Grettir wrote:
First off, Lyrax, I don’t want to convert you to my view; I am just having a conversation, with hopefully something arsing from it that can be used to develop Stahl. I hope that is abundantly clear.
Likewise. Glad that's been said.
Grettir wrote:
Stahlnish: "Gods do not exist."
Oustenreicher: "Prove it to me."
Stahlnish: "I don’t need to proove anything. You claim that gods exist, you proove it."
Oustenreicher: "I don’t claim gods exist. I say they may exist, or they may not exist; I cannot know this. You claim to know the answer to this for sure; you seem to have some source of knowledge I lack. So please tell me, how can you know that the gods don’t exist?"
As an aside, this sounds much more like a 19th century conversation than a 15th century one, but that's Not My Point.
The above is not at all how this needs to play out. Those who follow Stahlnish atheism don't assert that there are no gods. They don't need to. If anyone brings up even the words 'god' or 'magic' in decent conversation, they can simply be horrified and avert their eyes or change the subject. It's taboo.
Now remember, this isn't something that they really believe. This is something that they've invented to keep the fanatics out. Or rather, it's something the king has invented. Anyone who mentions supernatural things to the king, perhaps they get summarily executed or something. Or he just glares at them and thinks of less lethal, more enjoyable things to do. The point is that the nobles all have to deny the existence of magic or gods, at least while they're in Stahl.
Note that they don't have to assert the non-existence of these things, they have to deny their existence. Humans can do this quite easily, since, rather than involving action and thought, it requires non-action and non-thought. All arguments regarding the matter are null and void, since magic doesn't exist. At least, not in Stahl.
It's like this: If you've got a dragon on top of the palace, not doing anything or killing anyone but just sitting there, and a king underneath who says he doesn't believe in dragons and he'll kill you if you keep talking about them, then you'll shut up about it. Most likely. Deviants, under that system, are quickly found and taken care of. If it can work for an elephant in the room, or the dragon on the roof, it can work for religion and gods.
Grettir wrote:
They certainly would; they believed in far stranger things than the duck-billed platypus. But if I apply your notion of complete atheism to Stahl and the hef, I think that one could surmise that the Stahlnish, denying the existence of magic, would simply claim all those strange creatures to be completely natural.
It's also very natural for humans, upon meeting something new, to name it after something they already know. Take the bison, for example, which is also called a buffalo. It's big and shaggy, it has horns and makes loud noises. Call it a buffalo.
If something comes after you in the dark with bloody claws and slavering jaws, you'd be a rare individual if you stopped to contemplate it's mating habits. You'll kill/hide from/run away from/get slaughtered by it first and ponder it later. Or, not so much in the lattermost case. But if you kill it, and there's not a lot left? Will you make up a name? Call it after something mythical? Or take the closest fit from the world you know?
So the way to decide whether this is: is this something that's always been around a lot? Or was this a new thing? A unique occurrence? In this particular case, all reports of hef had previously come from unreliable sources, like the Savaxen and the Celts. So, it was something in myth, not something in a bestiary, and therefore, may not be something you'd want to report to your decidedly atheistic superiors. This particular soldier decided it should be a bear, just to be safe.
Oh, and, uhhh, no pun intended on that 'only foot' phrase?