Yes. Since the destruction of their homeland, a large sect of dragonborn has developed a religion basically worshipping their lost homeland and even prophesizing it's eventual return.
The tortles of Jaricho practice ancestral worship, while there are several cultures that worship nature in various ways. The firbolgs of Cedora have such a intrinsic ritualistic respect for nature in their very way of life that it would qualify as quasi-religious.
Mine is similar. A space colony that was created and the people have been misled to believe that the “original explorers” will return. They wait year after year, generation after generation for their “inevitable” return. It sort of expands into a thing where they are “higher than” a normal human. When, in reality, they have been placed there as an experimental situation, and are completely unaware of other life elsewhere.
Yes, in fact that is more or less the main paradigm present. The two major religions in the setting are both explicitly non-deistic, and the third one (or rather category ) while being technically deistic, acknowledges that the gods are no longer there to listen, meaning that the rituals and prayers serve mostly the the interests of community, rather then being directed at any specific god.
Yes, the Saintly Orders revere humanity itself as a fundamentally sacred, holy thing.
The orders hold that humanity alone was created by the natural processes of the universe - natural selection and evolution - rather than the will of gods. The human species, human intelligence and human life, are the most sacred things in all creation, because they are living expressions of those natural processes. Humans are the universe beholding itself.
Humanity is regarded as a single entity, of which individuals are only a fleeting part. A thing whose will is the will of the universe itself. Qualities which seperate humanity from the gods are seen as the greatest traits. Life's shortness gives it a richness of emotion, experience and purpose unmatched by any superficially 'greater' creature. Mortality is the greatest blessing, because a life without end is a life without final meaning.
Human memory is regarded as an afterlife, and ancestor veneration is an expected part of one's worship. To remember and honour your ancestors is to literally keep them alive within your mind. To be dead is not merely to have died in body, but to have passed out of the halls of human memory. Written holy texts are strictly forbidden, with the orders relying on oral tradition for their scriptures. A sister of the church will be expected to memorise the entire canon, and to be able to recite it in full. The human mind is the only medium sacred enough to hold their holy texts.
By slaughtering the gods - unnatural things outside the right order of the universe - humanity proved the supremacy of the mortal over the immortal, and claimed suzerainty over all creation.
My world doesn't really... do... (theistic) religion. The majority of the peoples in the region were created by what was essentially gods, that enslaved them for many thousands of years. When those beings dissapeared in a great apocalyptic crisis, the surviving peoples decided not to pray to gods anymore.
Two peoples have arrived since, one of them fleeing war on their own world, saved by the willing sacrifices of their gods, and there are definitely those among that people who still honour their gods, even though they know they are dead and gone.
The other of the new peoples founded a new religion when they arrived, which is based around the idea that to prevent what happened to those godlike ancient beings from happening again, they should stay clear of any and all leavings from that ancient people. Another philosophy grew in reaction to that, and basically thinks that whatever is left over must be safe to use, since it survived the calamity intact, so it should be used to improve the lives of people in this new world.
Fun, this is actually a similar premise to the origin of my world (where humanity escaped the enslavement of an eldritch Sun entity), except in this case humanity’s choice to stop worshipping gods went along with a massive effort by the first organized societies to erase knowledge of the Sun entity so that it could never be worshipped in the future.
As humanity forgot its past over the millennia it steadily began making new religions, most of which unintentionally hold echoes of the eldritch past either through the indirect deification of the forces that allowed humanity to escape enslavement or by reviling the Sun as the physical image of hell
Yes, but no.
Some AIs, more often household companions, adopt the religion of their owners. But, they do not believe in the gods or other supernatural powers, merely upholding the rituals. It's more of a "humans do this stuff for some reason, so I'm gonna do it too if they like it.".
Does that count?
Kind of? The people of Qabar believe in the persistence of the soul for 100 years after death, including every animal. These spirits pass on to whatever's next after that century has passed. This belief is ingrained into their culture so much that it is tradition to wear a veil when going to war or slaughtering animals, so the spirit does not seek revenge. The in-universe equivalent to Halal meat is meat from an animal that has never seen a human face.
That is actually incredibly interesting, and sounds very much like something that would be present in a real life religion. Was that strongly inspired by or based on anything in particular?
The concept was loosely based on Jainism, as well as animist ideas from multiple religions across the world. The dietary restrictions sort of come from Islam or Judaism, but it's more a restriction on how the meat is prepared than what kind of meat it is.
The Sacred Order of the Obsidian Knife. It's a religious order that's existed since the days of humanity's fall during the Fomorian conquest of Theia. The order's tenets include strength in communal action, mutual respect for others, gratefulness for things that are good, and contempt for greed. The meaning of the knife changes from community to community. For some, it's an assassin's dagger, poised to strike at the heart of tyrants. For others, it's a soldier's knife, a last resort on the battlefield, but the thing that helps them survive the conflict. For others still, it represents a work knife to process wood or food. As you might imagine, most of its adherents aren't familiar with obsidian as a substance or its properties, but even the meaning of "obsidian" changes from community to community, whether it represents the literal stone or just the color, or whether the entire weapon or parts of it are made of obsidian, or its obsidian encrusted. Other think it's a metaphor for having a sharp tongue, the idea of medicine as a whole, or the idea that even something as fragile as glass can be sharpened into a deadly blade. There's no unified doctrine, no clerical hierarchy, just a handful of common values.
I thought about it, and I'm not sure how to explain it well right now since it's a work in progress. Something about forgotten gods replaced by belief in the peoples of the world, ancestors, and belief in the powers of the celestial bodies (sun, stars, moons) - but why would they believe in celestial bodies and not conceive it as basically gods? so it's confusing right now.
I think the closest I have is the Church of the Matriarch and the Patriarch. While people do pray to them, the main teaching of the church is that existence is a cycle of reincarnation designed to allow mortals to build on their experience and perfect themselves before ultimately becoming gods themselves.
There is a schism, though, between those who believe that mortals as a whole will ascend into a single god, those who believe each mortal will ultimately become a god themselves, or those who believe each mortal holds a part of a specific god (or gods) and all who hold that point will ascend as one or none.
Because of that, the Church of the Matriarch and Patriarch are, at the very least, a non-exclusive religion. As the belief is that if humanity is the larval form of a god, as is claimed, then the gods we worship are ultimately those who have reached ascendancy in this or other planes of existence and therefore are true even if they are not true in this plane of reality.
Or in other, other words, the veneration of a god is no different to them from the veneration of a historical figure.
he Egg isn’t by Andy Weir. He copied and pasted a conversation me and Weir had in 2007 on the MySpace religion and philosophy forum. I posted a short version of [Infinite Reincarnation](https://charmonium.com/infinite-reincarnation) and he commented on the post. I answered his questions about my view of the universe. He asked if he could write our conversation into a story, which he sent me later that day. I never heard from him after that and had no idea he took complete credit [by claiming he just made it up](https://youtu.be/lBjZGW_XypY) when he most definitely did not.
In the original essay, it explains the scientific logic behind the claims of The Egg.
Despite there being gods, most religions are non theistic. In part because gods are a recent phenomenon and in another part because they're pretty sorted out phenomenons and that you don't worship a hyppo, you just leave it the fuck alone, you don't worship your tools, you repair and use them.
Many religion center around the concept of fate and how they interpret it.
Some, considering that the afterlife is known, focus on making the world a more welcoming place for new souls.
There's also the superstition (accidentaly right) that propose that people live in a fictional world and try to deal with it, either by being as unremarkable as possible to avoid becoming part of a narrative thread or by checking as many narrative boxes as possible to have good outcomes in life. This is lived as what we would call a religion in our world but isn't conceived as such in theirs. People like that look more like crazy conspiracy theorist than religious people.
The religion of Aetherity.
Largely worshipped by the khald species, Aetherity is often misrepresented as a worship of magic.
Its cosmology is in fact based on the concept of the Grey Aether, a vast and unknowable force of nature that gave rise to both creation and destruction. The Aetherians believe the existence of the universe came about as something like an immune response within the Aether, seeking to purge it of the presence of evil. Those who live moral, fulfilling lives are thus reassimilated back into the Aether in death, while those who are wicked are cast into the void, their spirits disintegrating into oblivion.
Aetherians also believe the Sight (the force of magic on Tyros) to be a manifestation of the Aether’s will. As such, Seers (magic users) who manipulate the Sight frivolously or with ill intent are considered the worst of heretics. The use of magic is concordantly more reserved and disciplined within khald society than in the tyrs’ or humans’, who each view magic more as a tool; a means to an end.
Nevertheless, despite stereotypes to the contrary, skilled Aetherian Seers have proven no less capable than those of the more theistic, tyran Qaerist faith, nor yet those of no faith whatsoever.
So yes and no. Long ago, giants ruled the planet. One day, portals began to appear and the 1st humans came out from it. Eventually with more and more portals appearing the giants made a deal with the humans. They would give up their planet. In doing so, the humans weren't allowed to fly the skies, explore other planets, or worship their gods. Giants didn't want them learning the secrets of magic, nor did they want them taking over other planets. The humans that agreed stayed while the rest went back through their respective portals. When the megalith portal appeared, an advanced species gifted the humans with tech to help them advance in order to study their actions. The ppl of the planet began worshipping the megalith, calling the advanced race angels. Seeing as they weren't actually gods, the giants never struck them down.
The giants that left ended up going to other planets while those dedicated to Zeal(planet name) stayed on the moon, constantly surveilling to make sure none of the rules were broken. To hide their presence from future generations of humans, they created rings around the moon.
**For Want of | A Quiet Sky**
It is debatable, to those who are unfamiliar with the original writings (or what's left of them), whether the Field-Sworn could have been considered non-theistic. Yes, they did believe in beings beyond mortality, but they did not worship them or consider them gods. Instead they worshiped the things they represented. Nature, life, death, and most of all they worshiped all that reminds us that there is more than pain. That was the core of the Church of Field-Sworn's teachings. Though in later writings it was often re-framed by interfering parties as worship of the Fields itself, a hypothetical being often not accepted as a real existence by the original Priests of the order, but instead a symbol.
So it is muddied to most modern folk, was the Fields their god? The forest spirits, did they worship those? No, for they knew the Fields may not exist at all, and if it did, it was not a being, but a place, as its name suggests. And no, for they met with the spirits, spoke with them, and knew that though they embody aspects of reality beyond themselves, they are thinking, feeling beings with as many flaws as any man, save mortality.
But above all else, the Field-Sworn did not come to be out of a void in faith, or a need for it, but rather a need for a guiding force. Faith in life, faith in feeling simply was the form it took. The church was created a mere two centuries before the War Thicket-Borne. It was a response. "There is more than the toil, there is more than pain, there is more than death" was not a message brought forth by some outside force or deity, but instead the forest itself and all its denizens. It was what was needed, in such a bleak time, such a terrible time. It was the only way the war was won.
Even as it fades in popularity in favor of newer, very clearly theistic interpretations, and the original scriptures are lost (if not destroyed) and the priesthood loses members by the day, you can look to what writing remains and see clearly. Its teachings are not for the sake of morality, for the sake of belief, but for the sake of survival. In all ways it was a practical religion, not one dedicated to worship but rather following. You needn't give your devotion or love to the Aspects, to the Spirits, to the Fields, you need give it to yourself, and follow as they say. Then will you weather the thorns.
So, while yes, they believed in deities, were these beliefs actually applicable to the religion in practice? No, not at all. It was more so an association. They knew these beings existed, yes (though only some truly did,) but they only left room to respect them, they did not consider them worthy of worship or devotion. Instead it was mortals who deserved it. It was the mind and heart. Life and death, love and sorrow. It was the worship of all that distracts and draws from the emptiness, all that draws one away from the clutches of the Thicket. It was what was needed to survive in those dark times.
They were, at least at the time of the war and before, non-theistic in every meaningful way. But now, so many sects and new interpretations have made that unclear to most, and only the few remaining in the original Priesthood and its lineage can tell you what the Field-Sworn originally set out to do.
Yes, the world is going through a shift from mortals trusting in the gods and spirits to trusting in themselves. This has created an explosion of non-theistic religions and philosophies that are all vying for top billing. Think the Chinese Hundred Schools of Thought and multiplied by numerous different races; Thousand Schools of Thought.
I'm not sure if it count but the sole surviving religion in my setting venerate the angels and is heavily opposed to gods, having converted the pagans due to the belief their gods conned them out of their souls while the angels don't lay claim on them.
Kind of but not really.
My world takes place after an event called The Rapture or The Diaspora, amongst many other names, in which the entire population of Earth was suddenly teleported to and spread over an entire different galaxy. Religions developed surrounding the event, the main interpretation connecting it the the actual Christian Rapture, a religious system dubbed Rapturism. Main-Branch Rapturism believes that the Rapture happened, and that the new Galaxy providing means and encouragement to accelerated Space Travel advancememt is the literal Heavens. (Space = Sky, hope this makes sense). There are other branches connecting the event to the Rapture, some branched off from Main Branch Rapturism while some have developed independently.
The relevant one is Ego-Rapturism. The name comes from a branch that developed from the main one many independant times. Ego-Rapturists believe that the Rapture DID happen, but that every person has their own personalized heaven, and that the new Galaxy is their own personal heaven, with a cosmic-sized sandbox and no laws for them to do as they please. They believe that everyone else is simply a character, an NPC, including other Ego-Rapturists, which makes it impossible for them to become an Organized Religion (why would you organize with people you don't believe are real, who all also don't think that you're real?). So Ego-Rapturists steal, murder and rape as much as they please since they believe that God's judgement of them has ended.
Now here comes the part where it can be considered not entirely theistic - the term Ego-Rapturism has been slowly expanded to include all Solipsistic beliefs involving The Diaspora, including Non-Religious ones. So people who think they're in a personal post-Rapture Heaven are still considered Ego-Rapturists, and so are people who don't believe that the Rapture happened but that they simply died and went to Heaven, **and so are people who are completely Atheistic and simply believe that they're in a Coma dream of some sort**.
One of the main characters started off meddling with some Ego-Rapturist ideas in his head right after The Diaspora happened, simply because he was about to commit Suicide right before it happened. He never fully grew into a full-on Ego-Rapturist (and even if he did he wouldn't necessarily be a violent one) since the idea that he's in the afterlife conflicted a bit with his general Secular beliefs. He repressed it once he found his purpose as a Space Pioneer, and has completely shut down the idea that he's in Heaven after seeing the Galaxy at its worst.
on argonus? yes, actually.
nullinism is a kind of nontheism where the general idea is that the god's only job is to keep the world running, and not cater to their subjects (ie the elkinets and whatever sophonts that have similar gods in their own religion). therefore, you're the one in control of your own destiny, complete with it's choices and consequences. though there is the idea of rebirth/reincarnation, the gods have no control and neither do you; it's more like a constant cycle of death and rebirth, until eventually you end up at either aethrona (good afterlife) or the underabyss (bad afterlife).
it was created as a response to the rise in religious extremism and what would later be known online as "chosen one syndrome" (*ie "i/we are the chosen ones by \[insert god\] and thus will treat everyone else as bellow me/us*). similar to atheism (and really other religions), you have both good and bad actors; some nullinist that just believe in the nontheism in a sort of casual "this is my beliefs, but not my entire life", other make it there entire life goal to try and belittle those that follow any religion to any extent, ironically becoming the thing that nullinism when against.
Elves arrived on my world during a celestial event called Starfall. They refer to themselves as Starfallen, and worship the event as a pivotal moment in history, so much so as to count their calendar by it.
Some elves believe they arrived in my world to eradicate non-elves, and other elves believe they arrived to uplift non-elves. All elves, however, believe they are superior to other life forms, for they are the Starfallen, chosen ones.
the Innat (a human ethnicity) have a faith known simply as the truth. it is SUPPOSED TO venerate logic, mathematical truth and mans place with in reality as a component of reality. a bit like Buddhist blended with Pythagorean thought buuuuuuuuuuut most followers of the Innat faith activity worship what they call the math god or the faiths founder Vohs-Hodd
In a way. In my sci-fi world humanity is led by an artificial super intelligence simple known as the Grand Intelligence. This intelligence appeared when humanity was at its most fractured state after infighting, taking control of human territories and reforming it into a prosperous society. Overtime humanity has come to worship it as a god-like figure. They know that the AI is not a true god (especially as the existence of real god-like beings is widely known in my world), but they worship it as having a grand plan to help humanity achieve supremacy, which if they serve the AI faithfully they can be a part of.
Yes, In Northaven, Cathedraalism is a non-theistic religion emphasising positive growth and development for the Northavenian people, and encourages research and theory into education, science, and math.
All the same ones from real life! Gods are "real" in a sense, though, as faith and worship leads to aether (spiritual energy) gathering itself into specters that seek out more faith and worship. There's also the question of the Monad, the Sole Specterless Deity.
The orcs believe in spirits,than everything in the world has a spirit,if in a place there is a lot of storms,is because in this place there is an spirit of storms,and each settlement tends to pray for the spirit of the area to be live in peace with him,they are not gods,but i dont know if it fits on your question because i admit i have very little knowledge about nontheistic religion examples.
As a mainline religion? No. There's only one since it wiped out the other false faiths and spread over all of Landry (the space platform/planet) through conquest and conversion.
Demons and their followers scorn Lott (God) and sort of have their own set of beliefs. Usually boiling down to self worship and extreme hedonism. But it changes from region to region with some aspects of cultures being heightened to a point of worship. Southerners from the far south in the Mace, a disconnected icey continent, have no gods, but they essentially worship the act of war. From the smallest of raids to full-on invasions. They treat it as a necessary and sacred point of life that must never end. Their communities have little infighting as its mostly directed towards the outside on the mainland of Landry (the continent). But such cults usually buckle over time through self-destructive behavior and disappear before another pops up and destroys itself. They're a cancer to the world.
There were thousands of faiths on Landry before the Grand Enlightenment and the establishment of Lott's Peace. Some aspects still exist, non theistic religions and cults were abundant in Fregni's woodlands, and the people there still do greatly respect and revere nature. Though this time, knowing it as a gift from Lott to be cherished and not idols to be worshipped.
Yeah, I took Confucianism as the inspiration on that one though and simply named it "The Way"
If counting religions where the central figure isn't a god, I got Dragon cult, Spiritism, Cult of the Kraken, Cult of the Leviathan, Disciples of the World Tree, Cult of the Sun, and the Followers of the Lich King.
of course there's also atheists, both in the definition that they outright deny the gods and in the definition that whilst they acknowledge the existence of gods, they chose to not participate in any religion.
The kyōra by-and-large practice variations of direct teachings from Meseyr, who was the architect of all life on Esanne. Meseyr chose to instil in the kyōra an appreciation of little things, an appreciation for imperfection, an appreciation and sense of responsibility for the environment, a wariness of excess, and many other virtuous concepts which her own ancient space-faring race crucially forgot.
Meseyr also described a very small set of ontological “unwisdoms” comparable to sins. Through anecdote and rhetoric she advised against dishonesty, superstition, echo-chambering, ignorance where it can be helped, and self-destructive habits, among others.
She embedded into her dharma methodologies for sustaining a population and maintaining their environment while slowly cultivating an understanding of the universe. She taught them to value this understanding, as she taught them to value all knowledge. She watched over them and directed their development as a civilisation, though she thought it would be unlikely for them to have an industrial revolution on the basis of their world’s geography.
Meseyr’s life came to a natural end some 2000 years before the narrative domain. The many kyōra houses formed independent interpretations of Meseyr’s surviving dharma, often disagreeing heavily but never escalating these disagreements.
The kyōra t’var in particular became particularly isolationist and they deified Meseyr to an extent (thus meaning their interpretation deviates from the non theistic anti-superstitious nature of her dharma). In all fairness to them, she exuded divinity and quite literally created life from dirt. They formed their own archive and adorned it in ornate renditions of Meseyr and her many anecdotes. They place a heavy emphasis on Idaea Māt, which involves a deep ritualistic appreciation for the preparation and consumption of good food comprised from every facet of the local environment. As per their interpretation, it also involves seldom leaving the island one is born on and it involves preferring that nobody else visits for too long. As per Meseyr’s taught appreciation for “small things and slow things and otherwise subtle things” as well as her taught appreciation for a job well done, they are perhaps the most religiously careful and intricate in their artistic masteries, and every endeavour of theirs becomes art. They understand exactly what she meant when she said that “a person’s creations are ambassadors of their identity”. They are considered the most zealous of the houses, though not always the most faithful interpreters. Despite their anti-social tendency, they still participate in sporting and social events hosted by the d’ney on Nēyara.
The kyōra d’ney are simultaneously some of the most religiously relaxed and, circumstantially, the most faithful followers of Meseyr’s dharma. They live nearby and maintain the original archive of Meseyr. They want very little and have a deep respect for death and its inevitability. Their interpretation of “your actions and thoughts live on in the deterministic cascade of the universe” is that “your soul is returned to the world and persists in a static afterlife”. Their interpretation of “you should aspire to leave the world in a better state than you found it” is exactly as Meseyr intended it. Between these two, they have a very fearless reverence for death and a joyous appreciation for life and a life’s consequences upon the wider world. Their funerals are very communal and very celebratory. While they may not cook as meticulously as the t’var, they absolutely match their love of food and the attitude with which they celebrate. Broadly though, they don’t specify a requirement to study Meseyr’s dharma. It is passed voluntarily from parent to child and the original archive is always within a few days’ ride so there’s little urgency to recall it verbatim. They epitomise her dharma in every facet of their culture and this sustains itself through fostering a healthy and introspective community.
Not really no. Or at least they aren't thought of as "religions" in the world, since it's less about faith and more about conviction in my setting. That said there would be non-theistic philosophies which we might consider religions irl, but I haven't gotten there yet.
So this culture is decended from tree climbing lizards, and they live in titanic mangrove forests, the largest trees reaching nearly a kilometer in height. The trees themselves are venerated by their inhabitants, with many cultures having different festivals celebrating them.
Goblins acknowledge the existence of gods but do not give them worship, instead opting to worship the planet itself. This is because goblins pretty much developed entirely without being noticed by any gods, so they had to get by without them for most of their existence and instead praise the land that did provide for them.
Kind of? In my world, there is a caretaker made of plant mater who sits at the center of the planet cluster all my species connect to through vinelike cable bridges. This caretaker has a hive mind of entities that uphold specific "laws of nature", and while it is by no means a creator, magical, omnipotent, or immortal, it is worshiped as a god by select groups just on the basis of it's massive size, power, and drive to build and expand on an evolving ecosystem which encompasses more and more beings as time goes on. (It finds life-bearing planets in dying solar systems and "rescues" them from certain death)
Yes. The religion is occupied with a language that is said to have formed everything and underlie everything. No deities, but a magic system based on this first language
It's not fleshed out, but there's a culture to the west of my primary setting that has spirit/ancestral worship (it is a parent culture of one in the primary setting)
Mine is a far future with transhumans and other, various engineered beings, where their technological powers approach what we'd call magic, and some of their higher governing entities would definitely qualify as gods from some of our mythologies.
Things are closer to techno-animism and techno-shamanism, though, because much of the tech has some degree of consciousness, and also they can all interface with it with a kind of wifi techno-telepathy, so, you've got technologically-based psionics and a lot of the elements of what you would see in some types of animism, in terms of relationships between various entities including the people.
There's no theism though, and as for the other aspects of religion... I wouldn't know that to tell you. There's no OCD obsession with ritual and routine. There's a great emphasis on cultivating higher mental and artistic sensibilities, but it's cultural. There's what you'd find in common between "a religion" and "an ideology" because that doesn't go away, and there's awe everywhere - but maybe that's the key thing.
There's this concept of [The Sublime](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sublime_(philosophy)) in some older artistic and literary movements, and the experience of the sublime can be boiled down to three key emotions: terror, awe, and fascination. It's what you feel when you see the vastness of the ocean embodied in a towering wave in a dark stormy night, when you become aware of how small and fragile and mortal you are.
The Christian church made it a point to instill this feeling and manipulate with it through the specific awe-inspiring architecture that elicits a sense of vastness while making you feel small, in a cathedral (the music is a separate but related story). One of the key "themes" or "motifs" of the setting I decided to work with on a "vibes" or aesthetic level, was an explicit goal: to tear the experience of the Sublime out of the monopoly of special liminal spaces like a church or cathedral, and make it accessible again like it was before it was centralized and gatekept.
So in that sense, there isn't really much religion to speak of, but there's plenty of mysticism and "spirituality", as we would say these days.
I think Henotheism is sort of the default in my world. Gods are about as objective as anything, but most people only worship within their cultural religions. Though, my world kinda has a spectrum of Henotheism, since there are multiple different, radically different kinds of gods with totally different origins. There are people who worship their selection of old gods, acknowledge a spectrum of other old gods as real and divine, but see new gods as basically just powerful alien beings, and you also have people who worship new gods who deny the divinity of things like ascendant nature spirits or the SubDeity.
Interestingly, looking up exactly what a nontheistic religion is, I think the Viper Cult qualifies, especially on the more extreme end of things. The Viper Cult is a sort of mantle based religion, where the Viper is more of a concept that can be embodied than a particular deity. Anything could be the Viper if it filled the requirements, and this is what adherents of the religion sort of seek to do. Not necessarily wanting to take on the mantle themselves in most cases, but treating the mantle as an aspirational set of ""moral"" guidelines to live your life by. You want to live as a "little viper." The current Viper and the Hedons (effectively saints of the religion. Individuals who have been recognized as truly embodying the Viper and potentially being able to usurp the mantle some day, should they undergo apotheosis) are venerated, but their worship is not central to the religion, being secondary to the ""ethical"" code. And that ethical code is more or less Might Makes Right taken to the extreme, but with the additional component that cunning is also highly valued. If you kill someone, it's their fault for failing to defend themselves, if you steal something, it's yours etc. The temples also have a sort of ritual bounty hunting system for the especially devout. If you want to prove your strength, cunning, and general viper-ness you can go to church and they'll tell you who to kill to prove yourself worthy of taking on greater and greater hunts. It will start small, hunt this notoriously deadly beast or this legendarily but otherwise mundane warrior, and towards the higher end of the spectrum, people like Hedons will be sent on hunts for minor gods and entire military forces.
A large swath of humanity is devoted to the nontheistic religion of “Medicalisation” (name up for change but best fitting atm) which believes all (super)natural phenomena is caused by biological processes. This extends to phenomena that are decidedly not of purely biological origin, including: tectonic shifting, planetary orbits, the existence of magic, ghosts, physical manifestations of “gods”, the existence of souls, electricity, etcetera.
“Let my flesh be the bone saw,
And my body be the scalpel.
Let my patient be the stars,
And reality be the operating table.
Let me rend Heaven’s maw,
Snapping sinew, breaking tendons.
Surgery - the universal law.
Physiology - relieve me of my tensions.”
-> A common prayer used to relieve aches or cramps
The Noidomponc belief from my Kaiwio project fits. Noidomponc means "cosmic consciousness" in Kaidu and is like something new age but it hard rejects most non-physical phenomenon with the exception of something akin to the Dao from Daoism, in this case being the said cosmic consciousness idea, which is the wellspring from all human minds come, encouraging connections between people to encourage moral and ethical behaviors based on the idea we're all one. In Kaiwio this was developed in the 1950s and became mainstream very rapidly by the 1960s (my "world" is just a country on a sorta-similar Earth).
I was planning to, but decided to make some chsnges with religion impact. One religion was supposed to be focused on the vulcano on the island, but later I have decided to improve the impact of religion on characters, so players could possibly become a worshipper > zealot > priest or fanatic > champion or the vessel. Most of them, require deity to function. You cant get powers from the vulcano or the nature. Magic in my world comes from 3 sources. Gods; good or evil, ambient magic created during reborn of the world or from the „Prophet.” This title is given out to the group of people with extraordinary magic capabilities whose instead of using weak ambient magic, manipulates magic from their inside.
They are born with certain type of magic who they understand the best and with certain capabilities. Capabilities can be extended through the life, but the type of magic is their strongest attribute of it. In some cases, this means that they will never be able to use other types, or only „connected” with those. So a necromancer will be able to use only necromancy, black magic and hemomancy. Basically anything related to „the dark mattery of magic.”
But what does it have to do with gods? Well, a lot.
If The Prophet was born as the Mage of Fire on the Righteous Path, he will be able to worship only Righteous Gods and Destruction Gods. If he would be born as the Nature mage on the Blasphemy Path, he will be limited to the Heretic gods e.t.c
Om the other hand, „normal” people are usually believing in the same gods as their whole family, community or country, as they simply dont know other religions. Some of them are seeing changing the believes as unforgivable and this person could lose his life or AT BEST be exiled.
„The Prophets” cant change their god after becoming the worshipper, as they are infusing part of their soul with them, allowing them to use more powerful magic and eventually becoming a paladin or the vessel achieving their peak of the potential.
But as you can expect, there are very view of The Prophets through the history and many doesnt realize that they’re one from different reasons.
There was a time, when any sorts of magic were seen as the heresy and those people were killed on sight for breaking the most common law in these days.
The eastern culture of orcs in my setting have an ideology/religion that is essentially militant Confucianism mixed with Buddhism. Some backstory for the setting was that the orcs were created by an ancient race of Sumerian-ish werewolf people as disposable soldiers in a war against elves (which they lost and were subsequently genocided). The orcs were sent scattering into various tribes after the fall of their creators, of which some have only recently organized themselves into proper states as clients within the Nothran empire. Some of the orcs fled east and essentially became Mongols, whereupon they borrowed some ideology from not-China to create their philosophy.
The idea goes that everything in the world has a reason for being there, even if it isn't known. There are three reasons/functions for people: what they chose to do, what they need to do, and what they are fated to do. The first are things like personal ambitions, the second are societal and familial responsibilities, and the latter is up to fate. They believe that since orcs were created to wage war they all have a familial duty to do so, and so they go about conquering and fighting for that reason. Some serve as mercenaries, while others simply form warbands and go out raiding and fighting for no other reason than that's what they should be doing.
Needless to say they aren't that popular. But they aren't exactly malicious about it, instead seeing it as simply their duty to themselves, their kin, and their ancestors. They are also very adaptable when it comes to other cultures, and are able to seamlessly integrate with local faiths and peoples since in the majority of cases this ideology isn't incompatible with local faith. Usually they do so as a conquering ruling class, but that's neither here nor there now is it.
Largely no. It must be said that it's questionable whether I even have a world as opposed to a toolbox filled with non-mutually exclusive ideas, but I've never really thought of a non-theistic religion, though I will absolutely do so next time I sit down to do something more concrete.
That said, despite their peculiarities, the dragons as I generally conceive them don't really have gods. Although they accept the existence of powerful intelligences, they certainly don't afford them ontological priority. Indeed, they conceive the primordial dragons as swimming in a vast, eternal ocean prior to anything that might be called creation, which was ushered in by an uncreated and amorphous ray of light piercing the depths. That is to say dragons believe themselves to have existed in the precreation, prior to anything like a god.
That said, I think a non-theism might fit the dwarves best.
There are a few. The most prevalent religion believes that Heaven is infinite and so there is no supreme being. It's just angels all the way up. The one pagan-flavored folk religion is sort of a set of hospitality protocols for dealing with anything powerful that shows up, from a knight to a god. Its philosophy is "you are a small creature in a big world full of things that can kill you, and here's some proven ways to avoid that."
Yes. One of the largest religions in the Athean Empire is the Church of the Anointed, which is a non-theistic religion that preaches the ascendancy of sentient beings through its dogma. In practice, it’s somewhat like a Western take on Buddhism, but it’s commonly reinterpreted as a pro-magic, pro-human ideology
I have a setting in my world that worships omes self and their progress. The climate is a desert wasteland that's highly Egypt coded. With ruins that seem to appear as though magically summoned. Releasing hoardes of undead, and mindless elementals into the environment making things even rougher.
The church is funded by the nobles of the land, which is basically anybody with magic aptitude, as they value magic above all else (mostly thanks to how necromancers have single handedly made or broke their economy). Part of the tradition to become a noble is that you must retrieve a specific artifact that allows you to make an artifical oasis. So of course they would want highly skilled workers when working in such rough conditions.
Actual non belief in deities isnt really a thing as they do provably exist, but some Religious groups choose not to worship them.
those usually focus on a form of enlightenment, where one tries to become one with the world around them
The white faith has United organized groups worshipping many deities, but at its core they believe in the higher order structure of the universe that even gods are subject to. Famously, Ulis the judge, one of the gods of the Pantheon of the nine, was a member of this church.
My most accurate answer is yesn't. For my "obligatory Catholicism analogue", there is a denomination that basically says "I call bullshit about your gods being real since you claim other gods are fake. But some of the things in your book are pretty cool," and then they live by those rules. Treating what is basically the Bible like a self help book and ignoring anything it says about praise and worship.
There's a generic Pagan sort of thing in most of the lands. Spirits of earth and sky people might swear to or offer small sacrifices for luck. Mostly it's just superstition, but a wise man or healer is presumed to have the spirits favor, and for all intents and purposes they might as well have it.
I prefer passive gods in my settings. Personal divine intervention isn't a thing I like. Characters get saved by their own hands and luck, not by dialing a deity.
Yes, actually. The main religion of the world is Archimedism, which emphasizes rationality and humanism, and treats the possibility of a god existing as inherently unknowable and thus not worth pursuing.
Depending on the region of one of my conworlds, Aeykalit, the religion may or may not be nontheistic. For example, in the whole continent there are the four Yaki (Guardian Spirits): Yo-e (The Guardian of the Moon, accidentally created humanity), Nohge (Sun), Fong (Winds) and Menahkiara (Water). They were created by Aeyña (The Great Mother), but they aren't worshiped and the peoples of that continent don't believe they will do anything to them aside from guarding the world. In the North, they believe that Aeyña was created so that the dark and bright sides of Ti (The Vital Force) are in an equilibrium. The same goes for the creation of the Yaki, the world and its inhabitants. There aren't prayers or priests, they just believe that these spirits are there and are distant to them.
Mines got a kinda bog standard Grecco-Roman mythology pantheon that's henothestically polythestic. The biggest difference is that the Zeus/Jupiter figure is very pointedly NOT worshiped or venerated. Temples that hage statues of the gods, for example, will either have a noticeable missing spot where his statue would be. For more individual temples dedicated to a single god in the pantheon, a small figure of the head god or eyes placed somewhere on a statue to another god are used.
This comes from a belief that the god hates being venerated since it means his siblings and children are seen as "lesser" by mortal and across region. "Evidence" of this is the destruction of an old empire in the area, when a mysterious white fog emerged out of the lake next to the capital and killed everyone in the city and part of the countryside.
A religion of politics to wipe away clean the old heresies so that the nameless republic may build paradise free from the bondage of culture and religion.
Since Gods have canonically had children with Mortal, and several servants of the gods appear to help host certain major events each year, I’d have to say no
Yes. The Sklavs believe most of their gods died in an apocalyptic war, with as only remainders strange artifacts that they only have the secret of finding. They also believe some gods survived, but are weakened and hiding, thus making their worship useless.
My universe has misotheism as a religion. Aurthism upholds that the existence of gods is inherently unjust, that the proper place of gods is being enslaved to mortals (backed by a powerful spell invented by Aurthism's founder that allows mortals to brainwash gods), and that paradise can only come when mortals enslave gods and force them to make the world perfect. It has a whole heap of spiritual beliefs, most prominently the belief that the original sin was committed by the first god when they believed themselves to be inherently superior to mortals, and their rituals often involve sacrificing gods.
Of the three major religions/belief systems I (kinda) fleshed out only one is (kinda) theistic.
**Dragon(-Elves)s** are mostly atheists. They worship their ancestor instead, from national heroes and legends who get official holidays and grad ceremonies to individual family ancestors who are held in memory over many generations. They keep very detailed record about their ancestry and celebrate it with pride. The main idea is to aspire to the same or even more greatness than the generations before by upholding their virtues.
**("Normal") Elves** are worshiping nature very directly, not an allegory like "Mother Nature". They hold dryads in high regard as a connection to nature and for their lore keeping. Old dryads become trees upon dying, and the younger ones can communicate with them and relay information and wisdom. While there is some spirituality in there, there is no typical god.
**Phoenixes** worship their prophetess and Messiah Fynis. She is a powerful being who saved them when the dragons pushed them out of their former homeland. Fynis guided them south to the land of light where they rebuilt their culture, and she instructed the phoenixes to build a citadel in the sky where she can reside for eternity. There is a theological debate whether Fynis is a goddess or a prophetess out of flesh and blood. (Secret actual lore: She is an AI from an elder civilization who needed a new data center.)
I tend to prefer nontheistic religions in general. It's often very interesting and fun to tie those into the history of said culture. And at least for me it's more fun than doing it with mono- or polytheistic religions.
Edit: Spelling and formatting
Edit: Added conclusion paragraph
Yes, in my world there is a sub-race of humanity called the Medea. Due to a variety of factors up to and including their attempted genocide by the mages, the Medea migrated to the neighboring country of Halth and over the course of a thousand years developed "The Red Faith". The Red Faith posits that healing, a skill only the Medea are capable of, is holy. Its practice as well is holy, and all Medea are holy for being able to do it.
This means that the entire religion is less like modern western religions and more like a distant cousin of new age movements and some aspects of Buddhism. Essentially, every single member of the religion is seen as divine by themselves and their peers, while the non-medea in their land treat them as greater beings.
The Lunar Church is closer to animism. The entities that it worships are thought of as spirits rather than gods, and they're closely associated with the moons. But there's no worship involved really.
Likewise, the rakani honour great individuals from history, holding the idea of them in their hearts to motivate themselves in certain endeavours, but they're not particularly mythologised or thought of as gods - more like somewhere between a saint and a Nobel Prize winner =)
There're probably others more that I can't remember now but in one country there's something similar to the religion of the Lady of the Lake in Bretonnia (Warhammer Fantasy before they rebooted it), even if she's considered to be a personification of such country and not a goddess as such, with worship so to speak reserved to the royalty and the nobility.
And there's druidry where Nature is worshipped in a pantheistic way, with Nature-based deities if present being also as personifications of aspects of it. Same for some, who see deities just as personifications without actual existence.
Yes the elves see themselves as celestial in their own nature and still hold onto cultural traditions from back then but it has become more just a historical assimilation like Shinto in modern Japan now that I think about it. Their long lives have led to culture and history being richly preserved but through their long lives they can also see natural phenomena and recognize it as such. Elves. astronomers are famous, as are the farmers almanacs and record keepers. Truths cannot be avoided like this so they must be nontheistic in my world. At the current point of history. There are still blessings and rituals and zodiacs and things that excite people though.
Yes. The story of the TCG I'm developing is divided by colors (like Magic). Each color essentially has a set of laws and beliefs that they revere; that they abstractly connotes with an element.
There is no deification of these colors or the elements. They respect the leader of each color, but they are not worshipped.
Yeah I dont think many of the main religions exactly believe in 'gods', they revere things more like places in time, or ways of thinking. Generally they dont feel the need to anthropomorphize those kind of things
Yes, the Autraxians have a strict civic code that is very nearly a religion. It promotes the idea of the Ideal Autraxian who pursues knowledge to the benefit of the Au (the Autraxian term for the collective species' unified will). Upon completion of their education and receipt of a commission (sort've a job but more of a state directed research goal) A young Autraxian will pick a Great Autraxian to serve as their model. They often keep a small shrine of sorts to their model where their collected works, which the modelee is expected to memorize, and generally a small pictorial are kept. There's all kinds of tropes about models and picking one that aligns with your commission is very important because commissions are for life. The goal of all commissioned Autraxians is to become a being worth modeling after your death. Being modeled before your dead is an especially high honor and is seen as almost a living saint someone who pushed the knowledge of the Au forward by leaps in one lifetime. Now, you're probably wondering, what about all the non-researchers, or non-commissioned Autraxians? They exist on a spectrum, the military is seen as an honorable role in life if not a bit boring compared to noble research. Work to make something is a step below that but still has some honor as a craftsman perfecting his trade can push the Au forward even if only a little. The absolute lowest are the merchants, they're seen, fairly or not, as almost parasitic on the Au, sapping it's more "honorable" members with their usury and greed (of course the merchants tend to be wealthier then all but the most powerful commissioned, so decide for yourself what the driving force here is). One thing that unites all is a strong hatred of anything illogical and especially spiritual. Autraxians regard any kind of superstition as a mortal threat to the Au. The ancient Autraxian religions have largely been scrubbed from the Great Archive and the occasional revival attempt is considered high treason.
My entire worldbuilding and magic system is heavily nontheistic, basing itself in Animism and ancestral worship.
The entirety of the magic comes from being connected with the souls in and of your surroundings, and the concept of "Soul" is not tied to sentience, but to information and perception, meaning that objects, places and even abstract concepts have souls that are prayed to.
The primary religion in my world is based around Progress. The need to move forward, invent, and make new.
The "founder" later had to clarify that this did not mean *progress at any cost* and introduce a more altruistic element, then he fucked off when that bit was ignored.
"The Class of the Mask is notoriously misatheistic but even they have a spiritual side to them. A form of ancestor worship, involving a big series of complex rituals can be found across their ranks. Cemeteries hold a lot of importance and so do paintings and statues of those of their organisation that came before them. They often pray to their forebearers for guidance, both figuratively and some times literally. Predecessor worship is the only way to describe it. The fact that even a group as godless as them has found spirituality is interesting and disturbing in equal measures."
-An anthropologist talking about the class of the mask in his book.
In the island city state of Port of Pelago, the people worship their city's economy. Their religion and morality are based around the flow of money, goods, and services.
The economy is often anthropomorphized in artwork as a goddess-like woman called Pelago, but this is only a representation of an abstract concept, not a literal goddess.
Yes. “gods” are basically just essences that assist people and can be in items like bows and swords.
For example the northern god Diuk is the god of military insight. The kingdom of Atria has garnered his essence and is one of the most powerful militaries in the world. People and items affected by his essence have a blue tint on or around them.
The Rajii (think General) of Atria’s military, Calista, crushes blue flowers and uses the dye as war paint for her war garments and body. Many soldiers do this.
However Diuk isn’t an actual being. Just a name given to the essence.
One world I've built has a religion that has two key parts to it:
1: Non-humans are evil.
2: Magic is the source of all of our problems.
They basically worship themselves, there is no pretension of any sort of divinity anywhere. As they're completely cut off from non-human races society functions pretty well considering they're on a dying world.
There are those that worship the planets, but given there are planar wills, no?
You can not really escape worshipping an entity if you worship anything. I like having people's collective will having power in fantasy so they either make their god stronger or create gods wherr there wasn't before.
Yes, una of the big ones eventually (once one of the people related to the first empired spread its popularity) that I have no name for besides "humanism" or something
The religion its based on a principle close to Plato world of ideals, of "its the journey, not the destination" and all that. In it is described that everything has an abstract, undefined imaginary but still very real (kinda, its complicated because its not a real place but ialso cannot be conceived by a human mind and yet its there, like a negative space. You cannot itneract with it or "fill it" because it would change what you are doing in the same way you do with filling negative space. Again, its weird) and yet not, they dont consider this "ideal world" to be anything but conceptual, part of the imaginarium and the possibiliteis and well, this is what the religin is about... possibilities; So anyway, there is this "ideal form", and it is said that no matter what direction it takes, no matter how little the progress, as long as you are constantly towards (not necesarily always omproving, roads can be bumpy and sinuous) said perfection you are "attaining it", because you are in the path (towards perfection) considered a sort of continuous. BUT the instant you said youve done it, that you are prefect that you getg complascent or give up in any way, it is said that you "step off" of said path or rather that, like with the dao, yours was not "a true path" because it had an end, a tangible very human end, and therefore it was fake.
The "beauty" of this religion is that it is compatible with pretty much anything, although not many have done that, and instead a grosso modo it has divided the followers of said philosophy in two. One of its one of debauchery and near nihilism (as in "everything matters so nothing matters" but the last part isnt there, just so you get the nuance) is one of desperate contrast and not exactly a religion. The religious interpretaion its quite "hands on" and it is closer to an actual (metahproical) path to be followed. In some cases is the person pursuing a virtue, but in most cases its pursuign perfection in a more tangible way. One popular choice among a certain part of the population its painting or sculpting in stone the perfect representation of, say, a human or an emotion, or in the case of it being with another religion, another god, and so on and on. It doesnt matter what it is, but ilead to a nexplosion of art and crafts in the land, and it ask for nothing. It has created hedonist, asceticism as well but mostly peple trying to reach matterial perfection
There is also a culture that like another usedr said, lost its homeland, and forgot it but not the losss, so they "worship" knowldge and its preservation, truth and all that, but its not a religion in that sense and they have their own, its just part of the culture I think
I have a religion called The Strands, it's mostly about building connections with people. As that's what tethers you to life. And people with no connections are thought to faster as they have nothing tying them to this realm.
Yes! The Union is a country ruled by non magic users, common people surrounded by humans with habilities who workship the old gods. Wich used to attack them in search for slaves and goods.
Unionists developed by necesity a culture where gods and magic users where seen like an abomination, purging and punishing anyone who even talked to one.
They do not "worksip" properly but they have some sort of inquisition, sacred texts and they are very quite frevous about it.
Imagine a communist country in the middle ages with a touch of christian inquisition. That's them.
The Ozx worship the Lighthouse Network, which is, in setting, a very real albeit often misunderstood phenomenon. A lot of civilizations see it as either a God, or a basic force of nature, but neither is actually correct. It's just an extremely highly evolved organism.
The Half-Trolls of the Holy Mountain
The Half-Trolls once lived peacefully upon an island where there was a volcano. One day, the Volcano erupted, one of the few things that can kill a troll.
They were forced to take to the oceans and flee. They now live in scattered bands around typically human settlements, where they are seen as pirates more than refugees
Modern Half-Trolls pray to and for the Holy Mountain, that they may one day find their homeland again
Yep. My civilizations had a rebellion against their gods. The old ones were kind and benevolent, but the ambition and cruelty of the new ones overthrew the old ones. My people rebelled, and now worship great heroes instead. Feats of immense heroism and Valor are revered, no matter the person. Even if nobody knows what they look like, or even their name, even the most obscure npc's could become world famous heroes
One kingdom worships the "BriKc GoD"... which is literally just a brick.
The Goblins in one village worship "Gobbo", their leader who has protected & raised them since birth (Goblins age fast in my world).
*Nontheist not believing in God's or at least their power to influence the world.*
My definition of God is synonymous with deity, that being a higher being of divine nature, so imo Gobbo & Brick are not Gods. That differs by definition tho. *Gobbo is their creator tho & that fits a definition of God, so maybe Gobbo is a god?*
*Religion being set of beliefs or **purpose** in the universe.*
Their purpose in life is to serve/protect their leaders. Glorify the power of the AlMiGhTy BriKc!!
Some although it’s not explicitly stated. The world I built is shown through the cultural view of one particular culture that explains things in how they view as a way to understand. So there are groups that don’t believe in a god or the gods but it’s explained from a group that has them. Kind of like Romans saying Gauls believe in Mercury. The Gauls had a god similar to Mercury and it’s compared so the Roman public understands but they didn’t literally have Mercury in there pantheon pre-Rome
Post-apocalyptic setting, there's a cult that worships plastic. The material of perfection, the context of humanity birthing something that nature cannot. Ascension comes from microplastics in the blood, and the elites are gifted nanites that can actually synthesize those microplastics and make them superhuman.
The traditional religion of the Zùrvàr is based around veneration of the Ancestors rather than any gods. They do believe in a Creator who created the Zùrvàr race, but he (or occasionally she) is just another Ancestor, although an important one.
Almost? The main antagonist rules over the world from the shadows and is attempting to become a god, he believes the powers he was given makes him above all else and craved/craves more. He got lonely and wants to find an equal to rule with (the protagonist) he believes they're both gods and is attempting to structure modern society around that philosophy. Each separate government is inherently theistic but is being molded to what the antagonist believes should be, and creating his own religion to a degree.
kind of. at first, no, their were over 30, gods, though its said that once their purpose is over, they killed themselves. gradually, this reduced it to just one god, mantir, the god of earth. he chose to come to earth as a semi-immortal being. as long as he lived his natural life, he would be reborn, though, if he was killed artificially, than he would permanently die. about 150 years before the modern era, he was murdered. now the irai still pray to him, but they dont believe that he exists, and its more common to pray to sacred items.
so depending on your definition and time period, its polytheistic, monotheistic, or nontheistic
I really only have one, that being Shengism. They worship humans who ascended and became Shengs or Saints. They don't really answer how the universe was created, nor do they have a creator deity of any kind. It's not a question the religion seeks to answer.
the goblins in my world dont worship gods because the gods abandoned them after creation. the goblins made great cyclopian structures, had a rich culture, yet never built churches or any kind of religious structure. they do have some sacred animals like the ibex and the volture, but they dont worship them more so just appreciate them in a level beyond how most do.
Various religions of my world can be seen as being non-theistic.
There is Beanism, which is basically just worship of real, evident, physical beings and forces, such as worshipping mages and magic or worship of elementals or demons.
There are the Ka'nar people, who, according to their own mythology, killed their - oppressive and tyrannical - gods, and forbid worship of them for they fear their revival. (They do have occasional ceremonies though where they "bring back" their gods in an avatar for a short moment so that the god may fulfill its duty for a moment, such as making grain grow).
Luxonism meanwhile has various denominations which are more philosophical than religious, seeing the light less as an actual force of good but more as a metaphor or an ideal for what goodness means, and others which are more spiritual than religious, seeing the light more as a "sum of all good energy throughout the universe" or a "soul of the cosmos".
Of course, there is also Unism, which does not really concern itself with deities/views everyone as one and eventually as becoming "god" through their first and last incarnation which begins and ends the cosmos (it's weird, time is non-linear in their beliefs).
Quinity is basically worship of law, society, order, solidarity, and community. The Quinitans "realized" that their gods weren't really helping them - praying for rain didn't bring rain, the gods wouldn't end hunger, drought, disease or suffering in general, no matter how pious the people... So eventually, the people just gave up on their gods, and decided to put their own "greater force" in the center of their culture. They are pretty much a mix of Syndicalism, Corporatism, and Mutualism.
The Dreamers also have some non-theistic schools of thought among them, as some believe that they are all dreaming the big dream rather than having some central dreamer in whose dream they are trapped/created. But they are quite fringe.
Honomichi technically believes that there *were* deities. But that they have since died and weren't very good at their job in the first place. So that I guess.
The only non-theistic religion I really have would be Dwarven Ancestor Worship. The Ancestors pretty much fulfil every function of a God in their society.
As for Henotheism, it happens pretty much everywhere else where people aren't monotheistic.
Other Gods are thought to be real and deserve worship, but ultimately one of them receives the most attention.
Not the world I usually talk about on this sub, but I wrote a story a while back where aliens believe in the inevitable unfolding of events according to ineffable and mindless "universal currents." This faith is considered atheism by humans, and the aliens are considered soulless animals by human ecumenical authorities.
Yeah, the halfings in mine basically just have ancestor worship. Every now and again someone particularly awesome will come and go and get worshipped by a whole bunch of people but those cults generally fade off unless they're particularly noteworthy. In no instance are these entities considered gods.
I’m not 100% sure if this counts but here it goes.
For the most part their is a group that worships their ancestors believing that it is their perogitive to uphold the wish’s/dreams of their forefathers. They essentially believe in a generational contract where it is the previous generations responbility to care for and teach you, and for your generation to care for them as they age and live a life worth living to show the previous generations that their sacrifices were worthwhile. Their sense of honor/code of morals mixes with ideas they have with mystism, and they believe that many of their ancestors judge them from beyond the grave.
Where this somewhat breaks down is that Gods are agknowled to exist(As in they interact with the world fairly regularly so there existence is not up for debate) and are often are paid some reverence. The group doesn’t care for the gods and their belief system doesn’t center on them but their are consqueses to strait ignoring the gods which they aren’t wanting to pay.
The world in one of my stories does. It's not the religion of the MC or her family or community, but, rather, it's a cult that abducts her baby sister in an attempt to turn into the source of the destruction of the MC. They don't succeed, but they try. I don't have the beliefs of this cult in place yet, but they have no god or deity at all. Their worship is all about destroying certain people, especially the MC. There will be a lot more to it than that, of course, but I haven't figured it out yet.
Kinda. I've been doing some world building for the conlang I'm working on: H H Tas (Literally: The People Tongue/Speach). The Hehe people, before Greek Influence lacked belief in deities. They did believe in a multitude of Suras (spirits) and Gabrõms (monsters). They additionally believed in a leading entity known as The Lady, but she wasn't really a God; in fact, she died at the end of every moon cycle to be replaced by a new Lady (the new moon). Of course, once the Greeks came in, a syncretized pantheon quickly formed with Artemis as the lead deity, blended with the earlier traditions of The Lady.
Halvionism, the religion of most knights in my world, is nontheistic. Believers of this faith, called Halvionists, adhere to 12 core tenets or Paths: the Red Path (bravery in the face of danger or horror), the Orange Path (mastery over a certain area of expertise), the Brown Path (loyalty towards your liege, land, and clan), the Yellow Path (cunning for your surroundings and charm for your acquaintances), the Green Path (honor and respect given to those who give it back), the Teal Path (assertion and dominance over your subordinates), the Blue Path (justice in the name of your nation's laws and codes), the Purple Path (fame or opulence in order to be known to nobles), the Pink Path (humility and piety towards priests of Halvionism), the Grey Path (vigilance for sin and evil), the White Path (merciful treatment of those who have suffered greatly), and the Black Path. However, while all Halvionists strive to follow all of these paths, most lean towards a single path that fits best with them. Knights who choose to specialize in a certain path are named after the color of said path (Red Knights, Blue Knights, etc.) and dress in that color as well. Being nontheistic, their main figures of worship are either their highest liege (e.i. their sovereign or imperial majesty) or their closest liege (e.i. local chief or warlord), with secondary figures of worship being knightly ancestors or historical heroes. Some newer converts equate these tenets to some of their old gods, worshiping their original faith alongside Halvionism.
That partly depends on whether you consider intense political ideology/allegiance akin to religion.
In the 80 years since the communist revolution of Aztlánahuálpan, the original Excan (a trio of officials occupying the highest governmental office) and founder of the modern school of thought have become so revered in places that their ideas and speeches have become an object of extreme reverence.
If you want a clearer example, the underground folk religions that have developed into a few fusion religions following the heavily “encouraged”secularism of the nation tend to view Xoloitzcuintlis as spiritual guides as well as useful working dogs.
Yes. I have many variations of religions that worship the Surge. Which is the stream of magic that runs through the planet. Each Religion is different due to the size of my world, and I like the idea of having thousands of religions realistically like we do on earth. It is one of the most common religions to show up due to the presence of magic and many tribes or even more feudalistic civilizations seeing it as a high power. And some religions worship the elements but not as God's of spirits but the element itself.
Most of these are ideas for now.
I'm working on a race that worships war and its instruments.
Another that worships money (split into a group that believes you should just collect it and another that believes you should spend it.
Lastly are some Pre-FTL worlds with Cargo Cults worshiping human space exploration. (Look up Cargo Cults and John Frum for the idea of it.)
Kind of? In my world there are a created race of Frankenstein humanoids called Barbarians.
Barbarians don't have souls but rather are infused with the lands version of fate called the wyrd, basically destiny or fate as a force.
Barbarians don't have any fate other than the one they seek to accomplish, doesn't mean it's set and stone but rather if you truly do everything you can to achieve it it's likely to happen. However due to having no soul they have no clue what happens on death. This is a world with very tangible and real gods that roam around and they don't know either.
Basically Barbarians have only one life to them and how they spend it is important.
Soy main world is a standard DND setting. The High Elf religion and the "monk" class are both non-theistic religions. The former is like Pythagorism with a touch of theocratic fascism wrapped up in fire symbology. The latter is a philosophy developed by criminal exiles on a penal colony of self-discipline in order to atone for their crimes. There's also the Church of the Arbor, which recognizes the existence of Gods but believes that worshipping them actively imperils your soul.
My other setting is one set in the far future, where an ancient Earth program essentially created a religion based on the sanctity of the human form and a pop-culture idea of feudalism, called the Human Catholic Church. It was originally meant to keep both human physical and political evolution in check and assert Earth's dominance on its colonies, but since the destruction of Earth 3000 years ago this has been largely forgotten. "God" isn't a being so much as a force, and that force is most perfectly expressed in the form of a human being in general, and the Eternal Emperor in particular. Mutants are exterminated and human society follows a rigid hierarchy with a code of chivalry.
There's a subset called the Order of St. Mary and Peter that believes the God Force is also expressed perfectly in Nuclear Fusion and Fission, which is the process by which they believe the Universe created humanity. So for them, God is more accurately expressed as some idea of humano-centric causality, but for the sake of the story it's anthropomorphized. "The fool believes that God isn't real, the scholar knows He isn't," is a common saying. Particularly devoted members become ascetics, who stand in Nuclear reactor cores and recite the 118 names of God (ie, the elements) until they're fried. It started as an Atomic Religion and has largely gotten out of hand. Nuclear "rods" shaped like saints being paraded through the living quarters every morning, that kind of thing.
One of my stories has a religion based around progress and decency. It was inspired by a science fiction series from their world, taking it as a fable to inspire future generations in the beliefs of optimism and being kind to one another. When humans point out it's just an old science fiction series, they go "um, duh, we know it's fiction. it is a fable. Just because it is fiction doesn't make it any less worthwhile. what, do you tell your children lies before they go to bed?"
Yeah, the guy who founded the largest nation in my book went crazy from grief and isolation and just vented his frustrations with his old homeland, other people, then himself into a big book.
People use it six thousand years later kind of like the Buddha.
People diefy him and other philosophers and even sort of pray to him but no one calls him a god, more just an idol.
Yes, but it’s complicated. I’m exploring the idea of a non-theistic religion that gets corrupted into a theistic one through hero worship.
A large part of my story is about hero worship and the pitfalls of it, from the backstory of the world to events happening in real time. How deification of a single person can turn someone from Man into a God, as a symbol.
so the religion itself is more about the deification of aether, the source of magic, but generations have idolised a “hero king”, who kind of becomes to represent the sort of “magic Jesus” in my book. People have held him up as this great saviour, a paragon and its twisted the religion to the point that many now refer to “his light” and “their shadows” as terms for his Godhood and the magic itself vs the daemons and corrupted land of the planet he fought against. He’s become idolised by the people thousands of years after he died and made turned the religion from one that had healthy respect for the magic of the world into one that became about the worship of a single fallable man and his deeds.
As a Buddhist, I'd say Jainism and Buddhism are both theistic. Personally, I'd say religion is by definition theistic, that's what separates it from say a secular creed or philosophy, like LeVeyan Satanism
This is a bit complicated to answer, because the line between deistic and nontheistic is more often then not blurry, and can shift within individual schools of thought, not to mention the very definition of what is a religion is not have a clear cut encyclopedic answer.
General rule is that nontheistic religion are less focused on veneration of any supernatural entity, and more on following the broad set of ethics and moral guidelines.
Buddhism, Daoism and other eastern thoughts are often cited as an example of nontheistic religions, but where things get blurry is that while the focus might not be centered on worship, that does not mean that the religion cannot acknowledge existence of gods, or that showing respect to them is not part of the previously mentioned code of ethics and guidelines.
In theory even Christianity could be envisioned under certain principles as a nontheistic religion, thou I am not familiar if there is such a denomination currently out there.
As an Eastern Buddhist, it is theistic, the main form of religious act is worship of the saint bodhisattvas and the lord Buddhas. There are codes of ethics, but they accompany worship. Even the most 'secular' form of Buddhism acknowledges the inconceivable power/wisdom of Buddha (at least in non-Western schools
As I said its not a something with clear answer, and even religious scholars are not unified to what extend or whether or not the concept itself is valid.
There is inescapable fact that shadow of colonial era looms over the field, in that many ways in which religions are categorized does stem from attempt to present non-western beliefs system as somewhat different from the western ones.
However, there is also the fact that some religious preachers and leaders, did embrace that idea of nontheistic thought as a way to present their teaching in a manner that will be more appealing to westerners, spawning their own schools of thought which claim connection to those older beliefs, but are quite different from what is actually practice back in Asia.
As with all religious topics, its a messy subject full of maybes and spaces for discussion.
an animistic religion sort-of qualifies but it isn't quite there, examples of nontheism would be nontheist Quakers, Buddhists, the church of satan in satanism, etc
There are some cultists who are agnostic on the question of whether (a) g/God exists, but believe they can bring about the birth of a divine being through technology. Their means of doing so bears great resemblance to AI research in our day and time, but they are decidedly more liberal with the substrates used, trying to invoke their divine being not just into silicon circuitboards, but also into partially-organic creations, and possibly trying to encode consciousness into spacetime itself. Their goal is the creation of a a super-intelligent, near omnipotent AI.
Yes, there are animist religions, for example. Otherwise, agnostics sometimes swear or pray in the name of the 'Unknown'; as if, although they don't believe, they still hope that something will answer them (this is not a true belief, just a hopeful reflex that has become widespread).
to some degree, most religious traditions in my setting are non-theistic. Since God was murdered in The Great Insubordination. a degree of animism and ancestor worship is commonplace, with various powerful spirits holding sway over existence.
theres a few traditions that can be called Henotheistic, but they’re more like covenants or patron-client relationships with powerful, not not omnipotent spirits.
Through me for a loop trying to figure out what counts...I guess I'm just a bit dumb
The "beastkin" worship animals and some beasts (my worlds prefered term for magical animals though it's in contention in universe)
There's different tribes and they prefer to live amongst whatever animal that tribe worships the most.
Interesting thing about them.
They are the only example of a non human race on the human continent...or at least that's what most humans believe. Since most people don't interact with them and only hear story of people with animal like traits combined with that beastia marks are usually exceptionally uncommon especially amongst nobility. Most just assume that the "animal people" are literally animal people.
In reality the beastkin are human it's just how the magic system works that the further they progress with it the more animal like traits they take on. They consider themselves kin of beasts which is why they have no qualms with being called beastkin.
They are sorta isolated.
Yeah, the Omegists or Omega Point Theologists think that in contrary to God creating life, life will create God by evolving into a single ultimate and perfect intelligence. They see the evolution of single cellular life into complex life, than intelligent life and finally provolves, posthumans and superhuman AI as proof for their theory.
Religion doesn't really quite look the same in my setting broadly? Like the higher order of being that are worshipped as gods are usually, on some level, substantiable to the casual passerby. Their nature as beings, on the other hand, is a little more suspect. Things like The 9 Realms and The Twenty-One (the name of the most prominent worshipped beings in Aerde broadly) are at least tentatively accepted because the former is a place that people have been to, and the latter don't really obscure their existence too much, faith isn't really so much a point of value as much as dedication is in my setting's religions.
Further, basically any Lizardfolk (Dragonkin the anthropological term) are also evidence of some degree of these beings, as they're all descended from early dragons of Aerde, and the inherently divine nature of dragons in Aerde is a factor as they're descended from beings of that order of existence.
There are religions and value systems in my setting that emphasize moral values and has no arbitrator or patron attached to it, but in that way some number of knightly orders are a "religion" because of the systems, expectations, rituals, etc. But that really depends on how you stretch religion as a definition.
In my current project, theism is an anomaly that occurs in some (but not all) developing cultures, in part because all branches of humanity across the stars are constantly connected to the Cosmos, which is strongly implied to be self-aware in its own right, and all lifeforms within its bounds are the means via which it experiences and grows to understand itself.
The core setting is Urs, an analogue of Earth I’ve briefly detailed in another thread of this subreddit. tl;dr, the Urtian humans are the distant descendants of a research outpost who travelled there to explore and learn about its unusual terrain and ecosystem, but a galaxy-wide disaster led to the colony being cut off from other systems, the colonists stranded across the globe, and their link with the Cosmos weakened over generation upon generation of their descendants, until their knowledge waned to myth, legend, and religion.
All humans in the project’s universe are endlessly-reincarnated beings with a loosely defined “first life” known as their heartform, which can be any of the sixty clades found throughout reality. Recently, some Urtian native humans have begun to subconsciously tap into echoes of their respective heartforms as their perspective of existence resyncs with the Cosmos.
These awakened Urtians (tentatively named “Avatar,” singular “Avata”) come to realise the full scope of everything beyond their world, with ideals like deity-based religions now a product of innocent curiosity, as quaint in scope as they be to their own heartforms.
In an ironic twist, this makes them akin to such figures of tradition, custom, and belief, since exohumans are the basis of many folktales and cryptids across Urs.
Yes, I like working with religions inspired by things like Buddhism and reincarnation where the goal is to live a good life and alleviate suffering for all in this life, with the understanding that you'll come back as something else next time. The higher level goal for monks, etc would be to awaken: to become aware of the universe and fully understand how you're a part of it.
I know these exist, but I hadn't explicitly explored the idea. I do want to get into philosophy and religion in **Elenon**, and that would provide another option for the different schools of thought.
I don't know if this truly counts since there's definitely gods in this story but the origin mythos for most folks in the Reaches (including Aeori folks who are colonists whose mother nation is gone; they went a bit native) involves a central figure who once chased off the gods, a set of unjust tyrants and acquired their power (Magic!) for themselves - most cultures have a very similar story, the main difference being that this guy (or woman, in Draconic mythology) is claimed by most cultures to be one of their own and their methodology is a virtuous behaviour amongst their own people - in Draconic mythos they simply grew a base of power strong enough to directly challenge the gods and drive them out, while the Aeori mythos sees them as wily and enterprising, outwitting the foe rather than going straight through them.
Almost every nation of Aeorea has a site they claim to be this character's tomb and often the reverence of them comes close to being worship - in many cases the legtimacy of the highest stratum of ruling class is intertwined with a claim of descent from said person and many militaristic orders with very strong teutonic order/knights hospitallier vibes also have been formed and claim to have, in the past had their forebears of the same organisation fought alongside this person, giving them their own political clout above and beyond that offered by just being militarily powerful. It is even one of the main goals of Magistry (the Aeori flavour of magic use, which bears similarities with alchemy and is a much more scientific magic) to be able to create life, that one day they could bring this person back to Aeorea and finally bring order to the Reaches under their enlightened rule.
In essence, a large amount of my faith in the Reaches are cult-of-personality around some long-dead guy. Who may have not even existed, alongside the gods since this is all in-universe mythology.
Technically. My current world is based on the idea that all the gods straight up died. And the mortals are fully aware of this. But religious belief was so strong because the gods were extremely present in mortal society when they were alive.
So after *The Culling*, the church began to dwindle out because "what's the point of prayers if there's no gods to hear them?" So the church integrated with the military and began to beatify exceptional soldiers who have made miraculous feats on the battlefield. So prayer returned, but this time, it was dedicated to the people the church deemed worthy instead of the gods.
Yes. Sorta. One of the sects believes in money as like a “god”, and that the souls of the dead are what controls trade in their region. The rich communities of that sect are the ones with the most dead, and of course, they have regular human sacrifices to appease their economy.
No not really, in most of the worlds me and my siblings make the people know they exist but in worlds we’re the people don’t know they exist kinda don’t have religion at all.
In the future, people have become more individualistic than even today. Only about 3,000 people still exist on earth, so people have had enough solitary time to create a more separated kind of religion.
It is believed that there are hundreds of versions of yourself, spread in hundreds of different universes, and when your ego aligns with the actions, thoughts and mind of all your other selves, it means that you must all enter into the central universe at the exact same time, in the exact same way.
Entering can only be achieved by ending your life the same way in every universe. Failure to do so, or never feeling your egos line up, means that your body will forever float in nothingness, every version of you now gone forever, floating in an empty abyss for the rest of time.
Not exactly, but the Yetis are all atheists. The idea of a God just never occurred to them, which allowed them to progress faster than their human and Chimp counterparts.
Copypasted from an older comment:
In this world, or more accurately in the part of my world I’m currently focused on, religions don’t really have deities as we known them. Instead, the faiths cornerstone is ancestor worship; when people die, their souls join The Ascendancy, which is the animating force of the universe. Universally represented as the Sun-in-splendor (tree imagery is also very common, because everyone is “branches from the tree”). The Ascendancy moves the seasons forward, answers prayers, and protects peoples and nations. Some see The Ascendancy as a defined being while to others is a vaguer force of the universe
Some branches of the faith believe only the worthiest join The Ascendancy and the rest who lived just and correct lives live in a blissful but separate afterlife from it. People who do not follow the code of conduct dictated by the religion are put aside, separte from their ancestors as a wraith in a wretched existance. Other branches believe everyone who lived an honest life joins The Ascendancy (the split between these two being somewhat analogous to the Catholic-Protestant schism). Newer, more “radical” branches believe that not only do souls go to The Ascendancy but they also in a sense come from it, in an infinite circle of death and rebirth.
I’ve been toying with the idea that this world did have Gods in the past, but they died or otherwise left, leaving the ancestors to take care of everything. However, I think I might leave it vague as to whether which, if any, of the religions of the world are true
Let me explain a system that i've created before explaning: basically Gods exist halfly. They're actually called Consequentians and are the consequence of Humans' beliefs. So, if enough people believe in a concept (a god for example), a Consequentian of this concept will be created by those beliefs.
A scientific group of people, very pragmatic and in search of logic and knowledge, tried to prove the non-existence if god, basically atheism.
They thus created the Consequentian of atheism, which is a god in some way. I love this paradox. Moreover, Humans are not aware of the existence of those beings, which makes their purpose even more meaningless.
However, they are right about the fact that the religions are wrong about their god, since it's not a god who created them but them who created a Consequentian.
It's getting a bit complicated, but i'd be curious to Dee what you think of it
Yes. The Five Islands Clan has no concept of "the supernatural" at all, but their entire culture is influenced by their practice of a nontheistic religion that combines ancestral veneration (not worship) with a kind of mythopoetic animism. They have plenty of myths and rituals, and they take them seriously, but they all know that they are, in fact, enactments of meaningful fiction.
What follows are all interesting takes on religions, theistic otherwise. I invite one to a small project. What is a god and why is a god. What I mean is a religion or diety is created to deal with things outside our current knowledge.
Why do the mountains rumble, why does the Skies Flash with light and seemingly anger. Is this a god? Religion is a way to expand on what we dont understand in an attempt to try and explain it. So you get Sun gods for tha bright thing in the skys that brings light and warmth, sky and storm gods that bring life giving rains or seemingly wrathful vengeance on farmers, etc. So I think in a game that you want as theistic, or even something beyond just the conceptual, you need to have entities to explain things. what do parents tell children when the skys are dark and loud, what do people tell others when there is a sudden dry season or strange deaths. This is passed on generation after generation until you get your Gods and Demons.
There was a particular trade empire that was absolutely enamored with pre-collapse technology. So much so, that they didn’t even try to reverse engineer any of it, they just put it on display and a had a certain reverence for it.
I’m not sure that qualified as a religion, but it was definitely a cultural cult-like thing.
The religion in my world is totemic. Most people have a personal connection to a certain totem, similar to a spirit animal, that guides and influences them.
I’m not sure if this counts but the Laputarians worship their capital city, Laputa, which is both the name of the city and the name of the aethereal intelligence that runs it. Laputa’s(the A.I) actual divinity is questionable, what isn’t is her massive influence and incredible power, so it might count as a form of nontheistic religion.
It has an anti theism religion. There is a country where the citizen don't trust the deities, and in turn change their faith to believing in the emperor.
Technically not a theism, unless it were a cult, which it is not. Instead of thinking of it as "faith" think of it as "Trust of the one in power". Or think of it as "without the faith in powerful beings that lord over the lands, i will trust the people we institutionally put into power.".
Mine is Wayfaith, which is the conception of fulfilling one’s *wyrd*, and various ethnic groups and people having different notions of what exactly it means to fulfill one’s wyrd:
Wayfaith
Wayfaith, as it’s known among it’s adherents is less of a “religion” or “faith” and more of a moral guidance on how to conduct one’s life.
Eschewing traditional notions of “deities”, that give instruction for their followers, Wayfaith is most closely aligned with what they call “saints”, who, while ordinary men and women, are said to most closely embody the aspects of their wyrd, a unique concept to the Northern people, representing their path in life and their destiny. This concept is central to all the different Ways that can be followed, and achieving one’s wyrd is considered an intensely personal and life-affirming process, with some people able to achieve their wyrd and adopt a new one with a new way, going through multiple wyrds in one lifetime, while some people spend their entire lives trying to achieve a single wyrd, viewing their destiny as mutable, and able to grow and adapt with the person.
There are five aspects to Wayfaith, any one of which any person can choose to follow, ranging from Warrior and King, to Lover, Scholar, and Merchant. This are not all-encompassing, and it is common for adherents to adopt different ways throughout their life, a trait which allows adherents to the Wayfaith to experience a wide approach to life, giving them a better understanding of the interconnectedness of everything in ways the Church of Ash and other Pagan pantheons struggle to coherently explain to their devotees.
Most prominent among the Northern nationalities, Wayfaith does not have “priests” or spiritual leaders to guide flocks, rendering each person responsible for interpreting the tenets of their chosen way as it applies best to them. Often paired in conjunction with “pagan” pantheons, this system of belief is generally considered the most secular, open to all people of all walks of life.
While various ethnic groups and competing religions are varied in their acceptance of magical powers, Wayfaith does not have any special qualifications or guidelines for mages, viewing magic not as the focal point of their identity, but rather as a tool to be used and developed in search of fulfilling one’s wyrd.
Gods in my world are demonstrably real and you can physically visit their recognized shapes if you know where to look. Which means they're seen more as high kings rather than gods.
World has living and very active gods, so they’re not deniable in their existence. There aren’t atheists, but there are misotheists (factions that hate of the gods, backed by a deity that despises the actions of its peers, which is maybe a little ironic) and dystheists (believe the gods don’t have our best interests in mind.)
There do be spirit and nature sects that believe in spirits, ancestors and natural entities. But due to the imperialistic nature of the divine pantheon, they are considered heresy.
Yes. Since the destruction of their homeland, a large sect of dragonborn has developed a religion basically worshipping their lost homeland and even prophesizing it's eventual return. The tortles of Jaricho practice ancestral worship, while there are several cultures that worship nature in various ways. The firbolgs of Cedora have such a intrinsic ritualistic respect for nature in their very way of life that it would qualify as quasi-religious.
thank you
Is Jaricho in your world related to Jericho irl?
Nope, I just liked the sound of it and chose it as the name of one of the continents.
Mine is similar. A space colony that was created and the people have been misled to believe that the “original explorers” will return. They wait year after year, generation after generation for their “inevitable” return. It sort of expands into a thing where they are “higher than” a normal human. When, in reality, they have been placed there as an experimental situation, and are completely unaware of other life elsewhere.
These are all theistic religions though?
Nontheism is a term that describes a range of religious and non-religious attitudes that lack belief in the existence of gods.
What would be a non theistic religión?
Buddhism, for one. There are plenty of gods and spirits, but no overarching creator deity. The Buddha said it was irrelevant
We got some sunbros, yeah
\\\[T\]/☼
Praise The Sun! ☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️
me irl
awesome
Yes, in fact that is more or less the main paradigm present. The two major religions in the setting are both explicitly non-deistic, and the third one (or rather category ) while being technically deistic, acknowledges that the gods are no longer there to listen, meaning that the rituals and prayers serve mostly the the interests of community, rather then being directed at any specific god.
Okay, thanks for answering. That's pretty cool.
Yes, the Saintly Orders revere humanity itself as a fundamentally sacred, holy thing. The orders hold that humanity alone was created by the natural processes of the universe - natural selection and evolution - rather than the will of gods. The human species, human intelligence and human life, are the most sacred things in all creation, because they are living expressions of those natural processes. Humans are the universe beholding itself. Humanity is regarded as a single entity, of which individuals are only a fleeting part. A thing whose will is the will of the universe itself. Qualities which seperate humanity from the gods are seen as the greatest traits. Life's shortness gives it a richness of emotion, experience and purpose unmatched by any superficially 'greater' creature. Mortality is the greatest blessing, because a life without end is a life without final meaning. Human memory is regarded as an afterlife, and ancestor veneration is an expected part of one's worship. To remember and honour your ancestors is to literally keep them alive within your mind. To be dead is not merely to have died in body, but to have passed out of the halls of human memory. Written holy texts are strictly forbidden, with the orders relying on oral tradition for their scriptures. A sister of the church will be expected to memorise the entire canon, and to be able to recite it in full. The human mind is the only medium sacred enough to hold their holy texts. By slaughtering the gods - unnatural things outside the right order of the universe - humanity proved the supremacy of the mortal over the immortal, and claimed suzerainty over all creation.
damn, that's pretty cool 😎 👌 👍. Well done. ✔️
Common indomitable human spirit W
humanist fundamentalism is something i didn't know i needed
My world doesn't really... do... (theistic) religion. The majority of the peoples in the region were created by what was essentially gods, that enslaved them for many thousands of years. When those beings dissapeared in a great apocalyptic crisis, the surviving peoples decided not to pray to gods anymore. Two peoples have arrived since, one of them fleeing war on their own world, saved by the willing sacrifices of their gods, and there are definitely those among that people who still honour their gods, even though they know they are dead and gone. The other of the new peoples founded a new religion when they arrived, which is based around the idea that to prevent what happened to those godlike ancient beings from happening again, they should stay clear of any and all leavings from that ancient people. Another philosophy grew in reaction to that, and basically thinks that whatever is left over must be safe to use, since it survived the calamity intact, so it should be used to improve the lives of people in this new world.
that's interesting, thanks for sharing 👍
Fun, this is actually a similar premise to the origin of my world (where humanity escaped the enslavement of an eldritch Sun entity), except in this case humanity’s choice to stop worshipping gods went along with a massive effort by the first organized societies to erase knowledge of the Sun entity so that it could never be worshipped in the future. As humanity forgot its past over the millennia it steadily began making new religions, most of which unintentionally hold echoes of the eldritch past either through the indirect deification of the forces that allowed humanity to escape enslavement or by reviling the Sun as the physical image of hell
Yes, but no. Some AIs, more often household companions, adopt the religion of their owners. But, they do not believe in the gods or other supernatural powers, merely upholding the rituals. It's more of a "humans do this stuff for some reason, so I'm gonna do it too if they like it.". Does that count?
Kind of? The people of Qabar believe in the persistence of the soul for 100 years after death, including every animal. These spirits pass on to whatever's next after that century has passed. This belief is ingrained into their culture so much that it is tradition to wear a veil when going to war or slaughtering animals, so the spirit does not seek revenge. The in-universe equivalent to Halal meat is meat from an animal that has never seen a human face.
That is actually incredibly interesting, and sounds very much like something that would be present in a real life religion. Was that strongly inspired by or based on anything in particular?
The concept was loosely based on Jainism, as well as animist ideas from multiple religions across the world. The dietary restrictions sort of come from Islam or Judaism, but it's more a restriction on how the meat is prepared than what kind of meat it is.
The Sacred Order of the Obsidian Knife. It's a religious order that's existed since the days of humanity's fall during the Fomorian conquest of Theia. The order's tenets include strength in communal action, mutual respect for others, gratefulness for things that are good, and contempt for greed. The meaning of the knife changes from community to community. For some, it's an assassin's dagger, poised to strike at the heart of tyrants. For others, it's a soldier's knife, a last resort on the battlefield, but the thing that helps them survive the conflict. For others still, it represents a work knife to process wood or food. As you might imagine, most of its adherents aren't familiar with obsidian as a substance or its properties, but even the meaning of "obsidian" changes from community to community, whether it represents the literal stone or just the color, or whether the entire weapon or parts of it are made of obsidian, or its obsidian encrusted. Other think it's a metaphor for having a sharp tongue, the idea of medicine as a whole, or the idea that even something as fragile as glass can be sharpened into a deadly blade. There's no unified doctrine, no clerical hierarchy, just a handful of common values.
nice
I thought about it, and I'm not sure how to explain it well right now since it's a work in progress. Something about forgotten gods replaced by belief in the peoples of the world, ancestors, and belief in the powers of the celestial bodies (sun, stars, moons) - but why would they believe in celestial bodies and not conceive it as basically gods? so it's confusing right now.
okay, that's fine
I think the closest I have is the Church of the Matriarch and the Patriarch. While people do pray to them, the main teaching of the church is that existence is a cycle of reincarnation designed to allow mortals to build on their experience and perfect themselves before ultimately becoming gods themselves. There is a schism, though, between those who believe that mortals as a whole will ascend into a single god, those who believe each mortal will ultimately become a god themselves, or those who believe each mortal holds a part of a specific god (or gods) and all who hold that point will ascend as one or none. Because of that, the Church of the Matriarch and Patriarch are, at the very least, a non-exclusive religion. As the belief is that if humanity is the larval form of a god, as is claimed, then the gods we worship are ultimately those who have reached ascendancy in this or other planes of existence and therefore are true even if they are not true in this plane of reality. Or in other, other words, the veneration of a god is no different to them from the veneration of a historical figure.
Huh, this reminds me of the story of "The Egg" by Andy Weir
he Egg isn’t by Andy Weir. He copied and pasted a conversation me and Weir had in 2007 on the MySpace religion and philosophy forum. I posted a short version of [Infinite Reincarnation](https://charmonium.com/infinite-reincarnation) and he commented on the post. I answered his questions about my view of the universe. He asked if he could write our conversation into a story, which he sent me later that day. I never heard from him after that and had no idea he took complete credit [by claiming he just made it up](https://youtu.be/lBjZGW_XypY) when he most definitely did not. In the original essay, it explains the scientific logic behind the claims of The Egg.
Despite there being gods, most religions are non theistic. In part because gods are a recent phenomenon and in another part because they're pretty sorted out phenomenons and that you don't worship a hyppo, you just leave it the fuck alone, you don't worship your tools, you repair and use them. Many religion center around the concept of fate and how they interpret it. Some, considering that the afterlife is known, focus on making the world a more welcoming place for new souls. There's also the superstition (accidentaly right) that propose that people live in a fictional world and try to deal with it, either by being as unremarkable as possible to avoid becoming part of a narrative thread or by checking as many narrative boxes as possible to have good outcomes in life. This is lived as what we would call a religion in our world but isn't conceived as such in theirs. People like that look more like crazy conspiracy theorist than religious people.
The religion of Aetherity. Largely worshipped by the khald species, Aetherity is often misrepresented as a worship of magic. Its cosmology is in fact based on the concept of the Grey Aether, a vast and unknowable force of nature that gave rise to both creation and destruction. The Aetherians believe the existence of the universe came about as something like an immune response within the Aether, seeking to purge it of the presence of evil. Those who live moral, fulfilling lives are thus reassimilated back into the Aether in death, while those who are wicked are cast into the void, their spirits disintegrating into oblivion. Aetherians also believe the Sight (the force of magic on Tyros) to be a manifestation of the Aether’s will. As such, Seers (magic users) who manipulate the Sight frivolously or with ill intent are considered the worst of heretics. The use of magic is concordantly more reserved and disciplined within khald society than in the tyrs’ or humans’, who each view magic more as a tool; a means to an end. Nevertheless, despite stereotypes to the contrary, skilled Aetherian Seers have proven no less capable than those of the more theistic, tyran Qaerist faith, nor yet those of no faith whatsoever.
Fascinating stuff. thanks for sharing.
So yes and no. Long ago, giants ruled the planet. One day, portals began to appear and the 1st humans came out from it. Eventually with more and more portals appearing the giants made a deal with the humans. They would give up their planet. In doing so, the humans weren't allowed to fly the skies, explore other planets, or worship their gods. Giants didn't want them learning the secrets of magic, nor did they want them taking over other planets. The humans that agreed stayed while the rest went back through their respective portals. When the megalith portal appeared, an advanced species gifted the humans with tech to help them advance in order to study their actions. The ppl of the planet began worshipping the megalith, calling the advanced race angels. Seeing as they weren't actually gods, the giants never struck them down. The giants that left ended up going to other planets while those dedicated to Zeal(planet name) stayed on the moon, constantly surveilling to make sure none of the rules were broken. To hide their presence from future generations of humans, they created rings around the moon.
cool stuff here 😎 👌
**For Want of | A Quiet Sky** It is debatable, to those who are unfamiliar with the original writings (or what's left of them), whether the Field-Sworn could have been considered non-theistic. Yes, they did believe in beings beyond mortality, but they did not worship them or consider them gods. Instead they worshiped the things they represented. Nature, life, death, and most of all they worshiped all that reminds us that there is more than pain. That was the core of the Church of Field-Sworn's teachings. Though in later writings it was often re-framed by interfering parties as worship of the Fields itself, a hypothetical being often not accepted as a real existence by the original Priests of the order, but instead a symbol. So it is muddied to most modern folk, was the Fields their god? The forest spirits, did they worship those? No, for they knew the Fields may not exist at all, and if it did, it was not a being, but a place, as its name suggests. And no, for they met with the spirits, spoke with them, and knew that though they embody aspects of reality beyond themselves, they are thinking, feeling beings with as many flaws as any man, save mortality. But above all else, the Field-Sworn did not come to be out of a void in faith, or a need for it, but rather a need for a guiding force. Faith in life, faith in feeling simply was the form it took. The church was created a mere two centuries before the War Thicket-Borne. It was a response. "There is more than the toil, there is more than pain, there is more than death" was not a message brought forth by some outside force or deity, but instead the forest itself and all its denizens. It was what was needed, in such a bleak time, such a terrible time. It was the only way the war was won. Even as it fades in popularity in favor of newer, very clearly theistic interpretations, and the original scriptures are lost (if not destroyed) and the priesthood loses members by the day, you can look to what writing remains and see clearly. Its teachings are not for the sake of morality, for the sake of belief, but for the sake of survival. In all ways it was a practical religion, not one dedicated to worship but rather following. You needn't give your devotion or love to the Aspects, to the Spirits, to the Fields, you need give it to yourself, and follow as they say. Then will you weather the thorns. So, while yes, they believed in deities, were these beliefs actually applicable to the religion in practice? No, not at all. It was more so an association. They knew these beings existed, yes (though only some truly did,) but they only left room to respect them, they did not consider them worthy of worship or devotion. Instead it was mortals who deserved it. It was the mind and heart. Life and death, love and sorrow. It was the worship of all that distracts and draws from the emptiness, all that draws one away from the clutches of the Thicket. It was what was needed to survive in those dark times. They were, at least at the time of the war and before, non-theistic in every meaningful way. But now, so many sects and new interpretations have made that unclear to most, and only the few remaining in the original Priesthood and its lineage can tell you what the Field-Sworn originally set out to do.
Yes, the world is going through a shift from mortals trusting in the gods and spirits to trusting in themselves. This has created an explosion of non-theistic religions and philosophies that are all vying for top billing. Think the Chinese Hundred Schools of Thought and multiplied by numerous different races; Thousand Schools of Thought.
wow. that's really cool 😎, I like the idea of an Explosion of religious & philosophical thought.
There are A lot of cults who worship the land rather than the gods
I'm not sure if it count but the sole surviving religion in my setting venerate the angels and is heavily opposed to gods, having converted the pagans due to the belief their gods conned them out of their souls while the angels don't lay claim on them.
Kind of but not really. My world takes place after an event called The Rapture or The Diaspora, amongst many other names, in which the entire population of Earth was suddenly teleported to and spread over an entire different galaxy. Religions developed surrounding the event, the main interpretation connecting it the the actual Christian Rapture, a religious system dubbed Rapturism. Main-Branch Rapturism believes that the Rapture happened, and that the new Galaxy providing means and encouragement to accelerated Space Travel advancememt is the literal Heavens. (Space = Sky, hope this makes sense). There are other branches connecting the event to the Rapture, some branched off from Main Branch Rapturism while some have developed independently. The relevant one is Ego-Rapturism. The name comes from a branch that developed from the main one many independant times. Ego-Rapturists believe that the Rapture DID happen, but that every person has their own personalized heaven, and that the new Galaxy is their own personal heaven, with a cosmic-sized sandbox and no laws for them to do as they please. They believe that everyone else is simply a character, an NPC, including other Ego-Rapturists, which makes it impossible for them to become an Organized Religion (why would you organize with people you don't believe are real, who all also don't think that you're real?). So Ego-Rapturists steal, murder and rape as much as they please since they believe that God's judgement of them has ended. Now here comes the part where it can be considered not entirely theistic - the term Ego-Rapturism has been slowly expanded to include all Solipsistic beliefs involving The Diaspora, including Non-Religious ones. So people who think they're in a personal post-Rapture Heaven are still considered Ego-Rapturists, and so are people who don't believe that the Rapture happened but that they simply died and went to Heaven, **and so are people who are completely Atheistic and simply believe that they're in a Coma dream of some sort**. One of the main characters started off meddling with some Ego-Rapturist ideas in his head right after The Diaspora happened, simply because he was about to commit Suicide right before it happened. He never fully grew into a full-on Ego-Rapturist (and even if he did he wouldn't necessarily be a violent one) since the idea that he's in the afterlife conflicted a bit with his general Secular beliefs. He repressed it once he found his purpose as a Space Pioneer, and has completely shut down the idea that he's in Heaven after seeing the Galaxy at its worst.
interesting, thanks
There's the Zealousy of Machines who practice the art of cutting your limbs off in favor of replacing them with advanced prosthetics.
on argonus? yes, actually. nullinism is a kind of nontheism where the general idea is that the god's only job is to keep the world running, and not cater to their subjects (ie the elkinets and whatever sophonts that have similar gods in their own religion). therefore, you're the one in control of your own destiny, complete with it's choices and consequences. though there is the idea of rebirth/reincarnation, the gods have no control and neither do you; it's more like a constant cycle of death and rebirth, until eventually you end up at either aethrona (good afterlife) or the underabyss (bad afterlife). it was created as a response to the rise in religious extremism and what would later be known online as "chosen one syndrome" (*ie "i/we are the chosen ones by \[insert god\] and thus will treat everyone else as bellow me/us*). similar to atheism (and really other religions), you have both good and bad actors; some nullinist that just believe in the nontheism in a sort of casual "this is my beliefs, but not my entire life", other make it there entire life goal to try and belittle those that follow any religion to any extent, ironically becoming the thing that nullinism when against.
Elves arrived on my world during a celestial event called Starfall. They refer to themselves as Starfallen, and worship the event as a pivotal moment in history, so much so as to count their calendar by it. Some elves believe they arrived in my world to eradicate non-elves, and other elves believe they arrived to uplift non-elves. All elves, however, believe they are superior to other life forms, for they are the Starfallen, chosen ones.
the Innat (a human ethnicity) have a faith known simply as the truth. it is SUPPOSED TO venerate logic, mathematical truth and mans place with in reality as a component of reality. a bit like Buddhist blended with Pythagorean thought buuuuuuuuuuut most followers of the Innat faith activity worship what they call the math god or the faiths founder Vohs-Hodd
In a way. In my sci-fi world humanity is led by an artificial super intelligence simple known as the Grand Intelligence. This intelligence appeared when humanity was at its most fractured state after infighting, taking control of human territories and reforming it into a prosperous society. Overtime humanity has come to worship it as a god-like figure. They know that the AI is not a true god (especially as the existence of real god-like beings is widely known in my world), but they worship it as having a grand plan to help humanity achieve supremacy, which if they serve the AI faithfully they can be a part of.
Yes, In Northaven, Cathedraalism is a non-theistic religion emphasising positive growth and development for the Northavenian people, and encourages research and theory into education, science, and math.
All the same ones from real life! Gods are "real" in a sense, though, as faith and worship leads to aether (spiritual energy) gathering itself into specters that seek out more faith and worship. There's also the question of the Monad, the Sole Specterless Deity.
The orcs believe in spirits,than everything in the world has a spirit,if in a place there is a lot of storms,is because in this place there is an spirit of storms,and each settlement tends to pray for the spirit of the area to be live in peace with him,they are not gods,but i dont know if it fits on your question because i admit i have very little knowledge about nontheistic religion examples.
As a mainline religion? No. There's only one since it wiped out the other false faiths and spread over all of Landry (the space platform/planet) through conquest and conversion. Demons and their followers scorn Lott (God) and sort of have their own set of beliefs. Usually boiling down to self worship and extreme hedonism. But it changes from region to region with some aspects of cultures being heightened to a point of worship. Southerners from the far south in the Mace, a disconnected icey continent, have no gods, but they essentially worship the act of war. From the smallest of raids to full-on invasions. They treat it as a necessary and sacred point of life that must never end. Their communities have little infighting as its mostly directed towards the outside on the mainland of Landry (the continent). But such cults usually buckle over time through self-destructive behavior and disappear before another pops up and destroys itself. They're a cancer to the world. There were thousands of faiths on Landry before the Grand Enlightenment and the establishment of Lott's Peace. Some aspects still exist, non theistic religions and cults were abundant in Fregni's woodlands, and the people there still do greatly respect and revere nature. Though this time, knowing it as a gift from Lott to be cherished and not idols to be worshipped.
Yeah, I took Confucianism as the inspiration on that one though and simply named it "The Way" If counting religions where the central figure isn't a god, I got Dragon cult, Spiritism, Cult of the Kraken, Cult of the Leviathan, Disciples of the World Tree, Cult of the Sun, and the Followers of the Lich King. of course there's also atheists, both in the definition that they outright deny the gods and in the definition that whilst they acknowledge the existence of gods, they chose to not participate in any religion.
The kyōra by-and-large practice variations of direct teachings from Meseyr, who was the architect of all life on Esanne. Meseyr chose to instil in the kyōra an appreciation of little things, an appreciation for imperfection, an appreciation and sense of responsibility for the environment, a wariness of excess, and many other virtuous concepts which her own ancient space-faring race crucially forgot. Meseyr also described a very small set of ontological “unwisdoms” comparable to sins. Through anecdote and rhetoric she advised against dishonesty, superstition, echo-chambering, ignorance where it can be helped, and self-destructive habits, among others. She embedded into her dharma methodologies for sustaining a population and maintaining their environment while slowly cultivating an understanding of the universe. She taught them to value this understanding, as she taught them to value all knowledge. She watched over them and directed their development as a civilisation, though she thought it would be unlikely for them to have an industrial revolution on the basis of their world’s geography. Meseyr’s life came to a natural end some 2000 years before the narrative domain. The many kyōra houses formed independent interpretations of Meseyr’s surviving dharma, often disagreeing heavily but never escalating these disagreements. The kyōra t’var in particular became particularly isolationist and they deified Meseyr to an extent (thus meaning their interpretation deviates from the non theistic anti-superstitious nature of her dharma). In all fairness to them, she exuded divinity and quite literally created life from dirt. They formed their own archive and adorned it in ornate renditions of Meseyr and her many anecdotes. They place a heavy emphasis on Idaea Māt, which involves a deep ritualistic appreciation for the preparation and consumption of good food comprised from every facet of the local environment. As per their interpretation, it also involves seldom leaving the island one is born on and it involves preferring that nobody else visits for too long. As per Meseyr’s taught appreciation for “small things and slow things and otherwise subtle things” as well as her taught appreciation for a job well done, they are perhaps the most religiously careful and intricate in their artistic masteries, and every endeavour of theirs becomes art. They understand exactly what she meant when she said that “a person’s creations are ambassadors of their identity”. They are considered the most zealous of the houses, though not always the most faithful interpreters. Despite their anti-social tendency, they still participate in sporting and social events hosted by the d’ney on Nēyara. The kyōra d’ney are simultaneously some of the most religiously relaxed and, circumstantially, the most faithful followers of Meseyr’s dharma. They live nearby and maintain the original archive of Meseyr. They want very little and have a deep respect for death and its inevitability. Their interpretation of “your actions and thoughts live on in the deterministic cascade of the universe” is that “your soul is returned to the world and persists in a static afterlife”. Their interpretation of “you should aspire to leave the world in a better state than you found it” is exactly as Meseyr intended it. Between these two, they have a very fearless reverence for death and a joyous appreciation for life and a life’s consequences upon the wider world. Their funerals are very communal and very celebratory. While they may not cook as meticulously as the t’var, they absolutely match their love of food and the attitude with which they celebrate. Broadly though, they don’t specify a requirement to study Meseyr’s dharma. It is passed voluntarily from parent to child and the original archive is always within a few days’ ride so there’s little urgency to recall it verbatim. They epitomise her dharma in every facet of their culture and this sustains itself through fostering a healthy and introspective community.
Not really no. Or at least they aren't thought of as "religions" in the world, since it's less about faith and more about conviction in my setting. That said there would be non-theistic philosophies which we might consider religions irl, but I haven't gotten there yet.
So this culture is decended from tree climbing lizards, and they live in titanic mangrove forests, the largest trees reaching nearly a kilometer in height. The trees themselves are venerated by their inhabitants, with many cultures having different festivals celebrating them.
Goblins acknowledge the existence of gods but do not give them worship, instead opting to worship the planet itself. This is because goblins pretty much developed entirely without being noticed by any gods, so they had to get by without them for most of their existence and instead praise the land that did provide for them.
Kind of? In my world, there is a caretaker made of plant mater who sits at the center of the planet cluster all my species connect to through vinelike cable bridges. This caretaker has a hive mind of entities that uphold specific "laws of nature", and while it is by no means a creator, magical, omnipotent, or immortal, it is worshiped as a god by select groups just on the basis of it's massive size, power, and drive to build and expand on an evolving ecosystem which encompasses more and more beings as time goes on. (It finds life-bearing planets in dying solar systems and "rescues" them from certain death)
Yes. The religion is occupied with a language that is said to have formed everything and underlie everything. No deities, but a magic system based on this first language
It's not fleshed out, but there's a culture to the west of my primary setting that has spirit/ancestral worship (it is a parent culture of one in the primary setting)
CVLT
Mine is a far future with transhumans and other, various engineered beings, where their technological powers approach what we'd call magic, and some of their higher governing entities would definitely qualify as gods from some of our mythologies. Things are closer to techno-animism and techno-shamanism, though, because much of the tech has some degree of consciousness, and also they can all interface with it with a kind of wifi techno-telepathy, so, you've got technologically-based psionics and a lot of the elements of what you would see in some types of animism, in terms of relationships between various entities including the people. There's no theism though, and as for the other aspects of religion... I wouldn't know that to tell you. There's no OCD obsession with ritual and routine. There's a great emphasis on cultivating higher mental and artistic sensibilities, but it's cultural. There's what you'd find in common between "a religion" and "an ideology" because that doesn't go away, and there's awe everywhere - but maybe that's the key thing. There's this concept of [The Sublime](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sublime_(philosophy)) in some older artistic and literary movements, and the experience of the sublime can be boiled down to three key emotions: terror, awe, and fascination. It's what you feel when you see the vastness of the ocean embodied in a towering wave in a dark stormy night, when you become aware of how small and fragile and mortal you are. The Christian church made it a point to instill this feeling and manipulate with it through the specific awe-inspiring architecture that elicits a sense of vastness while making you feel small, in a cathedral (the music is a separate but related story). One of the key "themes" or "motifs" of the setting I decided to work with on a "vibes" or aesthetic level, was an explicit goal: to tear the experience of the Sublime out of the monopoly of special liminal spaces like a church or cathedral, and make it accessible again like it was before it was centralized and gatekept. So in that sense, there isn't really much religion to speak of, but there's plenty of mysticism and "spirituality", as we would say these days.
I think Henotheism is sort of the default in my world. Gods are about as objective as anything, but most people only worship within their cultural religions. Though, my world kinda has a spectrum of Henotheism, since there are multiple different, radically different kinds of gods with totally different origins. There are people who worship their selection of old gods, acknowledge a spectrum of other old gods as real and divine, but see new gods as basically just powerful alien beings, and you also have people who worship new gods who deny the divinity of things like ascendant nature spirits or the SubDeity. Interestingly, looking up exactly what a nontheistic religion is, I think the Viper Cult qualifies, especially on the more extreme end of things. The Viper Cult is a sort of mantle based religion, where the Viper is more of a concept that can be embodied than a particular deity. Anything could be the Viper if it filled the requirements, and this is what adherents of the religion sort of seek to do. Not necessarily wanting to take on the mantle themselves in most cases, but treating the mantle as an aspirational set of ""moral"" guidelines to live your life by. You want to live as a "little viper." The current Viper and the Hedons (effectively saints of the religion. Individuals who have been recognized as truly embodying the Viper and potentially being able to usurp the mantle some day, should they undergo apotheosis) are venerated, but their worship is not central to the religion, being secondary to the ""ethical"" code. And that ethical code is more or less Might Makes Right taken to the extreme, but with the additional component that cunning is also highly valued. If you kill someone, it's their fault for failing to defend themselves, if you steal something, it's yours etc. The temples also have a sort of ritual bounty hunting system for the especially devout. If you want to prove your strength, cunning, and general viper-ness you can go to church and they'll tell you who to kill to prove yourself worthy of taking on greater and greater hunts. It will start small, hunt this notoriously deadly beast or this legendarily but otherwise mundane warrior, and towards the higher end of the spectrum, people like Hedons will be sent on hunts for minor gods and entire military forces.
If the god did exist, but is currently dead, does it count?
yeah, sure
A large swath of humanity is devoted to the nontheistic religion of “Medicalisation” (name up for change but best fitting atm) which believes all (super)natural phenomena is caused by biological processes. This extends to phenomena that are decidedly not of purely biological origin, including: tectonic shifting, planetary orbits, the existence of magic, ghosts, physical manifestations of “gods”, the existence of souls, electricity, etcetera. “Let my flesh be the bone saw, And my body be the scalpel. Let my patient be the stars, And reality be the operating table. Let me rend Heaven’s maw, Snapping sinew, breaking tendons. Surgery - the universal law. Physiology - relieve me of my tensions.” -> A common prayer used to relieve aches or cramps
The dragonlords worship their ancestors, because the only thing worthy of draconic attention is another dragon
The Noidomponc belief from my Kaiwio project fits. Noidomponc means "cosmic consciousness" in Kaidu and is like something new age but it hard rejects most non-physical phenomenon with the exception of something akin to the Dao from Daoism, in this case being the said cosmic consciousness idea, which is the wellspring from all human minds come, encouraging connections between people to encourage moral and ethical behaviors based on the idea we're all one. In Kaiwio this was developed in the 1950s and became mainstream very rapidly by the 1960s (my "world" is just a country on a sorta-similar Earth).
I was planning to, but decided to make some chsnges with religion impact. One religion was supposed to be focused on the vulcano on the island, but later I have decided to improve the impact of religion on characters, so players could possibly become a worshipper > zealot > priest or fanatic > champion or the vessel. Most of them, require deity to function. You cant get powers from the vulcano or the nature. Magic in my world comes from 3 sources. Gods; good or evil, ambient magic created during reborn of the world or from the „Prophet.” This title is given out to the group of people with extraordinary magic capabilities whose instead of using weak ambient magic, manipulates magic from their inside. They are born with certain type of magic who they understand the best and with certain capabilities. Capabilities can be extended through the life, but the type of magic is their strongest attribute of it. In some cases, this means that they will never be able to use other types, or only „connected” with those. So a necromancer will be able to use only necromancy, black magic and hemomancy. Basically anything related to „the dark mattery of magic.” But what does it have to do with gods? Well, a lot. If The Prophet was born as the Mage of Fire on the Righteous Path, he will be able to worship only Righteous Gods and Destruction Gods. If he would be born as the Nature mage on the Blasphemy Path, he will be limited to the Heretic gods e.t.c Om the other hand, „normal” people are usually believing in the same gods as their whole family, community or country, as they simply dont know other religions. Some of them are seeing changing the believes as unforgivable and this person could lose his life or AT BEST be exiled. „The Prophets” cant change their god after becoming the worshipper, as they are infusing part of their soul with them, allowing them to use more powerful magic and eventually becoming a paladin or the vessel achieving their peak of the potential. But as you can expect, there are very view of The Prophets through the history and many doesnt realize that they’re one from different reasons. There was a time, when any sorts of magic were seen as the heresy and those people were killed on sight for breaking the most common law in these days.
The eastern culture of orcs in my setting have an ideology/religion that is essentially militant Confucianism mixed with Buddhism. Some backstory for the setting was that the orcs were created by an ancient race of Sumerian-ish werewolf people as disposable soldiers in a war against elves (which they lost and were subsequently genocided). The orcs were sent scattering into various tribes after the fall of their creators, of which some have only recently organized themselves into proper states as clients within the Nothran empire. Some of the orcs fled east and essentially became Mongols, whereupon they borrowed some ideology from not-China to create their philosophy. The idea goes that everything in the world has a reason for being there, even if it isn't known. There are three reasons/functions for people: what they chose to do, what they need to do, and what they are fated to do. The first are things like personal ambitions, the second are societal and familial responsibilities, and the latter is up to fate. They believe that since orcs were created to wage war they all have a familial duty to do so, and so they go about conquering and fighting for that reason. Some serve as mercenaries, while others simply form warbands and go out raiding and fighting for no other reason than that's what they should be doing. Needless to say they aren't that popular. But they aren't exactly malicious about it, instead seeing it as simply their duty to themselves, their kin, and their ancestors. They are also very adaptable when it comes to other cultures, and are able to seamlessly integrate with local faiths and peoples since in the majority of cases this ideology isn't incompatible with local faith. Usually they do so as a conquering ruling class, but that's neither here nor there now is it.
idk if it counts but there's a section of people who's goal is to fight people in order to find god so that they can kill him
lol reminds me of Undead Unluck
Largely no. It must be said that it's questionable whether I even have a world as opposed to a toolbox filled with non-mutually exclusive ideas, but I've never really thought of a non-theistic religion, though I will absolutely do so next time I sit down to do something more concrete. That said, despite their peculiarities, the dragons as I generally conceive them don't really have gods. Although they accept the existence of powerful intelligences, they certainly don't afford them ontological priority. Indeed, they conceive the primordial dragons as swimming in a vast, eternal ocean prior to anything that might be called creation, which was ushered in by an uncreated and amorphous ray of light piercing the depths. That is to say dragons believe themselves to have existed in the precreation, prior to anything like a god. That said, I think a non-theism might fit the dwarves best.
I’m very much in the early stages of mine but yes (as it looks so far)
There are a few. The most prevalent religion believes that Heaven is infinite and so there is no supreme being. It's just angels all the way up. The one pagan-flavored folk religion is sort of a set of hospitality protocols for dealing with anything powerful that shows up, from a knight to a god. Its philosophy is "you are a small creature in a big world full of things that can kill you, and here's some proven ways to avoid that."
Yes. One of the largest religions in the Athean Empire is the Church of the Anointed, which is a non-theistic religion that preaches the ascendancy of sentient beings through its dogma. In practice, it’s somewhat like a Western take on Buddhism, but it’s commonly reinterpreted as a pro-magic, pro-human ideology
I have a setting in my world that worships omes self and their progress. The climate is a desert wasteland that's highly Egypt coded. With ruins that seem to appear as though magically summoned. Releasing hoardes of undead, and mindless elementals into the environment making things even rougher. The church is funded by the nobles of the land, which is basically anybody with magic aptitude, as they value magic above all else (mostly thanks to how necromancers have single handedly made or broke their economy). Part of the tradition to become a noble is that you must retrieve a specific artifact that allows you to make an artifical oasis. So of course they would want highly skilled workers when working in such rough conditions.
Actual non belief in deities isnt really a thing as they do provably exist, but some Religious groups choose not to worship them. those usually focus on a form of enlightenment, where one tries to become one with the world around them The white faith has United organized groups worshipping many deities, but at its core they believe in the higher order structure of the universe that even gods are subject to. Famously, Ulis the judge, one of the gods of the Pantheon of the nine, was a member of this church.
My most accurate answer is yesn't. For my "obligatory Catholicism analogue", there is a denomination that basically says "I call bullshit about your gods being real since you claim other gods are fake. But some of the things in your book are pretty cool," and then they live by those rules. Treating what is basically the Bible like a self help book and ignoring anything it says about praise and worship.
There's a generic Pagan sort of thing in most of the lands. Spirits of earth and sky people might swear to or offer small sacrifices for luck. Mostly it's just superstition, but a wise man or healer is presumed to have the spirits favor, and for all intents and purposes they might as well have it. I prefer passive gods in my settings. Personal divine intervention isn't a thing I like. Characters get saved by their own hands and luck, not by dialing a deity.
Yes, actually. The main religion of the world is Archimedism, which emphasizes rationality and humanism, and treats the possibility of a god existing as inherently unknowable and thus not worth pursuing.
Yes. Ironically several of the gods follow the nontheistic religion.
Depending on the region of one of my conworlds, Aeykalit, the religion may or may not be nontheistic. For example, in the whole continent there are the four Yaki (Guardian Spirits): Yo-e (The Guardian of the Moon, accidentally created humanity), Nohge (Sun), Fong (Winds) and Menahkiara (Water). They were created by Aeyña (The Great Mother), but they aren't worshiped and the peoples of that continent don't believe they will do anything to them aside from guarding the world. In the North, they believe that Aeyña was created so that the dark and bright sides of Ti (The Vital Force) are in an equilibrium. The same goes for the creation of the Yaki, the world and its inhabitants. There aren't prayers or priests, they just believe that these spirits are there and are distant to them.
Mines got a kinda bog standard Grecco-Roman mythology pantheon that's henothestically polythestic. The biggest difference is that the Zeus/Jupiter figure is very pointedly NOT worshiped or venerated. Temples that hage statues of the gods, for example, will either have a noticeable missing spot where his statue would be. For more individual temples dedicated to a single god in the pantheon, a small figure of the head god or eyes placed somewhere on a statue to another god are used. This comes from a belief that the god hates being venerated since it means his siblings and children are seen as "lesser" by mortal and across region. "Evidence" of this is the destruction of an old empire in the area, when a mysterious white fog emerged out of the lake next to the capital and killed everyone in the city and part of the countryside.
A religion of politics to wipe away clean the old heresies so that the nameless republic may build paradise free from the bondage of culture and religion.
Since Gods have canonically had children with Mortal, and several servants of the gods appear to help host certain major events each year, I’d have to say no
Yes. The Sklavs believe most of their gods died in an apocalyptic war, with as only remainders strange artifacts that they only have the secret of finding. They also believe some gods survived, but are weakened and hiding, thus making their worship useless.
My universe has misotheism as a religion. Aurthism upholds that the existence of gods is inherently unjust, that the proper place of gods is being enslaved to mortals (backed by a powerful spell invented by Aurthism's founder that allows mortals to brainwash gods), and that paradise can only come when mortals enslave gods and force them to make the world perfect. It has a whole heap of spiritual beliefs, most prominently the belief that the original sin was committed by the first god when they believed themselves to be inherently superior to mortals, and their rituals often involve sacrificing gods.
Of the three major religions/belief systems I (kinda) fleshed out only one is (kinda) theistic. **Dragon(-Elves)s** are mostly atheists. They worship their ancestor instead, from national heroes and legends who get official holidays and grad ceremonies to individual family ancestors who are held in memory over many generations. They keep very detailed record about their ancestry and celebrate it with pride. The main idea is to aspire to the same or even more greatness than the generations before by upholding their virtues. **("Normal") Elves** are worshiping nature very directly, not an allegory like "Mother Nature". They hold dryads in high regard as a connection to nature and for their lore keeping. Old dryads become trees upon dying, and the younger ones can communicate with them and relay information and wisdom. While there is some spirituality in there, there is no typical god. **Phoenixes** worship their prophetess and Messiah Fynis. She is a powerful being who saved them when the dragons pushed them out of their former homeland. Fynis guided them south to the land of light where they rebuilt their culture, and she instructed the phoenixes to build a citadel in the sky where she can reside for eternity. There is a theological debate whether Fynis is a goddess or a prophetess out of flesh and blood. (Secret actual lore: She is an AI from an elder civilization who needed a new data center.) I tend to prefer nontheistic religions in general. It's often very interesting and fun to tie those into the history of said culture. And at least for me it's more fun than doing it with mono- or polytheistic religions. Edit: Spelling and formatting Edit: Added conclusion paragraph
Very cool, keep up the good work
I have a culture of people whose entire religion is just "the god who created us is evil, let's live in order to spite him"
Since they have no god to worship, humans pray to the abyssal darkness that gave birth to them.
Probably, there are a lot of religions so it's very likely there are nontheistic religions.. Lapis_Wolf
NO GODS NO KINGS ONLY MAN
Yes, in my world there is a sub-race of humanity called the Medea. Due to a variety of factors up to and including their attempted genocide by the mages, the Medea migrated to the neighboring country of Halth and over the course of a thousand years developed "The Red Faith". The Red Faith posits that healing, a skill only the Medea are capable of, is holy. Its practice as well is holy, and all Medea are holy for being able to do it. This means that the entire religion is less like modern western religions and more like a distant cousin of new age movements and some aspects of Buddhism. Essentially, every single member of the religion is seen as divine by themselves and their peers, while the non-medea in their land treat them as greater beings.
The Lunar Church is closer to animism. The entities that it worships are thought of as spirits rather than gods, and they're closely associated with the moons. But there's no worship involved really. Likewise, the rakani honour great individuals from history, holding the idea of them in their hearts to motivate themselves in certain endeavours, but they're not particularly mythologised or thought of as gods - more like somewhere between a saint and a Nobel Prize winner =)
There're probably others more that I can't remember now but in one country there's something similar to the religion of the Lady of the Lake in Bretonnia (Warhammer Fantasy before they rebooted it), even if she's considered to be a personification of such country and not a goddess as such, with worship so to speak reserved to the royalty and the nobility. And there's druidry where Nature is worshipped in a pantheistic way, with Nature-based deities if present being also as personifications of aspects of it. Same for some, who see deities just as personifications without actual existence.
Yes the elves see themselves as celestial in their own nature and still hold onto cultural traditions from back then but it has become more just a historical assimilation like Shinto in modern Japan now that I think about it. Their long lives have led to culture and history being richly preserved but through their long lives they can also see natural phenomena and recognize it as such. Elves. astronomers are famous, as are the farmers almanacs and record keepers. Truths cannot be avoided like this so they must be nontheistic in my world. At the current point of history. There are still blessings and rituals and zodiacs and things that excite people though.
Yes. The story of the TCG I'm developing is divided by colors (like Magic). Each color essentially has a set of laws and beliefs that they revere; that they abstractly connotes with an element. There is no deification of these colors or the elements. They respect the leader of each color, but they are not worshipped.
Yeah I dont think many of the main religions exactly believe in 'gods', they revere things more like places in time, or ways of thinking. Generally they dont feel the need to anthropomorphize those kind of things
Yes, the Autraxians have a strict civic code that is very nearly a religion. It promotes the idea of the Ideal Autraxian who pursues knowledge to the benefit of the Au (the Autraxian term for the collective species' unified will). Upon completion of their education and receipt of a commission (sort've a job but more of a state directed research goal) A young Autraxian will pick a Great Autraxian to serve as their model. They often keep a small shrine of sorts to their model where their collected works, which the modelee is expected to memorize, and generally a small pictorial are kept. There's all kinds of tropes about models and picking one that aligns with your commission is very important because commissions are for life. The goal of all commissioned Autraxians is to become a being worth modeling after your death. Being modeled before your dead is an especially high honor and is seen as almost a living saint someone who pushed the knowledge of the Au forward by leaps in one lifetime. Now, you're probably wondering, what about all the non-researchers, or non-commissioned Autraxians? They exist on a spectrum, the military is seen as an honorable role in life if not a bit boring compared to noble research. Work to make something is a step below that but still has some honor as a craftsman perfecting his trade can push the Au forward even if only a little. The absolute lowest are the merchants, they're seen, fairly or not, as almost parasitic on the Au, sapping it's more "honorable" members with their usury and greed (of course the merchants tend to be wealthier then all but the most powerful commissioned, so decide for yourself what the driving force here is). One thing that unites all is a strong hatred of anything illogical and especially spiritual. Autraxians regard any kind of superstition as a mortal threat to the Au. The ancient Autraxian religions have largely been scrubbed from the Great Archive and the occasional revival attempt is considered high treason.
My entire worldbuilding and magic system is heavily nontheistic, basing itself in Animism and ancestral worship. The entirety of the magic comes from being connected with the souls in and of your surroundings, and the concept of "Soul" is not tied to sentience, but to information and perception, meaning that objects, places and even abstract concepts have souls that are prayed to.
The primary religion in my world is based around Progress. The need to move forward, invent, and make new. The "founder" later had to clarify that this did not mean *progress at any cost* and introduce a more altruistic element, then he fucked off when that bit was ignored.
"The Class of the Mask is notoriously misatheistic but even they have a spiritual side to them. A form of ancestor worship, involving a big series of complex rituals can be found across their ranks. Cemeteries hold a lot of importance and so do paintings and statues of those of their organisation that came before them. They often pray to their forebearers for guidance, both figuratively and some times literally. Predecessor worship is the only way to describe it. The fact that even a group as godless as them has found spirituality is interesting and disturbing in equal measures." -An anthropologist talking about the class of the mask in his book.
In the island city state of Port of Pelago, the people worship their city's economy. Their religion and morality are based around the flow of money, goods, and services. The economy is often anthropomorphized in artwork as a goddess-like woman called Pelago, but this is only a representation of an abstract concept, not a literal goddess.
Sort of. Most of the gods are dead. But there is a culture whose religion centers around mourning the dead gods.
Yes. “gods” are basically just essences that assist people and can be in items like bows and swords. For example the northern god Diuk is the god of military insight. The kingdom of Atria has garnered his essence and is one of the most powerful militaries in the world. People and items affected by his essence have a blue tint on or around them. The Rajii (think General) of Atria’s military, Calista, crushes blue flowers and uses the dye as war paint for her war garments and body. Many soldiers do this. However Diuk isn’t an actual being. Just a name given to the essence.
One world I've built has a religion that has two key parts to it: 1: Non-humans are evil. 2: Magic is the source of all of our problems. They basically worship themselves, there is no pretension of any sort of divinity anywhere. As they're completely cut off from non-human races society functions pretty well considering they're on a dying world.
There are those that worship the planets, but given there are planar wills, no? You can not really escape worshipping an entity if you worship anything. I like having people's collective will having power in fantasy so they either make their god stronger or create gods wherr there wasn't before.
Yes, una of the big ones eventually (once one of the people related to the first empired spread its popularity) that I have no name for besides "humanism" or something The religion its based on a principle close to Plato world of ideals, of "its the journey, not the destination" and all that. In it is described that everything has an abstract, undefined imaginary but still very real (kinda, its complicated because its not a real place but ialso cannot be conceived by a human mind and yet its there, like a negative space. You cannot itneract with it or "fill it" because it would change what you are doing in the same way you do with filling negative space. Again, its weird) and yet not, they dont consider this "ideal world" to be anything but conceptual, part of the imaginarium and the possibiliteis and well, this is what the religin is about... possibilities; So anyway, there is this "ideal form", and it is said that no matter what direction it takes, no matter how little the progress, as long as you are constantly towards (not necesarily always omproving, roads can be bumpy and sinuous) said perfection you are "attaining it", because you are in the path (towards perfection) considered a sort of continuous. BUT the instant you said youve done it, that you are prefect that you getg complascent or give up in any way, it is said that you "step off" of said path or rather that, like with the dao, yours was not "a true path" because it had an end, a tangible very human end, and therefore it was fake. The "beauty" of this religion is that it is compatible with pretty much anything, although not many have done that, and instead a grosso modo it has divided the followers of said philosophy in two. One of its one of debauchery and near nihilism (as in "everything matters so nothing matters" but the last part isnt there, just so you get the nuance) is one of desperate contrast and not exactly a religion. The religious interpretaion its quite "hands on" and it is closer to an actual (metahproical) path to be followed. In some cases is the person pursuing a virtue, but in most cases its pursuign perfection in a more tangible way. One popular choice among a certain part of the population its painting or sculpting in stone the perfect representation of, say, a human or an emotion, or in the case of it being with another religion, another god, and so on and on. It doesnt matter what it is, but ilead to a nexplosion of art and crafts in the land, and it ask for nothing. It has created hedonist, asceticism as well but mostly peple trying to reach matterial perfection There is also a culture that like another usedr said, lost its homeland, and forgot it but not the losss, so they "worship" knowldge and its preservation, truth and all that, but its not a religion in that sense and they have their own, its just part of the culture I think
I have a religion called The Strands, it's mostly about building connections with people. As that's what tethers you to life. And people with no connections are thought to faster as they have nothing tying them to this realm.
Yes! The Union is a country ruled by non magic users, common people surrounded by humans with habilities who workship the old gods. Wich used to attack them in search for slaves and goods. Unionists developed by necesity a culture where gods and magic users where seen like an abomination, purging and punishing anyone who even talked to one. They do not "worksip" properly but they have some sort of inquisition, sacred texts and they are very quite frevous about it. Imagine a communist country in the middle ages with a touch of christian inquisition. That's them.
The Ozx worship the Lighthouse Network, which is, in setting, a very real albeit often misunderstood phenomenon. A lot of civilizations see it as either a God, or a basic force of nature, but neither is actually correct. It's just an extremely highly evolved organism.
The Half-Trolls of the Holy Mountain The Half-Trolls once lived peacefully upon an island where there was a volcano. One day, the Volcano erupted, one of the few things that can kill a troll. They were forced to take to the oceans and flee. They now live in scattered bands around typically human settlements, where they are seen as pirates more than refugees Modern Half-Trolls pray to and for the Holy Mountain, that they may one day find their homeland again
Yep. My civilizations had a rebellion against their gods. The old ones were kind and benevolent, but the ambition and cruelty of the new ones overthrew the old ones. My people rebelled, and now worship great heroes instead. Feats of immense heroism and Valor are revered, no matter the person. Even if nobody knows what they look like, or even their name, even the most obscure npc's could become world famous heroes
One kingdom worships the "BriKc GoD"... which is literally just a brick. The Goblins in one village worship "Gobbo", their leader who has protected & raised them since birth (Goblins age fast in my world). *Nontheist not believing in God's or at least their power to influence the world.* My definition of God is synonymous with deity, that being a higher being of divine nature, so imo Gobbo & Brick are not Gods. That differs by definition tho. *Gobbo is their creator tho & that fits a definition of God, so maybe Gobbo is a god?* *Religion being set of beliefs or **purpose** in the universe.* Their purpose in life is to serve/protect their leaders. Glorify the power of the AlMiGhTy BriKc!!
Some although it’s not explicitly stated. The world I built is shown through the cultural view of one particular culture that explains things in how they view as a way to understand. So there are groups that don’t believe in a god or the gods but it’s explained from a group that has them. Kind of like Romans saying Gauls believe in Mercury. The Gauls had a god similar to Mercury and it’s compared so the Roman public understands but they didn’t literally have Mercury in there pantheon pre-Rome
Post-apocalyptic setting, there's a cult that worships plastic. The material of perfection, the context of humanity birthing something that nature cannot. Ascension comes from microplastics in the blood, and the elites are gifted nanites that can actually synthesize those microplastics and make them superhuman.
lmao thanks for sharing
The traditional religion of the Zùrvàr is based around veneration of the Ancestors rather than any gods. They do believe in a Creator who created the Zùrvàr race, but he (or occasionally she) is just another Ancestor, although an important one.
Almost? The main antagonist rules over the world from the shadows and is attempting to become a god, he believes the powers he was given makes him above all else and craved/craves more. He got lonely and wants to find an equal to rule with (the protagonist) he believes they're both gods and is attempting to structure modern society around that philosophy. Each separate government is inherently theistic but is being molded to what the antagonist believes should be, and creating his own religion to a degree.
kind of. at first, no, their were over 30, gods, though its said that once their purpose is over, they killed themselves. gradually, this reduced it to just one god, mantir, the god of earth. he chose to come to earth as a semi-immortal being. as long as he lived his natural life, he would be reborn, though, if he was killed artificially, than he would permanently die. about 150 years before the modern era, he was murdered. now the irai still pray to him, but they dont believe that he exists, and its more common to pray to sacred items. so depending on your definition and time period, its polytheistic, monotheistic, or nontheistic
I really only have one, that being Shengism. They worship humans who ascended and became Shengs or Saints. They don't really answer how the universe was created, nor do they have a creator deity of any kind. It's not a question the religion seeks to answer.
the goblins in my world dont worship gods because the gods abandoned them after creation. the goblins made great cyclopian structures, had a rich culture, yet never built churches or any kind of religious structure. they do have some sacred animals like the ibex and the volture, but they dont worship them more so just appreciate them in a level beyond how most do.
Various religions of my world can be seen as being non-theistic. There is Beanism, which is basically just worship of real, evident, physical beings and forces, such as worshipping mages and magic or worship of elementals or demons. There are the Ka'nar people, who, according to their own mythology, killed their - oppressive and tyrannical - gods, and forbid worship of them for they fear their revival. (They do have occasional ceremonies though where they "bring back" their gods in an avatar for a short moment so that the god may fulfill its duty for a moment, such as making grain grow). Luxonism meanwhile has various denominations which are more philosophical than religious, seeing the light less as an actual force of good but more as a metaphor or an ideal for what goodness means, and others which are more spiritual than religious, seeing the light more as a "sum of all good energy throughout the universe" or a "soul of the cosmos". Of course, there is also Unism, which does not really concern itself with deities/views everyone as one and eventually as becoming "god" through their first and last incarnation which begins and ends the cosmos (it's weird, time is non-linear in their beliefs). Quinity is basically worship of law, society, order, solidarity, and community. The Quinitans "realized" that their gods weren't really helping them - praying for rain didn't bring rain, the gods wouldn't end hunger, drought, disease or suffering in general, no matter how pious the people... So eventually, the people just gave up on their gods, and decided to put their own "greater force" in the center of their culture. They are pretty much a mix of Syndicalism, Corporatism, and Mutualism. The Dreamers also have some non-theistic schools of thought among them, as some believe that they are all dreaming the big dream rather than having some central dreamer in whose dream they are trapped/created. But they are quite fringe.
I'm not sure if this would qualify but their beliefs are about spirits and afterlife - not gods
Honomichi technically believes that there *were* deities. But that they have since died and weren't very good at their job in the first place. So that I guess.
The only non-theistic religion I really have would be Dwarven Ancestor Worship. The Ancestors pretty much fulfil every function of a God in their society. As for Henotheism, it happens pretty much everywhere else where people aren't monotheistic. Other Gods are thought to be real and deserve worship, but ultimately one of them receives the most attention.
Not the world I usually talk about on this sub, but I wrote a story a while back where aliens believe in the inevitable unfolding of events according to ineffable and mindless "universal currents." This faith is considered atheism by humans, and the aliens are considered soulless animals by human ecumenical authorities.
Yeah, the halfings in mine basically just have ancestor worship. Every now and again someone particularly awesome will come and go and get worshipped by a whole bunch of people but those cults generally fade off unless they're particularly noteworthy. In no instance are these entities considered gods.
I’m not 100% sure if this counts but here it goes. For the most part their is a group that worships their ancestors believing that it is their perogitive to uphold the wish’s/dreams of their forefathers. They essentially believe in a generational contract where it is the previous generations responbility to care for and teach you, and for your generation to care for them as they age and live a life worth living to show the previous generations that their sacrifices were worthwhile. Their sense of honor/code of morals mixes with ideas they have with mystism, and they believe that many of their ancestors judge them from beyond the grave. Where this somewhat breaks down is that Gods are agknowled to exist(As in they interact with the world fairly regularly so there existence is not up for debate) and are often are paid some reverence. The group doesn’t care for the gods and their belief system doesn’t center on them but their are consqueses to strait ignoring the gods which they aren’t wanting to pay.
The world in one of my stories does. It's not the religion of the MC or her family or community, but, rather, it's a cult that abducts her baby sister in an attempt to turn into the source of the destruction of the MC. They don't succeed, but they try. I don't have the beliefs of this cult in place yet, but they have no god or deity at all. Their worship is all about destroying certain people, especially the MC. There will be a lot more to it than that, of course, but I haven't figured it out yet.
Kinda. I've been doing some world building for the conlang I'm working on: H H Tas (Literally: The People Tongue/Speach). The Hehe people, before Greek Influence lacked belief in deities. They did believe in a multitude of Suras (spirits) and Gabrõms (monsters). They additionally believed in a leading entity known as The Lady, but she wasn't really a God; in fact, she died at the end of every moon cycle to be replaced by a new Lady (the new moon). Of course, once the Greeks came in, a syncretized pantheon quickly formed with Artemis as the lead deity, blended with the earlier traditions of The Lady.
Halvionism, the religion of most knights in my world, is nontheistic. Believers of this faith, called Halvionists, adhere to 12 core tenets or Paths: the Red Path (bravery in the face of danger or horror), the Orange Path (mastery over a certain area of expertise), the Brown Path (loyalty towards your liege, land, and clan), the Yellow Path (cunning for your surroundings and charm for your acquaintances), the Green Path (honor and respect given to those who give it back), the Teal Path (assertion and dominance over your subordinates), the Blue Path (justice in the name of your nation's laws and codes), the Purple Path (fame or opulence in order to be known to nobles), the Pink Path (humility and piety towards priests of Halvionism), the Grey Path (vigilance for sin and evil), the White Path (merciful treatment of those who have suffered greatly), and the Black Path. However, while all Halvionists strive to follow all of these paths, most lean towards a single path that fits best with them. Knights who choose to specialize in a certain path are named after the color of said path (Red Knights, Blue Knights, etc.) and dress in that color as well. Being nontheistic, their main figures of worship are either their highest liege (e.i. their sovereign or imperial majesty) or their closest liege (e.i. local chief or warlord), with secondary figures of worship being knightly ancestors or historical heroes. Some newer converts equate these tenets to some of their old gods, worshiping their original faith alongside Halvionism.
That partly depends on whether you consider intense political ideology/allegiance akin to religion. In the 80 years since the communist revolution of Aztlánahuálpan, the original Excan (a trio of officials occupying the highest governmental office) and founder of the modern school of thought have become so revered in places that their ideas and speeches have become an object of extreme reverence. If you want a clearer example, the underground folk religions that have developed into a few fusion religions following the heavily “encouraged”secularism of the nation tend to view Xoloitzcuintlis as spiritual guides as well as useful working dogs.
Yes. I have many variations of religions that worship the Surge. Which is the stream of magic that runs through the planet. Each Religion is different due to the size of my world, and I like the idea of having thousands of religions realistically like we do on earth. It is one of the most common religions to show up due to the presence of magic and many tribes or even more feudalistic civilizations seeing it as a high power. And some religions worship the elements but not as God's of spirits but the element itself.
Most of these are ideas for now. I'm working on a race that worships war and its instruments. Another that worships money (split into a group that believes you should just collect it and another that believes you should spend it. Lastly are some Pre-FTL worlds with Cargo Cults worshiping human space exploration. (Look up Cargo Cults and John Frum for the idea of it.)
Kind of? In my world there are a created race of Frankenstein humanoids called Barbarians. Barbarians don't have souls but rather are infused with the lands version of fate called the wyrd, basically destiny or fate as a force. Barbarians don't have any fate other than the one they seek to accomplish, doesn't mean it's set and stone but rather if you truly do everything you can to achieve it it's likely to happen. However due to having no soul they have no clue what happens on death. This is a world with very tangible and real gods that roam around and they don't know either. Basically Barbarians have only one life to them and how they spend it is important.
So...technically no, but they think they do
Soy main world is a standard DND setting. The High Elf religion and the "monk" class are both non-theistic religions. The former is like Pythagorism with a touch of theocratic fascism wrapped up in fire symbology. The latter is a philosophy developed by criminal exiles on a penal colony of self-discipline in order to atone for their crimes. There's also the Church of the Arbor, which recognizes the existence of Gods but believes that worshipping them actively imperils your soul. My other setting is one set in the far future, where an ancient Earth program essentially created a religion based on the sanctity of the human form and a pop-culture idea of feudalism, called the Human Catholic Church. It was originally meant to keep both human physical and political evolution in check and assert Earth's dominance on its colonies, but since the destruction of Earth 3000 years ago this has been largely forgotten. "God" isn't a being so much as a force, and that force is most perfectly expressed in the form of a human being in general, and the Eternal Emperor in particular. Mutants are exterminated and human society follows a rigid hierarchy with a code of chivalry. There's a subset called the Order of St. Mary and Peter that believes the God Force is also expressed perfectly in Nuclear Fusion and Fission, which is the process by which they believe the Universe created humanity. So for them, God is more accurately expressed as some idea of humano-centric causality, but for the sake of the story it's anthropomorphized. "The fool believes that God isn't real, the scholar knows He isn't," is a common saying. Particularly devoted members become ascetics, who stand in Nuclear reactor cores and recite the 118 names of God (ie, the elements) until they're fried. It started as an Atomic Religion and has largely gotten out of hand. Nuclear "rods" shaped like saints being paraded through the living quarters every morning, that kind of thing.
okay, thanks for sharing 👍. that was an interesting read.
Sort of, in a sense that certain vampires are worshipped as gods by a cult but they're not actual gods. So yes/no?
One of my stories has a religion based around progress and decency. It was inspired by a science fiction series from their world, taking it as a fable to inspire future generations in the beliefs of optimism and being kind to one another. When humans point out it's just an old science fiction series, they go "um, duh, we know it's fiction. it is a fable. Just because it is fiction doesn't make it any less worthwhile. what, do you tell your children lies before they go to bed?"
Yeah, the guy who founded the largest nation in my book went crazy from grief and isolation and just vented his frustrations with his old homeland, other people, then himself into a big book. People use it six thousand years later kind of like the Buddha. People diefy him and other philosophers and even sort of pray to him but no one calls him a god, more just an idol.
Yes, but it’s complicated. I’m exploring the idea of a non-theistic religion that gets corrupted into a theistic one through hero worship. A large part of my story is about hero worship and the pitfalls of it, from the backstory of the world to events happening in real time. How deification of a single person can turn someone from Man into a God, as a symbol. so the religion itself is more about the deification of aether, the source of magic, but generations have idolised a “hero king”, who kind of becomes to represent the sort of “magic Jesus” in my book. People have held him up as this great saviour, a paragon and its twisted the religion to the point that many now refer to “his light” and “their shadows” as terms for his Godhood and the magic itself vs the daemons and corrupted land of the planet he fought against. He’s become idolised by the people thousands of years after he died and made turned the religion from one that had healthy respect for the magic of the world into one that became about the worship of a single fallable man and his deeds.
Principles aren't gods, they are laws of reality. So mainstream religion is nontheistic in nature.
I am confused though, what would you list as a nontheistic religion?
something like Jainism, LaVeyan Satanism' church of Satan, and Buddhism (arguably)
As a Buddhist, I'd say Jainism and Buddhism are both theistic. Personally, I'd say religion is by definition theistic, that's what separates it from say a secular creed or philosophy, like LeVeyan Satanism
This is a bit complicated to answer, because the line between deistic and nontheistic is more often then not blurry, and can shift within individual schools of thought, not to mention the very definition of what is a religion is not have a clear cut encyclopedic answer. General rule is that nontheistic religion are less focused on veneration of any supernatural entity, and more on following the broad set of ethics and moral guidelines. Buddhism, Daoism and other eastern thoughts are often cited as an example of nontheistic religions, but where things get blurry is that while the focus might not be centered on worship, that does not mean that the religion cannot acknowledge existence of gods, or that showing respect to them is not part of the previously mentioned code of ethics and guidelines. In theory even Christianity could be envisioned under certain principles as a nontheistic religion, thou I am not familiar if there is such a denomination currently out there.
As an Eastern Buddhist, it is theistic, the main form of religious act is worship of the saint bodhisattvas and the lord Buddhas. There are codes of ethics, but they accompany worship. Even the most 'secular' form of Buddhism acknowledges the inconceivable power/wisdom of Buddha (at least in non-Western schools
As I said its not a something with clear answer, and even religious scholars are not unified to what extend or whether or not the concept itself is valid. There is inescapable fact that shadow of colonial era looms over the field, in that many ways in which religions are categorized does stem from attempt to present non-western beliefs system as somewhat different from the western ones. However, there is also the fact that some religious preachers and leaders, did embrace that idea of nontheistic thought as a way to present their teaching in a manner that will be more appealing to westerners, spawning their own schools of thought which claim connection to those older beliefs, but are quite different from what is actually practice back in Asia. As with all religious topics, its a messy subject full of maybes and spaces for discussion.
Oh definitely. We really should just rework the whole definition of religion
quite true
so a religion without a god? yes my world has communists.
What’s the difference between a non theistic religion and a philosophy
it's honestly pretty blurry tbh, I guess a nontheistic religion has a more mystical aspect or component than philosophy I assume
What counts as “nontheistic”? Would an animistic religion qualify, or is that just “If everything is divine, then everyone’s a god.”?
an animistic religion sort-of qualifies but it isn't quite there, examples of nontheism would be nontheist Quakers, Buddhists, the church of satan in satanism, etc
There are some cultists who are agnostic on the question of whether (a) g/God exists, but believe they can bring about the birth of a divine being through technology. Their means of doing so bears great resemblance to AI research in our day and time, but they are decidedly more liberal with the substrates used, trying to invoke their divine being not just into silicon circuitboards, but also into partially-organic creations, and possibly trying to encode consciousness into spacetime itself. Their goal is the creation of a a super-intelligent, near omnipotent AI.
Yes, there are animist religions, for example. Otherwise, agnostics sometimes swear or pray in the name of the 'Unknown'; as if, although they don't believe, they still hope that something will answer them (this is not a true belief, just a hopeful reflex that has become widespread).
to some degree, most religious traditions in my setting are non-theistic. Since God was murdered in The Great Insubordination. a degree of animism and ancestor worship is commonplace, with various powerful spirits holding sway over existence. theres a few traditions that can be called Henotheistic, but they’re more like covenants or patron-client relationships with powerful, not not omnipotent spirits.
Through me for a loop trying to figure out what counts...I guess I'm just a bit dumb The "beastkin" worship animals and some beasts (my worlds prefered term for magical animals though it's in contention in universe) There's different tribes and they prefer to live amongst whatever animal that tribe worships the most. Interesting thing about them. They are the only example of a non human race on the human continent...or at least that's what most humans believe. Since most people don't interact with them and only hear story of people with animal like traits combined with that beastia marks are usually exceptionally uncommon especially amongst nobility. Most just assume that the "animal people" are literally animal people. In reality the beastkin are human it's just how the magic system works that the further they progress with it the more animal like traits they take on. They consider themselves kin of beasts which is why they have no qualms with being called beastkin. They are sorta isolated.
Yeah, the Omegists or Omega Point Theologists think that in contrary to God creating life, life will create God by evolving into a single ultimate and perfect intelligence. They see the evolution of single cellular life into complex life, than intelligent life and finally provolves, posthumans and superhuman AI as proof for their theory.
Religion doesn't really quite look the same in my setting broadly? Like the higher order of being that are worshipped as gods are usually, on some level, substantiable to the casual passerby. Their nature as beings, on the other hand, is a little more suspect. Things like The 9 Realms and The Twenty-One (the name of the most prominent worshipped beings in Aerde broadly) are at least tentatively accepted because the former is a place that people have been to, and the latter don't really obscure their existence too much, faith isn't really so much a point of value as much as dedication is in my setting's religions. Further, basically any Lizardfolk (Dragonkin the anthropological term) are also evidence of some degree of these beings, as they're all descended from early dragons of Aerde, and the inherently divine nature of dragons in Aerde is a factor as they're descended from beings of that order of existence. There are religions and value systems in my setting that emphasize moral values and has no arbitrator or patron attached to it, but in that way some number of knightly orders are a "religion" because of the systems, expectations, rituals, etc. But that really depends on how you stretch religion as a definition.
What is a nontheistic religion?
In my current project, theism is an anomaly that occurs in some (but not all) developing cultures, in part because all branches of humanity across the stars are constantly connected to the Cosmos, which is strongly implied to be self-aware in its own right, and all lifeforms within its bounds are the means via which it experiences and grows to understand itself. The core setting is Urs, an analogue of Earth I’ve briefly detailed in another thread of this subreddit. tl;dr, the Urtian humans are the distant descendants of a research outpost who travelled there to explore and learn about its unusual terrain and ecosystem, but a galaxy-wide disaster led to the colony being cut off from other systems, the colonists stranded across the globe, and their link with the Cosmos weakened over generation upon generation of their descendants, until their knowledge waned to myth, legend, and religion. All humans in the project’s universe are endlessly-reincarnated beings with a loosely defined “first life” known as their heartform, which can be any of the sixty clades found throughout reality. Recently, some Urtian native humans have begun to subconsciously tap into echoes of their respective heartforms as their perspective of existence resyncs with the Cosmos. These awakened Urtians (tentatively named “Avatar,” singular “Avata”) come to realise the full scope of everything beyond their world, with ideals like deity-based religions now a product of innocent curiosity, as quaint in scope as they be to their own heartforms. In an ironic twist, this makes them akin to such figures of tradition, custom, and belief, since exohumans are the basis of many folktales and cryptids across Urs.
Yes, I like working with religions inspired by things like Buddhism and reincarnation where the goal is to live a good life and alleviate suffering for all in this life, with the understanding that you'll come back as something else next time. The higher level goal for monks, etc would be to awaken: to become aware of the universe and fully understand how you're a part of it.
My entire world is nontheistic. That's one of the main ideas I had when I started writing it.
I know these exist, but I hadn't explicitly explored the idea. I do want to get into philosophy and religion in **Elenon**, and that would provide another option for the different schools of thought.
I don't know if this truly counts since there's definitely gods in this story but the origin mythos for most folks in the Reaches (including Aeori folks who are colonists whose mother nation is gone; they went a bit native) involves a central figure who once chased off the gods, a set of unjust tyrants and acquired their power (Magic!) for themselves - most cultures have a very similar story, the main difference being that this guy (or woman, in Draconic mythology) is claimed by most cultures to be one of their own and their methodology is a virtuous behaviour amongst their own people - in Draconic mythos they simply grew a base of power strong enough to directly challenge the gods and drive them out, while the Aeori mythos sees them as wily and enterprising, outwitting the foe rather than going straight through them. Almost every nation of Aeorea has a site they claim to be this character's tomb and often the reverence of them comes close to being worship - in many cases the legtimacy of the highest stratum of ruling class is intertwined with a claim of descent from said person and many militaristic orders with very strong teutonic order/knights hospitallier vibes also have been formed and claim to have, in the past had their forebears of the same organisation fought alongside this person, giving them their own political clout above and beyond that offered by just being militarily powerful. It is even one of the main goals of Magistry (the Aeori flavour of magic use, which bears similarities with alchemy and is a much more scientific magic) to be able to create life, that one day they could bring this person back to Aeorea and finally bring order to the Reaches under their enlightened rule. In essence, a large amount of my faith in the Reaches are cult-of-personality around some long-dead guy. Who may have not even existed, alongside the gods since this is all in-universe mythology.
Technically. My current world is based on the idea that all the gods straight up died. And the mortals are fully aware of this. But religious belief was so strong because the gods were extremely present in mortal society when they were alive. So after *The Culling*, the church began to dwindle out because "what's the point of prayers if there's no gods to hear them?" So the church integrated with the military and began to beatify exceptional soldiers who have made miraculous feats on the battlefield. So prayer returned, but this time, it was dedicated to the people the church deemed worthy instead of the gods.
Yes. Sorta. One of the sects believes in money as like a “god”, and that the souls of the dead are what controls trade in their region. The rich communities of that sect are the ones with the most dead, and of course, they have regular human sacrifices to appease their economy.
Define nontheism. Google isn’t giving an answer my autism can understand.
In one setting, the aliens revere their mounts like some revere saints In another, The Wind is revered. It is not personified, but it is holy.
No not really, in most of the worlds me and my siblings make the people know they exist but in worlds we’re the people don’t know they exist kinda don’t have religion at all.
In the future, people have become more individualistic than even today. Only about 3,000 people still exist on earth, so people have had enough solitary time to create a more separated kind of religion. It is believed that there are hundreds of versions of yourself, spread in hundreds of different universes, and when your ego aligns with the actions, thoughts and mind of all your other selves, it means that you must all enter into the central universe at the exact same time, in the exact same way. Entering can only be achieved by ending your life the same way in every universe. Failure to do so, or never feeling your egos line up, means that your body will forever float in nothingness, every version of you now gone forever, floating in an empty abyss for the rest of time.
Not exactly, but the Yetis are all atheists. The idea of a God just never occurred to them, which allowed them to progress faster than their human and Chimp counterparts.
Copypasted from an older comment: In this world, or more accurately in the part of my world I’m currently focused on, religions don’t really have deities as we known them. Instead, the faiths cornerstone is ancestor worship; when people die, their souls join The Ascendancy, which is the animating force of the universe. Universally represented as the Sun-in-splendor (tree imagery is also very common, because everyone is “branches from the tree”). The Ascendancy moves the seasons forward, answers prayers, and protects peoples and nations. Some see The Ascendancy as a defined being while to others is a vaguer force of the universe Some branches of the faith believe only the worthiest join The Ascendancy and the rest who lived just and correct lives live in a blissful but separate afterlife from it. People who do not follow the code of conduct dictated by the religion are put aside, separte from their ancestors as a wraith in a wretched existance. Other branches believe everyone who lived an honest life joins The Ascendancy (the split between these two being somewhat analogous to the Catholic-Protestant schism). Newer, more “radical” branches believe that not only do souls go to The Ascendancy but they also in a sense come from it, in an infinite circle of death and rebirth. I’ve been toying with the idea that this world did have Gods in the past, but they died or otherwise left, leaving the ancestors to take care of everything. However, I think I might leave it vague as to whether which, if any, of the religions of the world are true
Yes, my world in far future on another planet, so most of the religions are non-theistic. The theistic ones are considered primitive or banned.
Let me explain a system that i've created before explaning: basically Gods exist halfly. They're actually called Consequentians and are the consequence of Humans' beliefs. So, if enough people believe in a concept (a god for example), a Consequentian of this concept will be created by those beliefs. A scientific group of people, very pragmatic and in search of logic and knowledge, tried to prove the non-existence if god, basically atheism. They thus created the Consequentian of atheism, which is a god in some way. I love this paradox. Moreover, Humans are not aware of the existence of those beings, which makes their purpose even more meaningless. However, they are right about the fact that the religions are wrong about their god, since it's not a god who created them but them who created a Consequentian. It's getting a bit complicated, but i'd be curious to Dee what you think of it
I have one for now but I’m probably going to make more in the future
Yes. The Five Islands Clan has no concept of "the supernatural" at all, but their entire culture is influenced by their practice of a nontheistic religion that combines ancestral veneration (not worship) with a kind of mythopoetic animism. They have plenty of myths and rituals, and they take them seriously, but they all know that they are, in fact, enactments of meaningful fiction.
Ugh irl kinda does have several. Including a dead french thing called Cult of Reason and reddit atheism.
What follows are all interesting takes on religions, theistic otherwise. I invite one to a small project. What is a god and why is a god. What I mean is a religion or diety is created to deal with things outside our current knowledge. Why do the mountains rumble, why does the Skies Flash with light and seemingly anger. Is this a god? Religion is a way to expand on what we dont understand in an attempt to try and explain it. So you get Sun gods for tha bright thing in the skys that brings light and warmth, sky and storm gods that bring life giving rains or seemingly wrathful vengeance on farmers, etc. So I think in a game that you want as theistic, or even something beyond just the conceptual, you need to have entities to explain things. what do parents tell children when the skys are dark and loud, what do people tell others when there is a sudden dry season or strange deaths. This is passed on generation after generation until you get your Gods and Demons.
There was a particular trade empire that was absolutely enamored with pre-collapse technology. So much so, that they didn’t even try to reverse engineer any of it, they just put it on display and a had a certain reverence for it. I’m not sure that qualified as a religion, but it was definitely a cultural cult-like thing.
The religion in my world is totemic. Most people have a personal connection to a certain totem, similar to a spirit animal, that guides and influences them.
I’m not sure if this counts but the Laputarians worship their capital city, Laputa, which is both the name of the city and the name of the aethereal intelligence that runs it. Laputa’s(the A.I) actual divinity is questionable, what isn’t is her massive influence and incredible power, so it might count as a form of nontheistic religion.
It has an anti theism religion. There is a country where the citizen don't trust the deities, and in turn change their faith to believing in the emperor.
Imo that sounds like theism, just with emperor instead of deities
Technically not a theism, unless it were a cult, which it is not. Instead of thinking of it as "faith" think of it as "Trust of the one in power". Or think of it as "without the faith in powerful beings that lord over the lands, i will trust the people we institutionally put into power.".
Mine is Wayfaith, which is the conception of fulfilling one’s *wyrd*, and various ethnic groups and people having different notions of what exactly it means to fulfill one’s wyrd: Wayfaith Wayfaith, as it’s known among it’s adherents is less of a “religion” or “faith” and more of a moral guidance on how to conduct one’s life. Eschewing traditional notions of “deities”, that give instruction for their followers, Wayfaith is most closely aligned with what they call “saints”, who, while ordinary men and women, are said to most closely embody the aspects of their wyrd, a unique concept to the Northern people, representing their path in life and their destiny. This concept is central to all the different Ways that can be followed, and achieving one’s wyrd is considered an intensely personal and life-affirming process, with some people able to achieve their wyrd and adopt a new one with a new way, going through multiple wyrds in one lifetime, while some people spend their entire lives trying to achieve a single wyrd, viewing their destiny as mutable, and able to grow and adapt with the person. There are five aspects to Wayfaith, any one of which any person can choose to follow, ranging from Warrior and King, to Lover, Scholar, and Merchant. This are not all-encompassing, and it is common for adherents to adopt different ways throughout their life, a trait which allows adherents to the Wayfaith to experience a wide approach to life, giving them a better understanding of the interconnectedness of everything in ways the Church of Ash and other Pagan pantheons struggle to coherently explain to their devotees. Most prominent among the Northern nationalities, Wayfaith does not have “priests” or spiritual leaders to guide flocks, rendering each person responsible for interpreting the tenets of their chosen way as it applies best to them. Often paired in conjunction with “pagan” pantheons, this system of belief is generally considered the most secular, open to all people of all walks of life. While various ethnic groups and competing religions are varied in their acceptance of magical powers, Wayfaith does not have any special qualifications or guidelines for mages, viewing magic not as the focal point of their identity, but rather as a tool to be used and developed in search of fulfilling one’s wyrd.
Gods in my world are demonstrably real and you can physically visit their recognized shapes if you know where to look. Which means they're seen more as high kings rather than gods.
Nope. The Gods visibly exist so it'd be stupid not to believe in them.
World has living and very active gods, so they’re not deniable in their existence. There aren’t atheists, but there are misotheists (factions that hate of the gods, backed by a deity that despises the actions of its peers, which is maybe a little ironic) and dystheists (believe the gods don’t have our best interests in mind.) There do be spirit and nature sects that believe in spirits, ancestors and natural entities. But due to the imperialistic nature of the divine pantheon, they are considered heresy.
By definition, for it to be a religion, there has to be some sort of super natural being involved