Sliding Scale of Divine Intervention

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Otherwise known as "When a character yells Smite Me, O Mighty Smiter!!, the chance that the Mighty Smiter will actually oblige."

On a scale of 1 to n:

0: Gods Don't Really Exist.

Religion exists but no one is really receiving the prayers. At best, the gods are myth and superstition; if the author is charitable enough toward religion they may have religiously-motivated characters at least doing good works in the name of their god. If the author is less sympathetic,, then Belief Makes You Stupid and better people have Outgrown Such Silly Superstitions. Or you have a Religion of Evil and/or Path of Inspiration where the only real benefactors are the corrupt men that run it.

1: The Gods Have Left the Building

"Between them they helped the ancient of days out of his crystal cell; it wasn't hard, for he was as light as paper and he would have followed them anywhere, having no will of his own, and responding to simple kindness like a flower to the sun. But in the open air there was nothing to stop the wind from damaging him, and to their dismay his form began to loosen and dissolve. Only a few moments later he had vanished completely, and their last impression was of those eyes, blinking in wonder and a stab of the most profound and exhausted relief."

—The Amber Spyglass
God or gods were present once, but for all intents and purposes have left or died or were sealed away (think the Titans of Greek myth). If you were four billion years old, you might want a vacation too.

2: The Watchmaker:

"But suppose I had found a watch upon the ground, and it should be inquired how the watch happened to be in that place; I should hardly think of the answer I had before given, that for anything I knew, the watch might have always been there. (...) Every indication of contrivance, every manifestation of design, which existed in the watch, exists in the works of nature; with the difference, on the side of nature, of being greater or more, and that in a degree which exceeds all computation."

—William Paley, Natural Theology
A god or gods exist, but they keep out of worldly affairs. They may be The Creator and may keep the laws of nature working behind the scenes but there's no way to tell if they care about being worshiped or not. Might be either True Neutral or Above Good and Evil. Or they are Neglectful Precursors. Authors who write Watchmaker gods are either neutral about the idea of God of hold the viewpoint that the beauty of nature, physics, math, order, etc, are sufficient justification for God's existence (A.K.A. the Watchmaker Argument), though they may not share the same views about organized religion. Sufficiently hard sci-fi works rarely go above this level on the scale.

3: God Works In Mysterious Ways:

It is said that the gods play games with the fates of men. But what games, and why, and the identities of the actual pawns, and what the game is, and what the rules are - who knows?

—Terry Pratchet, Guards! Guards!
Gods have an influence on the mortal plane and a vested interest in the people on it. However they do not (i.e. The Gods Must Be Lazy) or can not (i.e. God's Hands Are Tied intervene directly. They may send signs, omens and occasional lightning strikes, or a mortal in their service acquires powers to do the gods' will, whether or not they're entirely sure what that will is. If two gods are fighting, expect the fighting to spill over to their followers. Or they exist outside the mortal plane but their power can be drawn on by the occult-minded. An atheist or a Nay Theist may still get away with not being struck down. At this level, gods start to acquire Anthropomorphic Personifications and may Need Prayer Badly.

4: God Walks Among Us

Gods can manifest themselves directly. It may be a God in Human Form and it may be your copilot. Probably makes the rain fall and the wheat grow. May even take human husbands and wives. If you piss this type of god off, expect a mighty smiting. Pray that they aren't Jerkass Gods or expect to be smote more often and painfully. However, people still have reasonable free will and the gods are not necessarily infallible and may still need the help of their followers to do their smiting.

5 through Infinity: God-King of the Cosmos

God is everywhere, omniscient, omnipresent and truly omnipotent, and makes sure everyone knows it. In this universe, You Can't Fight Fate if Fate does indeed exist.

Sandbox God

I am god here!

—Jobe Smith, The Lawnmower Man
For this "God" all of the above may or even may not apply, but only for their little world, or sandbox. Outside of this sandbox however, he or she is powerless, or at the very least, just simply not all-powerful.

Ignorant God

This entity is a god, but for all intents and purposes, does not realize that they are a god. Can manifest as any of the above 5, as since they don't know what they are, their power, while undeniable, is also random (if Suzumiya Haruhi is a god, she's this type). Said ignorance can be due to any number of factors, including a divine memory gambit meant to delay insanity due to being everything and every possibility at once, and being unable to evolve or change (see God Emperor and Heretics of Dune, and Ghost in the Shell).

Gods who are actually Sufficiently Advanced Aliens are difficult to place because they might fall anywhere on the scale from 1 (setting themselves up as gods making lesser races their worshipful servants) to 2 (Precursors) all the way up to 5 (The Q Continuum). That baring the debate over whether they count as gods at all.

See also Super Weight.

Examples of Sliding Scale of Divine Intervention include:

Class 0

  • Valdorian Age setting for 5th edition Fantasy Hero (Hero Games). There's temples, there's priests, but no direct divine activity.
  • The Assassin's Creed series. It isn't immediately obvious, but the Assassins are narratively the most correct about the apparent nature of reality when they say "Nothing is true"; this apparently even extends to religion. Faithful adherents of religious groups run the gamut from sympathetic to monstrous, but the organizations themselves tend toward the black end of the Black and Gray Morality.

Class 1

  • The Penelopiad.
  • The entire point of Preacher is that God has abandoned His flock and Reverend Jesse Custer seeks Him out to demand to know why He hasn't done right by His creations.

Class 2

Chaos Gods from Warhammer Fantasy Battle/40k are Type 2. The spend most of their time fighting among themselves, but occasionally somebody or something in the physical universe manages to attract their attention. They cannot interact with the physical universe directly but can grant their followers new powers and mutations, as well as send their daemonic servants into the physical universe.

Class 3

  • The Avatars ascended to Stratosphere from Unknown Armies are 3. They can't influence the world directly but they can manipulate Fate and work through people following their Archetype.
  • God in the new Battlestar Galactica is a weak Category 4 or strong Category 3, definitely intervening, but not terribly interested in smiting. Also, He doesn't like to be called "God."
  • In The Bible, God is Category 3 and up, depending on when you're talking about.
  • God (the One) in the Young Wizards series only acts indirectly/subtly. presumably because acting directly would tear apart the fabric of reality. After all, just God's True Name is so powerful that it has to be kept in two parts, lest the might of its whole form destroy several universes.
    • One of the means God has of acting indirectly are wizards, since God is where they get their power from.
  • God, also known as the White God, works this way in The Dresden Files, according to Uriel. Paraphrased: "The battle between light and dark works on so many levels that you literally could not begin to understand how it all happens."
  • Eru Illuvatar from The Silmarillion, he has everything planned down to the last angstrom, but uses the Valar (Archangels or small-g gods) to bring about his creation. The Valar can be considered level 4 gods but they are not omnipotent nor omniscient.

Class 4

  • The gods of Greek and Roman mythology would be roughly a 4.5 on the scale, falling short of 5 only because they can be tricked and could probably be defeated by something powerful enough. They take human shape and walk among their subjects often, the Anthropomorphic Personification of Fate spins the thread of men's lives and you really don't want a god ticked off at you, least they turn you into a spider or keep you from getting home to your family for 20 years.
  • The gods of the Tortall Universe are about a 4, maybe a hair under it. They have been known to make personal appearances and can make what they want to happen happen but as the Graveyard Hag would say to Daine, "We have rules, dearie." - they have to use mortal vessels for many things.
  • In the Young Wizards series, the god-like Powers That Be will sometimes fully manifest and do things. It's implied that, contrary to being lazy, that they're constantly doing things to help, but that most of the time its in ways that can't be perceived by mere mortals.

Class 5 and Beyond

Sandbox God

  • The Matrix: The machines have a very large degree of control over the world and bluepills within the simulation, but are restricted to reality in the real world.
  • The Truman Show: Christof.
  • The Lawnmower Man: Jobe Smith is all powerful within the simulation.

Ignorant God

  • The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "True Q" features a young woman named Amanda Rogers, who is actually a Q that was raised as a human by Q parents, that were killed by the Q for leaving the Continuum.

Mixed or Other

  • Star Trek: See the note about Sufficiently Advanced Aliens being hard to classify. If they use trickery and are obviously false gods (the ones Kirk defeats mostly), they could be considered a 0 or 1 case. The Bajoran Prophets of Deep Space Nine borderline 'actual' gods as far as the setting is concerned (a 2-ish): They exist out of linear time, and their powers are hand-waved to the degree that one could argue they're more magic than science on the scale of sci-fi hardness.
  • The DCU's supreme being, The Presence, varies depending on who's writing about Him. In power He's usually around a 4.5, fully omnipotent but fate is still capable of being fought, though in behavior He can be a 2 in that He rarely gets involved unless the stakes are really, really high (like that time in *Swamp Thing where the sentient darkness that existed before the creation of the Universe came after Him). By the end of Lucifer, He willingly demotes Himself to a 1a, retiring to allow His granddaughter to take His place, with all evidence pointing to her being a more competent and loving Creator than He ever was.
  • Played with in various ways Tales of MU. Lord Khersis and Mother Kheele are strongly type 4, while the Elven Gods are either type 3 or 1A, depending on who you talk to. Khersisians also believe in the Great Star Drake who created the universe, but than doesn't interfere with it (type 2).
  • The character of The Author in Bob and George slides between the different categories. Sometimes he knows everything that's going on and is working Category 2 or 3. Other times he is there among the characters and has no idea what is happening. What makes this odd is that he is the author of the entire comic. He's the one writing and drawing the whole thing! The in comic universe (where There Is No Fourth Wall) cannot exist without him. More than once villains have plotted to destroy the comic universe by killing Author. Sometimes Hand Waved away and Played For Laughs by stating The Author just makes everything up as he goes.
  • Middle-earth's hierarchy of divine beings cover practically the whole scale. Eru, the universe's creator, is a 2- he has a plan for existence, but feels that the cosmos as he built it will naturally reach that end without direct interference. Since the creation, he's interfered precisely twice. The Valar are 3s- they're more active in Chessmastering events, but still keep their hands largely off unless they're absolutely needed. Evil deities like Morgoth and his one-time servant Sauron, as well as divine messengers like the wizards, are 4s, living among (and in some cases ruling) mortals. Tom Bombadil is a Sandbox God- essentially all powerful in his own little country, but he won't leave it or extend beyond it.
  • The cosmology of the Drunkard's Walk fanfic cycle ranges from 2 to 4, depending on the universe in question. The gods are real and active. Throughout the multiverse, they have a Covenant with mortals that lays out a relationship that is beneficial to both sides, and do respond in some manner to sincere supplication. They are generally hands-off but not exclusively so, so may manifest physical avatars with vastly restricted power as needed (and frequently do). They are also known to "tweak" events and guide individuals as needed to ensure that certain events and outcomes occur as required.
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