would you rather have a group of scientists who just think they know you're out there and can quantify you? That's a dangerous game to play, and likely has led to a number of instances of deicide.

Personally, my characters are commonly of the opinion that believing in a deity is actually believing in their portfolio, so I kinda skip this discussion all together. For instance, it's not belief in some creature named "Gond," rather than belief in the fact that creation and innovation perhaps divinely inspired. Likewise, it's not belief in Umberlee as some kind of crazy bitch - it's belief in the fact that the storms are whimsical and may very well screw you while you're out on a boat. It's not a belief in Shar as a dark and evil woman, it's a belief in entropy, forgetfulness and bitterness, and how they are primordial and eternal and worthy of our respect.

(That being said, I think Iron is being more than a little antagonistic in their posts. There's no need to point out your own strawman arguments and explain over and over again how no one has bothered to refute them. And there's plenty of need to express a certain level of decorum and decency in debate that moves the focus of said debate towards the topic and away from the speaker and their ego.)

Xaviera wrote:

If I understand you, then, you're not saying that people think the creatures FR folk know as gods don't exist at all, but that those creatures may simply be very powerful beings but not actual divinities. I have no trouble with the fact that such people exist in FR (you've given a few examples), though I think they'd be a tiny minority.

That's one possibility, yes. And I would think they're actually a fairly large group of people, considering that it's pretty much true. The gods aren't something transcendent, tremendous and fascinating in the Realms. They're people who tap into the Weave and travel the planes like any spellcaster, but only a lot better. Ok, that's not all they are, but it's not a very unreasonable conclusion.

Yossarin's post has many of the examples I was personally thinking of.

"Gods don't exist at all" is precisely the same as saying the gods aren't actually gods. If they're not gods, then the gods don't exist. I don't see how that's not atheism. Durpar has a form of pantheism, where gods are actually just manifestations of the Adama. Durpari theologians could also reasonably say gods do not exist. Gods could be the face of the cosmos or projections of a collective consciousness, as Yoss put it. Gods could be an illusion of the Weave. There are endless possibilities, all viable speculation if not widespread belief.

Quote:

As far as anyone who seriously questioned the existence of an external reality (outside of a sage constructing an academic argument), I suspect that, yes, a few such individuals might exist, but would be seen as simply deluded by pretty much everybody else. If your point is that they could exist in FR, I'll grant that. If you're saying that point of view would be seriously held by any more than a handful or a perhaps a score of people in the entire world at any one time, I am inclined to strongly disagree.

You need to keep in mind the distinction between denying their existence and denying the possibility of knowledge about their existence. It is not very convincing for an intellectual to claim to know the gods don't exist, because that would almost certainly be inconsistent logic. However, it would be perfectly reasonable to maintain that because our knowledge of the gods is limited, because the arguments in favor of their transcendent divinity are insufficent and because false worship has implications to our ethical and intellectual integrity, we must reserve judgement and admit we cannot know anything of the gods apart from empirical data. In fact, that would be the reasonable conclusion about everything in the world, if it weren't somewhat impractical and against our hardwired preferences.

Council: If I'm antagonistic it's only because people keep bringing up the same arguments that have already been refuted, and failing to answer the refutations with new counter-points. It's frustrating to see people talk past eachother. I'm not aware of any strawmans made, though this hectic and fast-paced conversation no doubt resulted in a few errors.

I never commented anything one way or the other about clinical insanity, dismissively or otherwise.

And while I fully agree that a high wisdom score would let you "inevitably see the folly of hubris," I dispute that, *in the FR*, it would be at all hubristic to assert that the existence and power of the gods are simply givens. You seized on the Descartes analogy above, but ignored the other comparisons I tried to raise: asserting that the gods don't exist is like asserting that Kara-Tur doesn't exist, or that magic doesn't exist. And nobody's arguing those positions. (Because they're entirely ridiculous.)

And I do maintain that citing RL philosophers doesn't help make your case here. The thinkers of the FR would have had to account for a very different set of observable data when formulating their philosophies, which the names you cite never had to contend with. Nietzsche would just about certainly have seen things very differently if he could have seen a cleric casting Cure Light Wounds.

IronAngel wrote:

Council: If I'm antagonistic it's only because people keep bringing up the same arguments that have already been refuted, and failing to answer the refutations with new counter-points. It's frustrating to see people talk past eachother. I'm not aware of any strawmans made, though this hectic and fast-paced conversation no doubt resulted in a few errors.

Your argument should be able to stand on its own without such intense negativity.

IronAngel wrote:

Erm, no offence but if you people don't even understand what the discussion is about could you refrain from commenting? Because, I can assure you I'm right (with the kind of qualifications Xaviera rightly pointed out, of course), there's little point in arguing that.

Edit: Sorry, that is rude. But I seriously don't feel like educating you in Philosophy 101 on things that are widely accepted as obvious for the last 2500 years or so. There's no harm in sometimes beieving what you're told even if you're not 100% clear on why it is so.

This right here is the kind of candor that made me walk away from viewtopic.php?f=103&t=67241 . It certainly wasn't me bowing to your superiority.

Also, that last line is very ironic, given how you're trying to force teach everyone to understand that intellectuals are intellectual because they question everything.

Last edited by IronAngel on Sun, Sep 02 2012, 22:24 PM, edited 1 time in total.

Lizzie: But a bunch of atheistic theories and beliefs aren't ridicilous in the context of the setting. They're not comparable to beliefs about Kara-Tur. (Magic is another complicated matter.) My response to Xaviera lists many very plausible beliefs. Yossarin's post is dead on, and I really don't see why you would disagree with it. You want to paint this as some fight for the possibility of the unbelievable. That's not it at all. I'm trying to point out that very regular guys with slightly above-average Intelligence and Wisdom modifiers could come to a variety of conclusions that aren't necessarily the same as those we can read from the sourcebooks OOC.

That's basically what my contribution in this topic boils down to. The discussion began when some players posted very generalizing and simplified statements about faith and atheism in the Realms, and I tried to add more depth and diversity to the picture.

And no, you didn't comment on clinical insanity. NinjaClarinet did. It's not a debate with two "sides" but it does seem that if you believe my interpretation to be ridicilous and PCs following it to be mentally unstable IC, you're being rather exclusive and forcing your interpretation on PCs created without the intention to represent nutjobs or lunatics. Your PC is free to treat them as such, but it becomes an OOC issue when players are arguing on the forums that people should act like that IC. My view is considerably more inclusive: a conservative and commonsensical interpretation is no doubt widespread, but it's hardly extraordinary or fantastic to find someone who disagrees with very plausible motives. We're both forcing our interpretations and theoretical frameworks onto the game, and that's OK; that's what RP is about. But I feel my interpretation does considerably less violence to other people's ideas. It's a live and let live situation. (Though I admit I've phrased some things too strongly - doubt may not be integral to the cleric class itself, even if it's an important part of many people's spirituality.)

Council: That may have been inappropriate, but it's hardly an unjustified reaction to the kind of base sarcasm Grymia practiced in the post just above it, without commenting on any of the arguments presented by others. Rude or not, I cannot be expected to lecture you on basic philosophy everyone should have learned at high school already. It's like having an argument with someone who does not recognize the evolution theory - not someone who merely disagrees with it for whatever reason, but someone who seems completely unaware of it in the first place. So if people are discussing something you clearly don't quite understand, it's probably better not to butt in. It's not my job to point it out, but I don't think it's an unreasonable guideline.

That was the only post with intentional negativity, though. You may be reading too much into my tone. I'm enjoying myself and getting to know and respect new people like Lizzie who I don't think I've ever really argued with this thoroughly.

IronAngel wrote:

Council: That may have been inappropriate, but it's hardly an unjustified reaction to the kind of base sarcasm Grymia practiced in the post just above it, without commenting on any of the arguments presented by others. Rude or not, I cannot be expected to lecture you on basic philosophy everyone should have learned at high school already. It's like having an argument with someone who does not recognize the evolution theory - not someone who merely disagrees with it for whatever reason, but someone who seems completely unaware of it in the first place. So if people are discussing something you clearly don't quite understand, it's probably better not to butt in. It's not my job to point it out, but I don't think it's an unreasonable guideline.

My point is that it's ironic that you're trying to get everyone to accept without questioning something you feel they've failed to understand that has been widely accepted, the goal of which is teaching people to have their characters recognize that following what is widely accepted about the gods in Faerun should be questioned. No wonder you're frustrated.

It may help to take a class on teaching, instead.

Last edited by IronAngel on Sun, Sep 02 2012, 22:35 PM, edited 2 times in total.

Mind that I'm not trying to get everyone to accept anything without questioning. It was directed at those who clearly didn't bother to think before typing and had nothing to contribute. Frankly, I call bullshit on lot of the philosophical arguments I've referred to; I'm not a skeptic myself. A moderate epistemic stance corrected to account for skeptical arguments often comes very close to common sense and where you started from. But before you can question, you need to learn. You haven't earned the right to criticize and dismiss something you don't understand. If you haven't taken the journey, the destination is pretty irrelevant.

You are absolutely right, though: it is ironic.

IronAngel wrote:

Mind that I'm not trying to get everyone to accept anything without questioning. It was directed at those who clearly didn't bother to think before typing and had nothing to contribute. Frankly, I call bullshit on lot of the philosophical arguments I've referred to; I'm not a skeptic myself. A moderate epistemic stance corrected to account for skeptical arguments often comes very close to common sense and where you started from. But before you can question, you need to learn. If you haven't taken the journey, the destination is pretty irrelevant.

You are absolutely right, though: it is ironic.

My goal here isn't to counter any particular argument you made (although I did comment on the topic at hand with my first post, if you'll notice). I think you'll have a much easier and less frustrating time getting your point across if you accept, rather than defy, the idea that people may need to see your work rather than jump straight to the conclusion. Regardless of whether you're prepared to do that or if you're uncomfortable with the idea of remedial discussion (which apparently you are), it will only hurt your argument to drive people on the defensive rather than focus entirely on the argument. IE: Stop telling people you don't understand how they could be so wrong, how everything they know could be fixed if they were just smarter, etc. It's entirely antagonistic and defeats your purpose, which I should hope is the goal of arriving at a higher thought together, rather than just browbeating others until they walk away out of frustration with you.

I guess I should try to clarify what I'm arguing against here, Iron:

If you're asserting that it's theoretically possible for a FR thinker to construct a logically consistent hypothetical framework of thought in which the phenomena commonly attributed to the gods are actually explicable by some other set of circumstances that has nothing to do with the divine, then I completely agree. Yes, that's possible.

If you're arguing that there would likely be any sizable number of living, breathing people in the FR who actually believe that possibility to be not mere possibility, but truth, then I disagree. The number of people who believe that a world without gods is not just *theoretically possible*, but *factually true*, would be negligible. And I maintain that your average cleric-on-the-street would dismiss the assertion that atheism is not merely possible, but actually factual, as the rantings of a bizarrely deranged nutcase.

(Note that I'm not here accusing you, OOC, of being a nutcase. I'm asserting that IC, a person who asserted the factuality of a godless world would be seen by the IC mainstream as a nutcase.)

To return on topic, Council's first post sums up my thoughts on faith rather nicely, in combination with Yossarin's. If you worship a god merely because you've seen him grant spells or heard of him walk the lands in the past, you're entering a contract. The god grants favor in exchange of your worship and service. That may work for you both, and it may even be enough for a clerical vocation, but it's not a very fundamental relationship. To be close to your god is to have a personal stake in him and what he represents; to believe without guarantee. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, yadda yadda. I also rather like the idea of revering portfolios first and foremost, though I don't feel my characters would take it to quite such extremes: mythology and stories are an important part of religion, and the character of the god appearing in those myths is an example to strive for and learn from. There is a personal connection between Oghma and Joon, even if they've never interacted as directly as two humans interact. He would worship whatever god of knowledge and inspiration that were to take Oghma's place, but the transition would be a painful and sorrowful one.

I think deep faith also requires you to overcome obstacles. If the answers are given to you without effort, where is the merit of the spiritual struggle? An untested faith can be entusiastic and certain, but it's also naive. I'm not sure I remember correctly, but I think it was Teresa of Avila who wrote about the steps of spirituality. One quite important step in the path to union with God was a period of darkness and despair where the mystic felt the total absence of God. Without this experience of loss and doubt, one could not reach higher levels of spirituality. Medieval mysticism is a pretty interesting subject, and one I like to use as a source of inspiration for religious RP.

Oh Lizzie you ninja poster: I'm arguing both, to various degrees. If you'll go read the first part of my last reply to Xaviera again, and Yossarin post, you'll see the kind of "atheism" I maintain is real and (relatively) commonplace (among the intelligentsia more than the common men, no doubt). That is to say, that the gods are not transcendent beings completely different in nature to mortals but rather powerful individuas, or that they're manifestations of a living cosmos, figments of the Weave (through which all regular interaction with them happens, mind you), a projection of a collective consciousness, or any number of things. Not that "nothing exists out there" - that would be an intellectual exercise, but not a belief people would actually hold in practice. As Yossarin put it: "Nothing is empirical and you really do take a lot of details on faith - where your powers actually come from, what actually happens to you when you die." And to add to that: who or what it is that's really answering your prayers, what do those beings who walked the land during the ToT have to do with the gods we worship, what is the relationship of foreign beliefs and pantheons to you own - and so on. I really don't see what you find so inconceivable about that.

Last edited by Silvarus on Mon, Sep 03 2012, 0:12 AM, edited 3 times in total.

Off topic from your discussion on the nature of truth, the example of Planescape gave me some interesting ideas on how characters could relate to atheism.

The setting of Planescape puts mortals travelling, while alive, in what is essentially THE afterlife and simultaneously the backyards of several different gods of several different pantheons of several different material planes, so it is no wonder that a large portion of planeswalkers and major Sigilian factions are more or less disillusioned about the gods. Some, such as the Believers of the Source, are more like real world new age spiritualists about ignoring the gods though, which is not really atheism, since it merely postulates a less anthropomorphised supernatural cause than the individual gods. In an environment where gods and extremely powerful mortals are virtually indistinguishable, and where gods die and are replaced by mortals, blind belief in the pantheons of different material planes can be very scarce, so atheism boils down to being skeptical about the special nature of the role of a god. (EDIT: Transcendent existence is the word I was looking for here. Thanks Iron.) This mandate of power is supposed to be special because it comes from an overgod called Ao, who created the multiverse, but does not actively answer prayers of mortals or interact with the worlds he created.

We are getting close to the realm of familiar OOC atheism here. Belief in Ao, which is necessary for the distinction between powerful mortals and gods in the great wheel cosmology, is essentially believing in what the creatures in power say about who gave them their mandate for power, as there is no direct way to detect the overgod by anyone else than the gods already in power. This sounds awfully much like the case of real life religious leaders/monarchs and real life theology, which brings us to the realm of philosophical arguments about prime movers and causeless causes and everything familiar from your everyday theological arguments in a miracleless world. For example, disbelieving in the authority of gods but believing in the existence of the creator overgod Ao is equal to real world Deism, which is not atheism. Disbelieving both the authority of the gods and the existence of Ao however is exactly what we call atheism.

So it seems entirely possible that powerful mortals, with access to extreme amounts of information about the multiverse, could end up with the kind of atheism we are familiar with. In the context of Forgotten Realms, the environment, foundations and building blocks necessary for this kind of thinking are so scarce that it is unlikely that many scholars would have access to the kind of prior philosophical writings necessary to make this kind of lines of thought possible, unless they have spent considerable amount of time in Sigil. Forgotten Realms atheists are more likely to be discontent and vaguely doubtful without being able to formulate exact reasoning to support the conclusion they jump to due to their discomfort. Or maybe they are more likely to base their atheism on the apparent injustice of the creatures in power.

EDIT: <insert several swear words here>. I managed to convince myself that Ao does not exist in Forgotten Realms and that he and the special mandates of power he gives are merely a conspiracy and lies by the "gods" in power invented to keep them in power. Damn you, skepticism! What am I going to do with my characters now?

I hadn't considered Ao as the final determinant of the gods' legitimacy - their claim not just to authority, but to a transcendent existence. Bringing up that problematic is actually very insightful. I've personally always struggled with the issue of justification and justice - what right do the gods have to decide mortal lives and afterlives? (Incidentally, it's also a gripe I have with real world religion.) But if they do not have or claim that right, how can they still be gods worthy of worship and devotion? Mere respect and sensible exchange isn't enough to base a life of faith on, for me/my PCs.

New ideas spread rather easily, I would think. Even if they're spready by travelling teachers and expensive manuscripts rather than the printing press, the European Middle Ages show that considerable cultural exchange can happen in a matter of years or decades. Faerûn has a somewhat more established and richer culture of education than medieval Europe, what with gigantic libraries like Candlekeep and public churches which store lore. Considering the constant, if small-scale, interactions between the planes, I would be surprised if well-read scholars didn't know something about Sigil philosophies. The borders of the planes seem distant and inpenetrable to the common man, but it's actually not that extraordinary. There are planewalking PCs on Amia, too. All it takes is for someone to write down what they've learned and a few manuscripts to be copied in some library, from where they may spread.

It seems to me kind of like you've moved on from the question of "are gods real or fictional?" and substituted instead, "what is the nature of godhood?" If what you're actually talking about is whether it would be commonplace in the FR for educated, intelligent people to discuss and dispute what makes a god a god, and whether and why they're worthy of our worship, then this has suddenly become a way more interesting discussion, IMHO. After all, even the gods themselves have provided the world pretty direct evidence that there's not always a clear line between mortal and god: some of the gods used to *be* mortals. (Torm, Shevarash, Azuth, Salandra, Cyric, Kelemvor, others.) It's perfectly plausible -- maybe even inevitable -- for an intellectual FR theologian to wonder at what point along the spectrum between mortality and godhood the actual deification occurs, at what point a being has transcended mortality and achieved divinity. If someday you or I might become a god, then what does it mean to be a god? And if mortal can become deity, then is deity the end of the spectrum? Or are there points even further removed from mortality (Ao?) that even the gods might someday aspire to?

If these are the sorts of questions you're pondering, then I'm totally on board. "What is a god" and "why should I care about them" are questions filled with awesome potential for character and RP. But "is there any such thing as a god?" Booooooring. Sure, you can make the case that the question is ultimately unanswerable. But it's just a bunch of empty hyper-intellectualized wanking.

Religion, Patron Deities & Worship in the Realms

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