In that universe, considering stuff like the gods and goddesses from ancient mythology’s exist. It makes you wonder if there would be a lot of Greco Roman influence among people from America due to the fact that the closest thing America has to such a ancient culture is the fact that our founding fathers were heavily inspired from the Roman republic and Athenian democracy. I mean, go to Washington DC and you can tell from the architecture that they were huge fans of stuff like that. Not to mention that I think that the Statue of Liberty is supposed to be partially inspired off of Athena/Juno from Greco Roman mythology, as well as stuff like the colossus of Rhodes from the ancient world.

Well, the gods were believed myth by everyone, up until the realms re-aligned with earth in 2001. That's when the fact that the Kemetic, Norse, and Hellenic pantheon were real was finally understood, and led to a lot of turmoil those first few years as new borders for realms were sorted out and things were adjusted. Nathan comes from the 2020s, where things are still being learned, but an uneasy peace has developed in ways between the three realms, each other, and the scientific realm.

How would this have affected the pre-existing belief systems such as Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, shintoism, and Judaism

Depends on the religion. The Abrahamic religions certainly weren't happy (especially since Israel fell inside the boundaries of the Kemetic realm), and there's a lot of turmoil about that.

That said, that's not a primary focus of the setting, so beyond "They don't like it and view people who get Marks as blasphemers and apostates", its not fully mapped.

Interesting. I ask because I actually once heard an interesting take on something similar to this once in a thought experiment someone I know once mentioned that they thought about. Considering that after having read the Iliad and the odyssey that the Greek gods and goddesses could be surprised that implies they were not omnipotent, and this person I know actually made an interesting claim that if a God in mythology isn’t omnipotent, then they aren’t truly a god just a really powerful person. Maybe this is because of modern western connotations of the concept of a deity, but I always had thought that a true deity would be omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent and theoretically if it were confirmed that the Greek and Roman gods or many of the deities of Egyptian and Nordic mythology existed in real life, that actually wouldn’t change all that much with other religions because you could make that same argument about them. Or at least you could with the Greek and Roman gods. Part of the reason I like to think about it is because at one point in online classes in school I had to read all of the Iliad and the odyssey, and I was absolutely bored to tears so I suppose partially this was a little bit of philosophical and mental revenge on my part after having been subjected to that reading. For an epic story, those two books were surprisingly boring, having to go through all of that on the page day after day. I think it’s probably because the way that ancient Greek translates on the page doesn’t really make for exciting reading for an English speaker plus the fact that I actually have found out since then that those stories were meant to have been sung not read

The gods of the Hellenic, Norse, and Kemetic pantheons were absolutely not all powerful, all knowing, or omnipresent. While I can't think of many Hellenic examples (maybe Metis?), in both the Norse and Kemetic mythos, gods could even be killed.

The idea of what constitutes a divine being or God, versus simply a powerful entity, has been debated philosophically for millenia. From a narrative perspective, I find an omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient deity rather boring. Such a being also gets into sticky problems regarding theodicy. While the typical answer to that problem is theistic dualism, that isn't in my personal opinion sufficient to solve theodicy in most cases. In any event, since I'm writing the stories for my version of "Three Pantheons" and for "Wings and Prayers", I get to say what the rules are, and I'm unlikely to write something I find boring.

However, in Three Pantheons, the problem your argument faces is that while the various deities are geographically constrained in where they can exercise their powers ("magic"), inside those areas, they are absolutely proven to be extant and have the powers to do things that are miraculous, such as transforming people into other species, regenerating limbs, and other feats of power. This gives them an inherent leg-up on any religion that has an 'absent' deity, at least in the narrative.

Furthermore, monotheistic religions in the real world already often view adherents to other religions as a challenge to their own beliefs; this happens even when they nominally worship the same entity. (All three Abrahamic religions ultimately are based in the same tradition and entity, and there's been untold strife between them over the last 1500 years.) Even inside the same tradition you can have problems; see the Shi'ite/Sunni divide, or the feuds between Catholicism and the various Protestant denominations.

I don't think it's at all unreasonable that such a 'real' divine entity or pantheon would be viewed as a threat by religions that explicitly deny, in their belief system, the existence of other divine entities, and that this would cause tensions to boil over in some areas.

As for the books, most ancient stories (including many holy texts like the Torah and Bible) were originally oral traditions, passed down from person to person as a story or a song, yes. Widespread literacy was rare until comparatively recently, so reading and writing was not available to most. Songs were particularly common, as the music serves as a mnemonic device in and of itself. (For practical proof of this, compare the number of books you can recite from memory vs. the number of songs you know by heart.) Even if not sung, a story like that would not be read off as rote recital, but done in a dramatic, theatrical fashion. It's not surprising they lose something in translation.

I also asked Nathan on his input about your arguments about what constitutes a deific entity. His response, below, was considerably shorter than mine was.

"Go tell Zeus, or any of the other deities, they're not a real god. Let me know how that works out for you."

(Also, in the future, please use paragraphs to split up your walls of text; I would've gotten this comment to you a few days ago if your post was easier to read.)

Part of the reason I felt this way was as I had said it was kind of a reaction to the fact that me reading the Iliad and the odyssey a few years ago kind of became a chore for me so I felt that I needed some payback so to speak when I was thinking of these arguments. Let’s just say being forced to read a classic story for school kind of hurts the enjoyment of it, especially when that story is very long and occasionally hard to understand.

Sorry about the lack of paragraph structure. I guess I just hadn’t thought of that. I’m just used to a very different sort of message Sending I usually just send text messages to people or I make short comments on things so sometimes when I have a lot to say, I can just forget sometimes to do paragraphs.

I’m not sure if I remember this from somewhere or if I’m thinking of something original to myself without realizing it, but I had always thought an interesting way of handling a setting with both modern and mythological beliefs would be something like the idea that the gods and goddesses might in certain circumstances Not force you to worship them or at least they would allow for different interpretations for respect to them.

I think in one story, I once thought of when I was really bored I came up with the idea that in some kind of story where someone found out the ancient Egyptian gods and goddesses were real in that they were very powerful beings that were essentially living forces of nature, but with one or two exceptions they would not necessarily force you to worship them. In fact, they even would be tolerant towards people who worship other religions, such as Christianity, Buddhism, etc.

Perhaps that has more to do with my personal biases combined with an interest I have with ancient Egypt, but I always thought that was an interesting way to go about it was The idea of being that they wouldn’t be opposed to you worshiping them, but they wouldn’t force you to do it unless they were evil such as some of the deities like set and that other one that I cannot voice type here for the life of me, but who I think was a snake. I suppose Buddhism is a little less complicated in incorporating into something like that for the reason that it’s rather nontheistic.

Can’t say I’ve had much of an interest in Greco Roman mythology and certainly not Norse mythology over the ancient Egyptian mythology as well as ancient Egypt in general is something I found interesting

There is a notable rule in the Hellenic myths: The Gods decrees are final. Even to themselves. They cannot take back a gift given, or rescind a curse. They may only try to counteract it by issuing a seperate decree. For example, Cassandra's gift of prophecy could not be taken back once given, but it was possible to add a curse that her predictions would never be believed. Nor could Poseidon simply reclaim the bull he granted to Minos, even though Minos disobeyed the instructions regarding what to do with the bull. He had to find an alternative and more creative way to punish Minos. And the gods did love their creative punishments - perhaps simply killing is too uninteresting.

The Greek gods were kind of assholes. Petty, argumentative, jealous, vindictive, selfish. Very human. But they were bound by their word.

That's why you should never doubt their divinity. :P Oops, you just said Dionysus isn't a god?

have fun being a dolphin.

Somehow I imagine that even if the combined forces of every pantheon were to personally turn up and explain that they know divinity and they've never met this God person, the population of Abrahamic believers would just try to believe even harder. But a meme comes to mind, about characters from the Marvel universe.

Tony Stark: Hangs out with a God. Is still an atheist.
Captain America: Has met multiple Gods. Still a Christian.

The monotheists would simply decide that these new pantheons aren't really gods. They are just really powerful aliens or something like that. And while this might really, really annoy the various gods to be insulted on a regular basis, they aren't going to start a turf war by destroying cities over it. Though I am sure the monotheists would go suddenly very quiet on the matter any time they thought a god might be paying too close attention, for much the same reason one might stop talking politics when the dictator's secret police are around: No need to poke the bear.

Especially when a god can easily make you into a bear. :P