Guild Wars 2

Im new to rp and I have a hard time with the six gods. The charr are atheists by choice
but to me it seems they acknowledge their existence. So I guess my question is can you rp as an atheist with the other races as well. Thoughts and guidance?

Sylvari are the only race that can come close to RPing that, I think; but it’s difficult to equate atheism in a universe with physical gods to atheism in a universe without (as far as we could tell) physical gods. Of course, if you don’t consider the gods to be gods, but merely very powerful beings (like the Charr do) you could argue that is atheism. But then, what makes a god a god? Gets rather muddy.

That is my quandry. I also fail to see how they can coexist peacefully at all since it seems they would covet worship. To rp one seems like it would be difficult and make my charachter in the eyes of others dillusional. I like the angle you brought up with the charr and will think on it. thanks

I have 2 possible answers:

1) Yes you can RP a character who is completely atheist, who doesn’t believe the Six Gods exist at all, or ever existed. But you’d have have to deal with the fact that a lot of other people would consider them strange, possibly even crazy, for thinking that. (Which isn’t too far off how some people treat atheists in real life so it could be appropriate.)

It might be difficult with the norn, because on occasion the Spirits of the Wild are seen in the world. Similarly there are historical accounts of the Six Gods in the world (and at least one used to be human). But your character wouldn’t be the first, or the last, to deny something that seems like undeniable fact to everyone else. And more than a few times those people have turned out to be right too.

2) Your character could have the same sort of attitude as the charr or the asuran. They don’t doubt that the Six Gods, the Spirits of the Wild etc. exist but they don’t see them as a higher power to be worshipped, just another of Tyria’s myriad life forms and in the asurans case a part of the Eternal Alchemy.

Which I think most people should accept, even if it is some what unusual for some races, because there’s actually a surprising level of religious tolerance in Tyria (especially considering how antagonistic all the races can be on other issues). You never see norn and humans arguing over whether the Gods or the Spirits are real for example. Everyone seems to accept that ALL these things are real, and that some people worship one and other people another and in general they leave them to it.

I also can’t see it coming up that often because there’s relatively little organised religion in Tyria. No one’s going to be pointing out that they never seem to see your character at the temple and questioning where they do go to worship. Religion seems to be more of a private thing with prayer and other forms of worship performed on an “as needed” basis.

One of the great things about RP is that if everyone puts the effort in you can make almost any kind of character you can imagine. (Personality wise at least, you probably can’t work a talking unicorn into Tyria without a lot of rule-bending.) I once knew somone who’s character remained an athiest even after befriending the God of Insanity.

I don’t see any problem at all with playing a human atheist. The Six Gods haven’t shown any evidence of their presence for hundred of years. People have old stories and religious doctrine, but they don’t turn up on street corners anymore. It makes perfect sense to me that some modern, sophisticated city folk (for example) would start to suggest that the stories were all just made up to begin with, and the gods were never really here.

Of course, if your character goes to Orr they might be convinced differently, but there’s still room to deny the gods’ existence (and blame any references on human superstition being exploited or something).

Alternatively, you could take one of my rp characters’ view and decide that you don’t know if the gods were ever real or not, but if they were real they abandoned humanity and left them to deal with the mess they’re in now alone, so screw ’em!

You could role play as a Slyvari who seem to have developed a form of “Weak” Agnosticism. I dont really think the Charr would be a good fit as they are more Maltheist than Atheist. Humans,Norns and Asura may be suited for the role as the fact of knowing that the six exist may be unknown to them. Regardless of that I dont see why you would want to RP as an Atheist, because the God’s including Koda do exist.

Yeah, I think you could. While there’s evidence that the gods objectively exist, whether they’re worthy of worship would still be very much a matter of individual choice.

To give a more concrete example of this: Imagine you meet someone who worships polar bears. You know polar bears objectively exist, but you don’t attach any religious significance to them. You can thus be an atheist without denying that bears are real, even though someone else sees them as gods. Just because something exists doesn’t automatically make it a deity.

Likewise, there’s ample evidence of the existence of the Six, but your character could see them as powerful beings from olden days who aren’t really around much anymore, but not worship them or consider them legitimate gods.

There is an alternate possibility.

Considering that multiple parts of lore (how humans came to Tyria, a ‘certain’ Asura storyline) allow for time/dimensional transit; is it impossible to be a temporally or dimensionally shifted person? A human [for instance] from a dimension closer to ours would not necessarily know of – or believe in – the Six.

I think it’s totally reasonable to RP a human atheist. We, as players, know the gods exist, but any human character would only have ‘faith’ to go on as they (the human gods) have been absent for well over a human’s life span.

On the other hand there’s really no reason to disbelieve they exist. Things such as the presence of magic, and the norn’s ability to were-form certainly provide compelling evidence of some higher power.

Not believing in the gods would be like not believing in George Washington. As Tarn said, there really is no reason to disbelieve they exist. Are there people now who don’t believe he existed? Sure but not many. And anyone else is just going to look at them like they have tin foil under that hat so you can’t read their thoughts.

Embolism.8106:

Sylvari are the only race that can come close to RPing that, I think; but it’s difficult to equate atheism in a universe with physical gods to atheism in a universe without (as far as we could tell) physical gods. Of course, if you don’t consider the gods to be gods, but merely very powerful beings (like the Charr do) you could argue that is atheism. But then, what makes a god a god? Gets rather muddy.

I can’t remember the name, but there is actually an NPC sylvari (in the Grove, I believe) that asks a question slanted towards this. My character said something along the lines of: “That’s a deep question,” and walks away. The sylvari would be a good race to choose for an atheist role, or possibly a human who has studied the sylvari’s ways.

I have to say, though, that not believing in the gods/spirits/alchemy would create a separatist, or rogue, view of your character. That would potentially put perception on your character as an ally of the dragons (by other characters, not necessarily by ingame narrative), which is never a good thing when you are supposed to be the hero that stops them.

If you define “gods” as omnipotent, omniscent entities worthy of your worship and prayers, then there are quite a lot of things that could have made your character become an “atheist”.

If you play a Charr, you basically are an atheist. Back in the days of GW1 the Charr had gods and were basically ruled by a priest caste (the flame legion). Around the time of “Eye of the North” the Charr began to fight what had become a sort of theocratic opression and nowadays the only authority they respect “is the clentched first of their legion. With engines of destruction we killed our gods.” (From the Charr intro cinematic). They call them “gods”, but they were “false gods” or “very old and powerful beings” that could be killed anyway. When Charr talk about the 6 gods the humans pray to, they will likely aknowledge their existence as “ancient, very powerful beings”, but not as “all-powerfull, all-knowing entities that are worthy of worship”.

I’m not sure if the concept of the Eternal Alchemy has room for “gods” that are all-powerful. They would likely view the 6 gods as entities that are very powerful, but still are part of the Eternal Alchemy and are therefore bound by its “laws/principles”. My Asuran Necromancer would LOVE to meet one of the 6 human gods – there are about a tousand lab tests he would like to do with them. Worshipping is not on the list though.

The Norn have the Spirits of the wild. They are visible in the world so there is no denying their existence. They do have power and they show it by actively using it to help players (and the Norn in general throughout the backstory). But spirits can also die (Owl Spirit was killed by Jormag). The closest thing to an “atheist Norn” that is still within believable roleplay would be a Norn that questions what kind of spirit actually “deserves” the status of “Spirit of the wild”. In the Norn starting area there is this woman who thinks that Hare deserves to be reverred as a Spirit of the wild and gives you her reasons for it. The Sons of Svanir think Jormag is a Spirit of the wild! So if you want to roleplay something outside the “standard Norn believe” system, I think you could either reverred something as Spirit of the Wild that is not widely considered as one (join the followers of Hare for example) or be more extreme and openly doubt the status as Spirit of the Wild for one of the “big 4” for some reason.
With regards to the human gods I think the typical Norn might even doubt their existence. The spirits of the wild are visible/active part of the Norn life, whereas the human gods are silent. Maybe they died, just like Owl did?

I have no clue what Sylvari believe or think.

So, a human atheist. I think it might be possible without breaking the boundaries of the lore. The gods are silent so there is no visible proof. Just because people believed in the gods for generations does not mean their belief is right. But even if it was right and the entities that are called gods actually do/did exist, they might not be “gods” in the sense of “all-knowing & all-powerful beings”, but “only” a lot more powerful that the average human. If you go back in history of Tyria you find the Mursaat, a race of very powerful spellcasters that were worshipped as gods by the White Mantle.
So for a human character you have a lot of options to play different more or less “ahteistic”. You character be asking one or more of these questions:
Do we have any factual evidence that the gods do exist or is it all just stories? If the gods did exists, might they “just” be really powerful beings that we call gods because we are tiny compared to them? If so, why do we worship the 6 gods but label the Mursaat as false gods though the tales of their power are amazing as well. And if you say the reason we worship the 6 gods and not the Mursaat is because the 6 gods help Tyria… where are they now, and are they still “worthy” of being called gods if they stopped helping us?"

Maybe some of this rambling is actually useful for you. Have fun roleplaying.

The asura believe that the Six are very, very important parts of the Eternal Alchemy, i.e. huge, important cogs in the workings of the machine of the universe. Depending on your interpretation that may or may not qualify them as “gods” from an asuran perspective. They certainly don’t think worshipping them is part of the agenda however.

The norn do not doubt the existence of the Six in general, but they do not consider them “gods” in the same way they don’t consider the Spirits of the Wild as “gods”: to them the Six are spirits just like the ones they revere, except they represent ideas (Balthazar would be Spirit of War, Genth would be Spirit of Death, etc.) instead of animals.

The Sylvari are probably the closest to real world atheists. They hear the humans speak of gods, but are skeptical as they have not seen any evidence of godly activity. The only difference from real world atheists I could see is that the Sylvari are genuinely open to the concept of gods, while real world atheists tend to be strongly against any form of theism. Technically the Sylvari aren’t agnostic as they implies a belief in a higher power that can never be proven to exist.

I doubt you would find many humans that are truly atheist, although many humans are starting to believe that the Six are no longer worthy of worship as they’re no longer actively helping humanity. In this sense their belief bears some similarities to the Charr.

Hypergrip.9673:

I’m not sure if the concept of the Eternal Alchemy has room for “gods” that are all-powerful. They would likely view the 6 gods as entities that are very powerful, but still are part of the Eternal Alchemy and are therefore bound by its “laws/principles”. My Asuran Necromancer would LOVE to meet one of the 6 human gods – there are about a tousand lab tests he would like to do with them. Worshipping is not on the list though.

I wonder why not, my asuran elementalist is very interested on how do the 6 react to the human worship. Even though he doesn’t believe they’re worth worshiping. He record the energy readings of a human god while receiving worship.

Tyria may not even have a concept of a god that is all-powerful, all-knowing. The Tyrian gods seem more akin to polytheistic cultures of the past like greek, roman and norse that whole pantheons vying for power. really, any culture with a pantheon of multiple gods probably won’t have a concept of them being all powerful.

Dustfinger.9510:

Really, any culture with a pantheon of multiple gods probably won’t have a concept of them being all powerful.

I agree! And this is why it’s important to distinguish between God (single, all-powerful, capital G) and god (one of many, selective powers, lower case g) when you’re talking about fantasy, or in fact real world religion too. They’re quite different concepts.

Ah, true. i usually use a capitol “G” but didn’t this time. That can lead to alot of confusion.

The Kodan have Koda, which they seem to believe is omnipotent and omniscient. Of course, whether Koda actually exists is up for debate given there’s no physical evidence of his existence (with the possible exception of the Voice’s rage): all things considered Koda is quite similar conceptually to the Abrahamic God.

Interesting;

Long ago, Koda, the Ancient One, Founder of the Earth, Keeper of the Sky, formed the world. In the beginning, the spirits of the world were wild and untamed. In time, many took physical form: spirits of stone, spirits of water, spirits of wind, spirits of soil, spirits of plants and birds and creeping things. All things with form have spirits… as do many formless things. But one day the bear stood up and looked around him and saw that the spirits of the world were restless and chaotic. He could not understand the endless cycles of creation and destruction. And so bear was the first creature to speak, and with his first words he asked Koda, “Why is this so?” And Koda was pleased and made this offer to the bear: “If you would watch and learn, then watch and learn, and you shall protect and guide the spirits of this world.” And those who praised Koda and accepted this offer became the kodan. And those who were not ready and did not wish to change remained as bears. – The Wisdom and Power of the Kodan