Prometheus by Goethe / Fallen Angel by Alexandre Cabanel / St Peter Weeping before the Virgin by Guercino / Angels Weeping over the Dead Christ by Guercino / Niobe's children are killed by Apollo and Diana by Pierre-Charles Jombert / Prometheus Brings Fire to Mankind by Heinrich Füger
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As Bishop, I was very close even to those who do not believe in God. I formed the idea that they often combat not God, but the mistaken idea they have of God.
Pope John Paul I, in a General Audience on September 6th, 1978
don’t ask me if I believe in god, ask me if I agree with the dude and the answer becomes clearer. Belief is immoral when the god to worship only watches through miracles. Found car keys equal to a starved slave. A lucky $20 bill to the child pleading under suffocating rubble. What makes prayer worthy then? I cannot pray to a god who punishes those for the actions he has planted within them nor a god who points blame to a devil he himself allows to reign free across the rat race that is our Earth. Call me childish for believing what isn’t humane is not for me. Call me prideful for refusing to place my bets to a god that cannot be explained but demands to be heard. A god who disconnects himself so much further that all he rations are left in the hands of men made shameless and rich in His excuse. God gives them money and children to feed on yet god remains pure from the stains we’re left to clean?
In DnD settings such as Faerûn and more recently in the Cosmere, where the existence of gods or god-like beings has been proven beyond the shadow of a doubt, having an atheist character makes little to no sense. Why would you deny the existence of gods when there's people who can literally channel divine power to heal, harm or even resurrect others, you can talk to it and you refuse it's existence? Bit crazy.
Now there's a somewhat roundabout way in which you can justify the existance of atheism, a lot of the time in these worlds gods can be fought, replaced and killed; there are god corpses in the Astral Plane and Adonalsium and its Shards have been frequently shattered, entrapped and modified. An atheist character could argue that, since none of them have proven themselves to be trully omnipotent, none of them are trully godly and are just extremely powerful, but ultimately mortal, beings.
I would like to propose, however, an alterntive. A character that not only recognizes the divinity of their gods, but who also detests them for it. We're taking off from the idea that gods exist and, while not omnipotent, they are divine and beyond human reach, that they have stablished followings and that someone, for some reason, may hate them for any or all of these characteristics. What are their motivations? They could be anything really, a real life example is the backlash against the church during the French revolution and the rise of the Cult of Reason; while not misotheist, a fantasy Robespierre could see the very existence of the gods as inherently monarchic and oppressive decide to take no gods, no kings to it's logical extreme. Whether they are truly divine or just very powerful in your particular world would dictate the degree to which this misotheist project succeeds.
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"Do you REALLY hate organized religion or do you just hate American Christianity uwu"
I think all forms of indoctrination into antiscientific beliefs (For serious purposes not like fucking Santa Claus don't be disingenuous) should be considered child abuse along with teaching your kids racism, sexism, queerphobia, classism, or ableism. (Probably a few other big -isms to count as abusive to teach too, I just don't want to list every single genre of violent prejudice.) So yeah, I hate organized religion due to the fact that it culturally normalizes easing your kids into it. If there was an organized religion that culturally normalized pushing your kids away from believing it so they'd only follow with strong evidence of it being good for them with NO grooming or proselytizing needed, you'd give me reason for an exception. I would still hate the broad concept due to how it's been used.
Spoilers for Honkai: Star Rail "Penacony" arc below the cut
The Aventurine-Sunday conflict scene is so wildly misleading for what happens moving forward. Aventurine is portrayed as this jaded (pun intended) victim of circumstance who questions why the gods allow terrible things to happen and how he can be considered to be blessed with luck when his entire tribe and family were exterminated, while Sunday is portrayed as a rigidly virtuous religious zealot who wants to impose his extremely dogmatic Path on to everyone and harshly punish those he views as sinners.
But then later Aventurine is like "Actually I just have to accept what happened to me and hope it makes sense someday, and also I just have to continue to endure constant misery so that I can make my family proud who told me to have faith and be good" and Sunday is like "I Will Kill the Gods With My Own Hands and Build a Paradise for Humanity with Their Remains" like okay?????
Aventurine is built up as this person who defies destiny but then just ends up completely accepting his destiny, meanwhile Sunday actually tries to change the course of the universe and everyone else is like NO, things can NOT be better, suffering and capitalism are Inevitable and how Dare you suggest otherwise, you deranged maniac
We're encouraged to think of Aventurine's position with the IPC as sort of a status condition, a semi-convenient vehicle that belies his true personal ambitions. In contrast, when we first meet Sunday, he IS the Family for all intents and purposes, and we assume that he is the primary defender of Penacony's status quo, including all the capitalism, commercialism, and exploitation. Aventurine is framed as heroically investigating the murders and trying to give voice to the voiceless, while Sunday is framed as an oppressor who abuses his power for his own petty satisfaction.
But when everything shakes out, that's not how it is at all. In the end, everything Aventurine did for the greater good was meaningless, because the murders weren't really murders, and they likely would have come to light through Gallagher's interventions regardless of Aventurine's actions. Sure, he disrupts the status quo of Penacony, a bit, to make the Family look bad, but any noise he made completely pales in comparison to what Sunday ends up doing anyway. So the only thing he accomplishes that actually ends up mattering is sneaking the three cornerstones into Penacony, allowing the IPC to gain a foothold, specifically via his two colleagues, who, unlike him, are never framed as anything but essentially loyal to the IPC and its imperialism. Even if you hold that Sunday is evil and that what he wants must be stopped (which I obviously don't, but that's a discussion for another time), and that Aventurine's actions may have indirectly created difficulty for Sunday in that regard, Aventurine cannot be credited for helping to prevent it because he did not know that it was going to happen.
Meanwhile, Sunday is framed as cruelly torturing Aventurine, but how did that turn out? Sure, it was painful, but when you look at what actually happened, the Harmony basically gave Aventurine therapy, allowing him to reconcile with his inner child and future self, resolve his internal conflict and resentment, and face the uncertainty of the future with bravery. And can we really blame Sunday for hating Aventurine? First of all he's just lost his sister, but moreover, from Sunday's perspective, Aventurine is just another oppressor from the IPC trying to steal his planet—which he in fact is, it's just that we're encouraged to think of this as sort of a lesser/necessary evil because obviously Sunday and the Family suck.
But Sunday doesn't represent the Family or the status quo. He doesn't want things in Penacony to continue as they are, with Dreamchasers' fantasies being exploited for profit and stowaways selling body parts for a chance at an okay existence. There's no way to say it without sounding a bit ridiculous because of how cynical we've all become at the idea of utopia but—truly, all Sunday wants is for everyone to be happy forever. And he's perfectly fine shaking things up or breaking ties to make that happen, breaking the Oak Family off from the other Families, being willing to throw his foster father under the bus at the first sign of disagreement if it means protecting his sister, not even being loyal to the Aeons from whom he draws his power. Sunday's loyalty is to himself and humanity alone.
I feel confused and, frankly, a little bit lied to. I still like both characters and think that their portrayals are complex and nuanced; but it's more so the way that the narrative contorts around them in order to frame Aventurine as a hero and Sunday as a villain that annoys me. You can tell me that this is so all you want, but I have my own eyes and brain and this is not the conclusion that I would draw.
