Hey everyone.
I had a thought, can anyone in Tamriel be what you call an "Atheist"?
I mean, in the TES world the existence of gods ( Both Aedra and Daedra ) is pretty much confirmed. You can't deny the existence of the Daedric Lords and there are figures such as Talos and The Tribunal.

If anything, the most atheistic view on religion in Tamriel can be a view of apathy. You're not forced to worship a deity buy you cannot deny it's existence.

What are your opinions about this?

I dont think its possible to be an atheist in such a world. But it is possible to be irreligious I guess, and that can be close to it. You know there are Gods but you just chose not to worship them

Atheism, in the narrow sense of denying the existence of a deity or deities, is probably not possible in Tamriel. But http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apatheism could be a legitimate position to take.

I suppose one most definitely could not deny the existance of most Aedra and Daedra, nor could they deny the existance of Oblivion, but one could deny the divinity of the Aedra and Daedra.
For example: One could not deny the existance of Molag-Bal, but one could argue that he is not a "divine" being", but perhaps just a truly powerful daedra (who are not necessarily gods by any means).
Just as there are mortals on Nitn who have extreme power over the arcane arts, there could be daedra who have even greater power, they then use this power to travel to Nirn and commune with mortals and appear divine, and they even use their power to influence other daedra to form legions and armies under his/hers command.

So you would acknowledge the existance of immensely powerful Daedra and Aedra, but you would also believe that these beings are not divine, and to take it one step further, you could say that there are no divine beings in the Elderscrolls universe... Making you atheist.

I think you understand what I'm trying to say, though I must admit it would be hard to maintain such beliefs as this if one was truly on Nirn... Hell I wouldnt believe something like this in the E.S universe but it's not impossible and I could see how one could be an "atheists" on Nirn.

So my conclusion, it's possible, but I doubt anyone would.

The Dwarves (Dwemer). Here's a quote from MK concerning them-

"Dwarves were the ultimate Bartleby's of the universe: whenever it asked something of them they simply 'would rather not.' Let me take this a step further and say Dwarves regularly practiced the perception of acausal effects. Dwarves knew that phenomena (that which can be perceived by the senses) and noumena (that which is the thing-itself) were both illusions, with the second one just being more clever. Dwarves could divide by zero. There isn't even a word to describe the Dwarven view on divinity. They were atheists on a world where gods exist."

Strangely I didn't change part of the text to italics and it doesn't appear that way in the Imperial Library...here's the full page- http://www.imperial-library.info/content/definitive-guide-dwemer