Well there is an old name. So let me be controversial and present a fourth.

The Marakhuti did nothing that would last. Rather the Aedra are both dead and gone and have been ever since the convention. They lie about their own existence.

This is a two fold argument:

The Aedra would have you believe different, but they were givers before liars. Lies have turned them into biters. Their teeth are the proselytizers; to convert is to place oneself in the mouth of falsehood; even to propitiate is to be swallowed.'

The Aedra gave, their bones to the creation of Mundus. Then they became lairs. But what kind of lie swallows those who propitiate? How is that being merely being polite, nevermind actual belief, in the Aedra is to be taken in by the lie? It is because in being polite, you have already accepted their existence.
That the Aedra are lairs is further evidenced by the mirad of variations in the appearance of the Aedra, all influenced by the local believes. Quite contrary to the Daedra.
Now this is not to say that there never were any Aedra. Rather they died or departed Mundus after the convention. Mortal believes imprinted on schizophrenic skin ball is all that remains.

The Marukhati then. They could not seperate Akatosh from Auri-El because they were one and the same. Then they discovered how to bring about the Dawn.
But what is the Dawn? The Dawn is a period in which gods walked on Mundus. It's repeated with the Warp of the West, seven Brass-Gods walking Mundus, the Tribunals ascension and the Dawn Era its self.
So it would be sensible to assume the Selective found out how to make themselves gods. Eight human gods to replace the Aedra. They walked Mundus for some time as evidenced by the utter chaos.

Vivec lay with Molag Bal for eighty days and eight, though headless. In that time, the Prince placed the warrior-poet's feet back and filled them with the blood of Daedra. In this way Vivec's giant-form remained forever harmless to good earth. The Pomegranate Banquet brought many spirits back from the dead so that the sons and daughters of the union had much to eat besides fruit.

To walk Mundus in the divine form harmful.

The Jills did not have their full powers; rather, I should say, all the mundex spirits had every power at every time amendment at every ordering, which is to say none of them could ever fully express; our world was young and so were its architect gods.

With every one of the Selective in control of the ordering of events time you can imagine the mess it makes of Cyrodiil.

At this point all transcription becomes impossible, except by way of sheet music, an orchestration of which was attempted during the reign of [NUMINIT], who, along with everyone else in the symphony's radial madness, was vaporized by adjacentia. The requisite adachimelic holding-tendrils activated, preventing Imperial collapse.

In the end though, the Dawn ended. The Dawn Era it ended with the departure of the gods, leaving behind dead husks. I suspect the Selective vaporised when they realized the meaning of the sporedream that themselves did not exist either.

To understand the stars that fell to Mundus you have to consider their purpose. Veks teachings explains that the world becomes a hurling disk, the hub of the wheel without it's spoke in the presence of the divine. When the selective gave up hold of their divinity these spokes / holding tendrils snapped back into place and show that nothing has changed.

I remember we disagreed about this, along the same lines, years ago. Coming back however, and thinking about it for a half-day, what you are saying makes more sense. It is a classic (to put it crudely) Elsie God-Hater Atheist Occam's Razor proposition: The gods only very rarely appear, and look terribly confused when they do, for the most simple reason... they don't exist, or exist only as Earthbones, and not in an anthropological, conscious form. This makes what Mankar is saying fundamentally work. The Aedra are not conscious gods, and now they only serve to keep the world in its current form. He does not perceive what Lorkhan is doing behind the scenes, and sees Dagon as the solution to bring people to a CHIM-like state (without noticing, again to use a metaphor, that Dagon's landscaping preferences in the Desert of Rust and Wounds do not look anything like the Dawn, CHIM, etc.). Real gods are conveniently locked behind a barrier, and when they appear in the Mundus, either as the Daedra or Maruhkati, etc, with Vehk as an exception, things get messy in a hurry.

The only criticism I have of this model is I wonder if the times where the Aedra intervene are sparse and unfocused enough to justify saying that they only exist as Earthbones at this time. I have been trying, a bit, to defeat my own argument. So here we go:

1. The Aedra separate Lorkhan from his heart.

This is the most basic, Mer-perspective supporting example. However, it can be rather obviously argued that this occurred before they solidified into the Earthbones.

2. Kyne sending her son Morihaus down to help in the Cyrodiilic slave revolt.

Supports the Nordic point of view of Kynareth, but admittedly, it is an 'indirect' intervention that can be interpreted in different ways.

3. Pelinal's reference to Akatosh as a conscious being.

"It is for our shared madness that I do this" and all that. This can also tie into the broader connection between Akatosh and Shezarr I am referencing, however.

4. Akatosh and the Chim-el Adabal pact made with Alessia.

In, I believe, the Nu-mantia Intercept, Shezarr is actually credited with this. I will tie this back into a broader theme later: Akatosh's appearances lately may have more to do with Shor than the original Aedra himself, so to speak.

5. The Alduin/Orkey/Shor incident.

I will admit, this story is so bizarre it is tempting to write it off, to whatever extent. What is particularly interesting, however, is the following phrase in the quote:

Seeing the strength of King Wulfharth, Orkey summoned the ghost of Alduin Time-Eater again. Nearly every Nord was eaten down to six years old. Boy Wulfharth pleaded to Shor, the dead Chieftain of the Gods, to help his people. Shor's own ghost then fought the Time-Eater on the spirit plane, as he did at the beginning of time, and he won, and Orkey's folk, the Orcs, were ruined. - Five Songs of King Wulfharth

In essence, somehow Orkey (presumably Malacath) gave Alduin conscious purpose apart from existence as an Earthbone again by 'summoning his ghost', and of course, a chaotic, bizarre event occurs, rather similar to the weird **** that happens every time a god appears in Tamriel (even Vehk's 36 Sermons are good testimony of this, though he seems to keep things more under control).

6. The Tosh Raka-Akatosh variant's interference in Akavir.

I understand Tosh Raka has been previously connected with Akatosh, but if one takes a hard look at this quote, this looks like a case of a 'mantling'.

Since that time the cat-folk have tried to become the Dragons. Tosh Raka is the first to succeed. He is the largest Dragon in the world, orange and black, and he has very many new ideas. "First," Tosh Raka says, "is that we kill all the vampire snakes." - Mysterious Akavir

7. Martin and Akatosh.

This one is possibly the easiest to wave off, Martin mantles Akatosh, 'gives him a focused, conscious purpose', then promptly strengthens the barrier and dies.

8. Finally, most importantly, if all Akatosh is, is an Earthbone, at this point, then what is Alduin doing, in a conscious godlike form, trying to eat the world?

So here is my fundamental proposition: in the case of Pelinal's reference of "our shared madness", the gift of Chim-el Adabal to Alessia, the following quote...

"... and left you to gather sinew with my other half, who will bring light thereby to that mortal idea that brings [the Gods] great joy, that is, freedom, which even the Heavens do not truly know, [which is] why our Father, the... [Text lost]... in those first [days/spirits/swirls] before Convention... that which we echoed in our earthly madness. [Let us] now take you Up. We will [show] our true faces... [which eat] one another in amnesia each Age." - Song of Pelinal, Volume 8

...and finally the Dragonborn, or Shezarrine's absorbtion of Alduin/Jill/Dragon souls when he kills them, these interventions of "Akatosh/Alduin" have fundamentally been Shor's other half, and we as Dragonborn are tasked with getting his madness under control, and absorbing it all into one whole, focused demigod/god, ala PC, Shezarrine.

Ironically, much like in the real world, this argument for non-existence in an anthropological form still cannot be completely proven.

Then again what can be? The problem is usually a lack of falsifiability.

But I could have been more accurate. When I say the Aedra don't exist, it means that any specific observance of the Aedra is based on a falsehood. Rather it's all schizophrenic skin ball.

..The gods are only there as spokes and have no other purpose as to fortify the wheel from dissolution?
This is why it must be eaten, because its a wheel, a snake eating its tail, a thing in itself confined and defined by itself?

Is this what Vivec meant?
(To escape)

Is Shor affected the same way the Aedra are? His incarnations seem to have similar personalities (hates mer, rather violent), despite regional differences.

Also, would it be accurate to describe Shor as being even more dead than the Aedra?

This discussion is interesting, but what about the three avatars that you can meet while playing "Morrowind"? They seem to be testing the Nerevarine -- presumably the Zenithar and Mara avatars could have escaped their captors at any time, but were waiting for you to show up and prove that you could take the role of Nerevarine. I assume you're saying the "Morrowind" avatars aren't canon?

Oh they're "canon" (allthough that is a silly word), Prowler's suggestion wouldn't be any fun if they weren't. Or to put it differently: How can they lie about being here if they're not here to speak those lies?

They died and yet lived on through their decendents who's unconcious memories of the dawn gave birth to the ghosts/echoes/holograms of the original actors. Those are the lies that walk ever so slightly different in each land, because memory is a fickle thing and so are its figments.