Or open to a more logical somewhat scientific interpretation?

It seems a lot of people think if something is written in a book in TES then it is automatically fact, this is very different to earth history where it's well known that history is "his - story" and someone saying or writing something shouldn't always be taken at face value (or more accurately should never be taken at face value).

I'm no expert on TES universe so I'm really just asking if there's any breathing room with interpretation or are things definitely exactly how they are written?

What springs to my mind is there is some god I think who forces their followers to live far from civilisation... how convenient, could this not instead be interpreted as the religion being primitive nonsense that only uneducated savages are naive enough to believe in?

Also orcs are cursed to live short lives? Um is it not possible there's a valid scientific reason that is just not yet understood by people and they just dismiss it as a curse because they can't understand?

Do you see where I'm going?

Maybe magic resistance is simply being smart enough to not believe in it, which makes it not work, because it's not actually real? Etc etc...

This is quite simple: there are no absolute truths, as all the books can be falsified to some extent. They are all made by imperfect in-universe authors. And also, the truth of TES lies in your own perception, just as you choose what the actual fate of your character is in the games.

TES lore is very much like earth history as far as doubting it and verifying it goes; but just be sure to never discount anything entirely, even if it seems ludicrous - in turn, this doesn't mean you can't decide on something based on the flaws in a potential source.

On the other hand, stuff that appears to only be so because of the limitations of the game (for instance, the Imperial City, the greatest city in Tamriel, has only a small number of people in Oblivion) can fairly easily be ignored as lore.

However, just because you apply scientific rigor to your assessment of lore (which is good!) does not mean that lore has to abide by Earth's scientific fact; to use the case of the Orcs, while there might be a reason Orcs live shorter lives that is unknown to the people, it might also be because of a curse - in Tamriel, superstition and magic is very real.

This is my take on it, hope it is similar to those of the greatest minds around here.

All lore texts are biased and contain both true and false information. If you read some of the books, you'll quickly notice that they all conflict with each other and it is up to you to figure out what really happened. However, looking for a "scientific" explanation is probably going to lead you in a false direction most of the time because the world of TES is founded on myth.

The reference your thinking of is that Daedra worshipers build shrines out in the wilderness because they are not accepted by "civilized" people. The Daedra most certainly exist - we've interacted with all of them at one point or another.

You mean it isn't?

Weird.

I think he just unintentionally touched upon the Godhead subject. Dayum.

Did we really? Or did we imagine them because we believe?

My wife is from Papua New Guinea where black magic still has a hold in some areas (although she is a Christian), it's been interesting to get an insight into the world of black magic and realise how significantly it can affect people who believe in it. Large groups of people will all testify to seeing some phenomenon that can't possibly be real (a firefly that follows around a cursed person for weeks for example), and people will really get sick and die after a witch doctor rubs some strands of their hair into some chicken guts or whatever. The people who believe in it, are really affected by it daily, and genuinely experience "magic" from their perspective. It's of course a fairly well understood psychological phenomenon where your mind will trick you into seeing what you expect to see, your memory will warp into what you expect to remember, etc etc.

I dunno, I'd find the TES universe just as interesting if it turned out all the magic and supernatural stuff (including religion) was not actually real and could be scientifically explained away like the black magic of primitive societies on earth, and religions of not-so-primitive societies for that matter.

Well the idea is that in TES gods and magic are the observable reality. So to this world and it's denizens, it is scientifically possible and provable that if a certain sequence of mental triggers is set off (according to Infernal City) then things happen independent of physical action such as creation of fire without fuel or tinder.

Essentially, it's fantasy, bro. It was written to be fundamentally different from the real world down to it's very basic innerworkings. While there's nothing wrong with trying to see what does match up with how the real world works, trying to do so for everything will be as effective as demolishing a brick wall with an old dead fish.

Well, do you count the dream of a sleeping Godhead real?

Let me rephrase, because we're getting into weird topics here that don't usually get brought up in such a calm and plainly actually-thought-about manner as seen here..

Magic definitely is real in TES. Unless you want to say that entire large buildings and major historical events with observable aftereffects are imagined, because they were done by magic.

For example, in Lord of Souls thousands or more people are killed by Umbriel, and then yet more are killed by the Wormies. If we follow the "magic only seems to be happening because they believe it does" idea then where did all these corpses come from?

Even discounting the weird lore, many major parts of the main games would have to be written off as illusory when it makes for a better story to just accept the fundamental difference in the mechanics of the world, from the heart of Lorkhan to Oblivion gates and the entire endgame of Skyrim.

A disease people didn't understand? So to explain what happened a fantastic tale was woven?

I know, it's pretty hard to be a skeptic in the face of actual lightning bolts actually coming out of people's hands and actual demons being summoned into actual existence... but it's fun to try. Just to see how much can be explained away while knowing it can't all be.

What about the floating island then? Sun rays bouncing off of Swamp gas?

I get what you're saying there, but I think it takes a few too many mental loops, a few too many "it works if you say x y and z."

But there's that word again, "skeptic." In Tamriel, a skeptic is someone who gets told that the stars aren't holes to the dimension wherefrom flows all magic and says "oh really, well you're gonna need to back this up with some pretty solid stuff."

To make sure that I understand what you're talking about, then, you are calling the mechanics of the world into question, not just its history? This sounds... counterproductive. Why would you want to, unless you were using that knowledge to directly improve your existence? And how would one go about improving their existence by being skeptical of everything around them? The Dwemer tried, of course, but since game mechanics don't allow us to really do anything spectacular with magic and/or the knowledge we gain, there's really no point to it all.

This sums it up nicely, it all boils down to what you believe as you have different races writing about the same story using different names for the same being and they tend to contradict one another on the details. Religion isn't allowed here but a simple anology (without getting into it) is the Bible and Qu'ran, they both start out with the same stories and characters under different names and then grow in different direction from there.

I both hate and love lore equally as it's very realistic the way they tell it from different in-game perspectives but very frustrating when trying to find facts.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SufficientlyanolyzedMagic

My only real issue with this is that its assuming that everyone in the work are all god-fearing denizens too ignorant to actively go out and see the how's and why's of what makes their world tick. The truth of the matter is, there are many people that go around doing just that, with what may as well be considered the equivalent of science in Tamriel. You have a guy in a giant mushroom making female clones of himself and studying a plague that is anything but a normal disease, scholars actively investigating the affects gods/divine entities have on the world, Necromancers dissecting corpses just to see how they can raise them in a more efficient manner, people observing and noting the biological changes of when a person afflicted with Lycanthropy transforms, and many more.

To dismiss all of these as simple "They don't have a clue as to what's going on" is kind of sad, since it throws away everything they ultimately know/has written down the tube. That's not to say that they can't be wrong, but throwing away all the possibilities stemmed from their achievements and dismissing it as pure ignorance is counter-productive, in my humble opinion.

That's pretty much how I see it.

It can be an interesting thought experiment to figure out more mundane explanations for fantastical events (even Bethesda likes to do that http://www.imperial-library.info/content/dragon-break), but it does lead to a more boring world if you take it too far, IMO.

You wouldn't have to throw everything away, but explain it. So lycanthropy is real and people do become werewolves that turn into big beasts when there's a full moon, BUT it's simply a disease one is afflicted by, and if modern science could somehow study it they could break it down into minute scientific detail and find nothing paranormal about it.

It wouldn't mean everyone in tamriel is a [censored], just less technologically advanced. We have a history ourselves of attributing gods and magic with everything, but recently we've been able to work most of it out and find there's a scientific explanation behind everything if you have the means to uncover it. We've had all sorts of scholars "proving" magic and religion to be accurate via in depth study for thousands of years too. There's been no change in the power of our ape brains, we were fundamentally just as intelligent an animal 80 000 years ago. So yeah it wouldn't mean the men and mer of tamriel need be dumber than us, some could comfortably be more intelligent without it affecting this really. They say neanderthals were more intelligent than homo sapiens and all they really achieved was making really sharp rocks, however all we achieved in the same time period was making less sharp rocks, so we can't really look back and make fun of their intelligence. If they hung around they'd be making better stuff than us most probably. Similarly I don't think you can make fun of the intelligence of tamriel's races even if it turned out their theories were incorrect.

Keep in mind I do realise this is all kind of moot since a lot of what happens on tamriel really could never be explained with science, but it seems a lot of the seemingly magic stuff could be. Depends how imaginative you can be with your skepticism I suppose.

Except on Tamriel one of these gods will manifest on front of the person saying they dont exist and use them as a play-thing in their plane. You cant explain away someone producing a sickle of ice, launching it at some one who in turn shatters with a wall of flame, as "not magic" even if there is a scientific explanation simply because of how ludicrous it is. Magic on Tamriel is magic, you can go onto a lengthy and unnecessary speech about breaking down into various components of light, but at the end of this trill the answer will invariably return to "its magic"

It's Zeno's Paradox: death by measurement.

Heh heh.

Sorry, couldn't help it

On a serious note, please define "scientific interpretation," since all the magics you have seen has certain result, went through countless tests with repeatable outcome and all that you would require to perform in an experiment, things look really scientific to me.

If you ask me, I think us being able to have clean (important) running water, AC, and natural gas furnance in many common households is a magical thing.

Especially the Daedric Princes, I have no idea how you can think this is superstition, when they just appeared in front of you and produced an item out of nowhere and gave it to you as you earned their favor.

Godhead retcon. You always had the shibbledibble.

While finding a mundane explanation for the Oblivion Crisis is going to be difficult, there may be some phenomena you can apply this to. For example, deities other than the daedra and Akatosh are usually fairly subtle. Clerics of the Imperial Cult claim to know what the gods want based on dreams and auguries. Prophecies are just about always questionable.

In Arkay the Enemy, followers are instructed to "reveal the primitive burial customs to be mere superstition" because they really do hinder them somehow. Presumably some rituals are superstition, just as the writer of Corpse Preparation knows that other necromancers remove the vital organs when rasing mummies, but has seen no practical reason to do so. A lot of content in TESII books is about folklore which modern scholars don't seem to discuss much.