What happens when beliefs directly contradict in a world changing sense? What if, for example, a story was spread across Tamriel that none of the gods even existed (except Lorkhan maybe, since I'm told everyone remembers him at birth and can never forget) and that the laws of nature were actually created by a magical pink bunny rabbit? Would all the gods cease to have ever existed and get replaced by a magical pink bunny rabbit who is literally a magical pink bunny who hops around the world and if you kill it, the world ends? A bit of a crazy thought, but supposedly everything believed in TES is literally and absolutely true, so I thought I'd like to know how this would work.

Let's say this became the new Orcish faith after the creation of the third Orsinium:

Auri-El would still exist
Akatosh would still exist
Alduin would still exist
Alkosh would still exist

But now there's this new Rabbit. It's Floppy Ears create the wind, and its Feet are said to pat down the dirt that covers every grave. It's locked in an eternal struggle against Umnug, the infinite carrot, which it will never finish eating. At the start of the world, the Rabbit's Heart (which was orange-tinted) convinced the rabbit to create the world, but after the Rabbit's Eyes told the Brain what this meant, the Brain got very upset, and was very mean to the Heart, and so the Heart leapt out of the Rabbit's Throat, and went tha-ump tha-ump across the world it had just created (this was very easy, because everyone knows that it's the tha-umping that makes rabbits move so fast).

I'd say that theoretically it's a free-for-all. But when you get down to it, there are constraints. Sure, you could destroy the gods by turning everyone into atheists, but how would you ever accomplish that, with the continual reinforcement of divine power and importance impressing on mortal minds?

But you could theoretically do it. Shezarr is a god who was forgotten and disappeared, although I suppose his case is different because he was Lorkhan, not an Aedric god.

As for totally off-the-wall beliefs like pink bunny rabbits, I'm on the fence. Because, if you notice, none of the mortal religions are particularly random. If the gods are the result of mortal perception, it tends to be the perceptions of entire races and cultures, with institutions and even reality-altering metaphysical constructions like the towers. And the deities they construct usually embody familiar old concepts, and closely correspond in number and character to those original spirits. Again, it's free-for-all with entry requirements and rules.

I suppose what I'm trying to say is that the eight Aedra are physically present, as planets orbiting Nirn. And they have existed since creation roughly in their current form. A magical pink bunny rabbit might be incapable of attaining the same stature. It could be a culture deity like Ebonarm, Reman, Sai, etc. There's no historical or mythical basis for a pink bunny rabbit.

Or maybe it's wide-open, and the game is simply stacked against your far-fetched hypotheticals to the extant that they will never happen. Which isn't to say that Nirn is a stable construct. It's not at all.

This. This right here.

If you manage to win a lot of converts to your one true Bunny-faith, the gods will still be present.

They'll just restructure, into bunnies.

Reminds me of the power of the WAAAGH!

The sheer belief of something causes it to be, though the WAAAGH! isn't as powerful.

I must admit, this may be one of the best threads ever, in my humble opinion.

Which brings up the real answer to the question. It's not the beliefs that dictate reality, but rather, the interpretation.

Hermeneutics be a cruel, zany mistress.

Right on.

The Bunny thing is hilarious and surprisingly compelling.

Peeps keep talkin' like Gods got no identity without worshipers. Ain't them deities got the capacity to interpret themselves? Aedra less so than Daedra, just cause the Aedra are bound. Except for ones like Dagon, or Sheo-Jyg before he broke the cycle. What is the process whereby one god can bind another into a certain interpretation, anyway?