Fellow atheists, how do you handle gods and religions in your stories?

[mcarrowolga]

I sometimes include mystical creatures, gods, and religions in my fantasy stories but usually it goes like this:

No gods, no religions exist:

Gifts of wandering ice | Tapas

or

Religions exist but gods don't:

Cold Obsidian | Tapas

What about you?
Share your examples.

[indagold]

I imagine gods like politicians: they get elected and are virtually like mortals just with immense power and immortality. It's sorta the main theme of the comic, anyone can become a god and how horrifying it is.

All Broken Gods | Tapas

[milejdyvan]

I just try to handle religion in a way where it comes off as true to the real world, but not necessarily the same either (since it's a fictional religion). Basically a make-believe religion that is similar to what I know of religion. And yes, as an atheist, those parts of the story are pretty hard to write but even when it comes to religious characters, I try to base their views from real life examples.

Individuality | Tapas

[CarltonIsaac]

It is quite simple really.

As a non-believer, any of the hundreds of faith based beliefs of the real world is easy to understand objectively, just as much as any work of fantasy fiction and science fiction.

And then conjure up some of that in the fictional world the same way as any other element of story writing.

[domisotto]

I have lots of different settings.

One has gods that are basically an alien civilization that left the world, because it was incompatible with the humans, prompting diseases among the population. Some developed immunities, so they can still visit gods if they pass through abandoned portals.

I have a Hindu-Hellenistic world which has full matriarchy, and women of strong faith can carry semi-divine children, but it is never known in advance how long it takes for powers to manifest, and what kind of a being would emerge.

In my vaguely medieval world, the characters worship vague notion of Light Lifegiving.

Normally, I write spiritual characters, because it adds interesting lore to the worlds and motivations, because I am inclined to fantasy, and religion permeating every decision in life and forming basis of a lot of motivations for actions is a forgotten thing in the modern Western mindset, so it comes across as fantasy like and unusual

[ScarletDemon]

For me, I am an atheist that grew up in a very worldly family that introduced me to all sorts of religions, but was also raised religious. As for me, I handle gods/religion in my stories as, the gods and beings exist, but they didn't mean for the religion to happen. I also like to have all religions merged together in a business like sense where all deities of like themes work together, like branch managers where the theme they have is the major business.
In my biggest story, The Wizard of Wall Street, the MC's love interest is the son of the archdemon Leviathan, whom I have as a genderfluid deity/emperor of an extra-planar ocean that is connected to all the other oceans in the world. But I also have all of the love deities of all of the world amassed into a group under a singular name.
As to flesh out the "business" idea, I also have it that all cultural religions exist, I leave none out. And have all deities created by a primordial entity of my own creation whom because of what they do have been given the name "God/Satan" or something else as a title.
As for the best ways to handle it I'd say: be inclusive, there's a lot of cultures out there you can pick deities from to make characters of, be respectful, don't overthink about if you're writing the character well enough, it's your interpretation of the deity and don't let your writing suffer because you don't know how something is...do your research.
Sorry for being longwinded, so here's my link:

The Wizard of Wall Street | Tapas

[Aims]

In my works both gods and religions exist, but I literally just put some basic science in the whole thing to explain stuff like "if god exist than why don't they do something?", "Why do some of these religions sound the same?", "where did god came from?" and "why are there so many gods?"

Little Sparks | Tapas

On the other side | Tapas

[therosesword]

I handle them with respect. My beliefs are, as far as I'm concerned, vastly different from the people who read my work. It doesn't matter if I believe pig's feet is the food of the devil, if the people I write about love it I portray it that way.

I can wax eloquent on the colors I like and I can vilify them equally as well if my characters hate them.

I look through the eyes of my characters.

Write hard, write true.

[PlsDelMe]

I'm agnostic (but leaning atheist) and it's really easy, they're just characters with superpowers, like y'know Thor from Marvel.

[Inspector_Spinda]

Mine takes place in the mostly real world. It has vampires, but otherwise real. My mc is Christian although that's not a huge part of the story, it just makes sense for this background. Even if you don't believe in got, it is not super difficult to tap into the mentality of a religious person since religion, especially Christianity is so prevalent in our societies. I don't think I'll have many problems writing a religious character unless they've very devoted or the story is very focused on religion. Then I may have to do extra research.

Plastic Teeth | Tapas

[CttMaurice]

I haven't properly incorporated it into my world, not because I don't want to but mainly because I have no clue how to go about it. The only example I have that's somewhat applicable as a religion is "earth mother" or Gaia. The only practices that are in the story are the "sanctuary" where people go to get healing and temporary homes if they are in need. It also has a built-in orphanage that takes in anyone of any race and beliefs. There they teach them how to heal and be generally good people... now that I think about it that may be a good building block for it to expand lol.

[arbiterswake]

The way religion and the construct of God is handled in Arbiter's Wake is a means by which religion manipulates and controls the masses.

"Devout" humans that have been chosen have access to "divine" magical abilities bestowed upon them by what they precieve as God when in reality that's not the case.

Wood elves which use druid or nature magic believe in more spiritual constructs in the story.

High elves believe in ancestral constructs.

And Dragons fall into a Matriarchal construct.

Those are pretty much the only religious or power structure concepts I have.

[nostalgicroxas]

I add or include gods or mystical beings as needed but generally they don't follow the realm of simple Christian God rules. I've also got some stories where it's more like the "gods" exist off of your belief in them - no belief, less godly powers or such. But it's usually such a mild and minimal thing. The biggest thing I struggle with is if a story doesn't have a higher power called "god" so they can't say things like "Oh my god" or "godspeed" and I need to subsitute them for something that sounds just as believable and extreme of an exclamation without being .... weird.
Final Fantasy 14 has an interesting way of it of doing "By the Twelve" for their "Oh my God" and "wicked white" in another version of their same world. It's little things like that that shouldn't sound out of place.

[vothnthorvaldson]

With difficulties
I stupidly went for a main plot with a few direct interventions of gods and I'm having issues to make them realistic in the mind of a believer, because I have no idea what is the mind of a believer. So I'm just going for making them believable enough for the plot to work and that's all.

I ended up with having them be more like mentors, and their nature of divinities is only apparent because my characters consider them as gods (with not much more precision).
I needed to incarnate one in my second chapter and that was really, really complicated. I went pretty basic, I THINK it works although it is not at all what I was hoping I would evoke (but what do I know? I'm desperately non-spiritual).
https://tapas.io/episode/1694652

[surenlicious]

I'd like to treat it like a philosophy. A leftover by the progenitors that started the way of living. No need to worship them for it, but improve on it. Be better. Make sure the world and society is constantly moving forward and onward away from what was the prototype. If it doesn't work, throw it away and start again from scratch. Keep looking for what works for you.

Jade Kingdoms | Tapas

[UrMom]

I have a weird relationship with religion. My mom grew up in a legit Christian cult that really messed her up, and I admit that I can get rather cynical of theism given it's history, and my experience with people in that group. Although overall I think every religion is valid, including the now niche ones that people don't think exist like followers of Thor (people who carry the hammer) and such, and ones that probably no longer exist like belief in the Greek gods.

That being said I don't have religion in my current comic, one of my characters is totally atheist, while the other is mildly agnostic. There is a slight "spirituality" in the form of self-care, and how things work out in the end based on the character's change in perspective and such, but I don't have an examples yet since that won't be till later on in the story.

I have another story I want to do in the future which I've been building on since high school, it centers around a god ignorant to mortals and how they work, then becoming vengeful after learning what this group of mortals has been doing to it (the god is sexless and genderless.) has been bad. The way religion is handled is like how an observer sees it, while there is an overall mythology in the story there are several religions in this world, none of them being portrayed as anymore right or wrong than the other. The overall mythology is pretty much like "yeah, the god(s)/deities these people believe in could be real." because there are several worlds/planets , and several gods with many different abilities in that universe.

It's interesting because while the main character is a god, the secondary MC is an atheist who doesn't believe it till he sees everything for himself, but even after that he never practices anything. His belief is more of an acceptance than full on conversion.
(Can't list any examples of this either since it's not a physical comic/story yet.)

[jcmraz]

Depends on the world. You can create a world with a god even if you don't believe in any yourself. The god just becomes a fact of the world. Or you could just treat the religions as religions and not really mention reality of a god. It's up to the world and story you're designing

[KGBrightwell]

I like to make sure that I am not making Christianity the generic default. I don't always mention a character's religion or lack thereof, but typically it comes into play if only in a minor way.

[pilot-obvious]

Religion isn't really something that comes up in my story frequently, but I do acknowledge that it exists in my timeline. I have one character in particular that was born and raised Catholic, but the only reason it will come up is because they start questioning their faith due to their (lack of) moral values. I don't want to paint it in a positive or negative light. I simply want it to just exist.

I'm really impressed by the individuals who go so in depth with their world building and can build or incorporate religion (or really anything!) into their story with such believability. It's super cool!

[ButterflyEmpress]

There’s gods and heaven in my story, but no real religion behind them nor are they based on any mythology. They are essentially immortal humans with supernatural powers and heaven is the place they live and originate from. Living creatures created by the universe can’t recognize them as gods. Only life that’s born in heaven or directly created by the gods can recognize them.

Love Me, Deity | Tapas