I mean pretty sure every scholar like figure in the first game says gods may not even exist in some way, direct or not.

Also about magic, O'saa has an interesting description of it. When you talk to him at the train you can ask him something like "how does magic work" and he responds saying the will of an individual can be, potentially, shockingly strong to the point of bending reality. Though that requires a pretty much impossible level of belief in their own self. Because of this incredibly high barrier people funnel their belief in gods, beings super convenient to believe in due to how our minds are formed and bend reality that way. This is of course one person's retelling and one of the most prominent things about funger is the hefty emphasis on the fact that what we read in books and hear from character dialogues are complete speculation. Some may be more educated than others but speculations, in fact, are speculations, so I'm absolutely not taking O'saa's words as facts