The Gods Only Have Power Because We Believe In Them

A clever rationalist fiction/parable (with apologies to Pratchett & TVTropes): escalating student-and-sage variations on 'the gods only have power because we believe in them,' each a different logical/equilibrium twist - gods need belief near 50% (the lightning of doubt), gods need the WORSHIP OF UNBELIEVERS ('solve for the equilibrium'; Akhenaten/Jeremiah/cultural-evolution), the known gods are the losers of wars in heaven, the Fates have no temples because they're strongest, etc. The later sections become rationalist parables: the plague-god/germ-theory noble-lie ('when someone goes on a podcast and disagrees with an epidemiologist...'), the dominant-assurance-contract to stop believing, the student-becomes-god-of-power, and the final ontological-bootstrap (believe in a perfect God with 'a magical hack to bootstrap from existing to omnipotent') -> '...along with his wife Sarah and his son Isaac' (= inventing the Abrahamic God).

Quality 72 · Strong. Strong - inventive, witty, intellectually satisfying short fiction; each variation lands a genuine logical twist and the endings (the germ-theory noble-lie, the ontological-bootstrap-to-Abraham) are delightful payoffs. Held at Strong because it's a short, light (if clever) parable-collection on a borrowed premise rather than a sustained work.

Claude’s paradigm shift 50 · Moderate. Moderate - an original, clever rationalist recombination (equilibrium variations, assurance contracts, the ontological bootstrap) on an explicitly borrowed premise (Pratchett/TVTropes).

Real-world impact 1 · Negligible. Pure fiction/parable; negligible material real-world effect (per the convention, fiction/satire = RWI 0-1).

Humor 1/5 · Lizardman’s Constant. GATE: borderline PASS at magnitude 1 (flagged). A fiction/parable explicitly homaging Pratchett with structural playfulness and punchline endings = intentional comedic craft (clears the gate as a playful fiction piece, not ambient wit in a serious essay), but the dominant mode is intellectual cleverness with amusement as a byproduct - so minimum nonzero (1), like the ACX-634 Rome borderline call, not the =2/=3 of a primarily-comedic piece.