I need help designing a "maybe gods, maybe not" setting

[A Butter Idea]

TL;DR - In a homebrew setting where no incontrovertible proof of the gods exist, what makes divine magic any different from occult magic? Please post your suggestions below.

I'd like to request some help from the worldbuilding community. I want to create a setting where the existence of the Outer Sphere, let alone what it contains, is unknowable and can neither be proven nor disproven. The kinds of stories I want to tell as a GM are ones including themes of existentialism and pontifications on mortality. At best, mortals should only be able to confirm the existence of souls, and any systems of reincarnation that do not necessarily involve trips to the Outer Sphere. Final Fantasy VII is my main inspiration here.

Unfortunately, the default Golarion setting is terrible for telling these sorts of stories. Just about every mortal in Golarion knows that the gods and the afterlife exist, so the concept of death already loses a lot of gravitas. And because everyone knows that their souls will be judged when they die, everyone is incentivized to be good for a few decades or centuries so that they can enjoy paradise for eternity. Only the absolute densest 0.1% of mortals would ever choose petty evil, knowing full well that Hell or other unholy realms await them as punishment. And mortal supervillains seeking to upend the cosmic order wouldn't fare much better, as they wouldn't have very many loyal minions to select from. At that point, the only real contenders for villains are monstrous beings like fiends, undead, fey, and aberrations. Saturating my villain roster entirely with monsters like that is sure to break the intended tone of my stories. I absolutely must have human (and human-adjacent) villains who seek world conquest, who lie and cheat and steal for their own self-interest, who believe life is all about maximizing their own pleasure in the little time that is available to them, and who will exploit their fellow human beings to those petty ends.

So, for all these reasons, I want to make a custom setting where the Outer Sphere is ambiguous in its existence. I want to keep in divine spells, clerics, champions, and all other game mechanics involving the divine in place, partly out of a desire to avoid having to rebalance everything, but also because discussions of faith and the eventual fate of the soul are very interesting to have, especially when such subjects are not understood by even the wisest of mortals.

But here is the main problem I've been running into in trying to design such a setting. Without the confirmed existence of gods, what really differentiates divine magic from occult magic? In Secrets of Magic, Djavin Vhrest describes occult magic as follows:

"Ideas, art, and expression form metaphysical threads, each woven into a grander tapestry of culture, tradition, and community. Every thinking being develops some twist on this vocabulary—every painful lesson of cause and effect, every bedtime tale laughed off or taken to heart, every syntactic rule that dictates our logic, every object that carries even a semblance of symbolism—all strained through the myriad combination of senses we each experience. Each of these elements forms your narrative language, rooted in your thoughts and emotions. Each is a tool to create and manipulate a story.
"Enduring thoughts slowly manifest as immortal archetypes on the Astral Plane, and souls resonating with the weight of a million aligned choices meld with the Outer Planes to form the Great Beyond. Untold trillions have lived and died, and their stories form the tapestry’s very foundation. Pick any mortal's little patch in the greater design, and you’ll find the multiverse’s vast narrative reflected in some corner of their mind. Even without shared language, values, and lived experience, an occult practitioner and their subject almost always share this esoteric memory. Not only is that enough to work magic, but any practitioner powerful enough to tap into these cosmic expressions can influence thousands at a time by manipulating the multiverse’s underlying mythology."

This is how I would ideally like faith to be handled in my stories. The shared values that bind communities of people develop into widely-accepted that embody these values. When enough people believe in the shared idea of Sarenrae, Sarenrae becomes real -- or at least, real enough that dedicating your life in her service will grant you real power. But then, if that is all the gods really are -- just shared delusions which grow so popular that they take on a life of their own -- then what really makes divine magic anything more than just a popular offshoot of occult magic?

There must be some other aspect that divine magic embodies which occult magic does not. In a world where no incontrovertible proof of the gods exist, what would take its place? That's what I need help figuring out, more than anything.

[Teridax]

I think the key distinction here is symbolism versus values: occult magic deals with the interplay between thoughts and emotions, the conscious and the unconscious, and can play with symbols and intent without the practitioner having their entire life tied to certain ideals or concepts. By contrast, divine magic does tie your life and soul to certain metaphysical concepts, which sometimes (but not always) comes with edicts and anathema to follow, and which doesn't really require you to think about them in any conscious way so much as feel and embody them. When people want to dream up stories of Sarenrae, contact her from beyond the Universe, and consider what a world with Sarenrae would look like, that's occult magic, but when people come together to worship Sarenrae, celebrate what she stands for, and embody her values in their day-to-day life, that's divine magic. Because your universe doesn't confirm the existence of gods, it may also become much more common to have faith grow around certain ideals and more abstract concepts, and not just gods.

With that said, both types of magic touch upon the soul, and thus upon the emotions that often drive moral decisions. This can work to your advantage, in that in your Universe, the divine tradition may just be conflated with the occult: because there'd be no evidence of the divine, divine magic could just appear to others as weird occult magic. You could even play with this and have certain researchers pull at that thread to posit the hypothetical existence of a fourth tradition, while others try to explain how certain divine spells are available to some "occult" practitioners -- and perhaps some "primal" casters too -- and not others, even as those anomalous spellcasters find themselves unable to cast other spells common to those traditions.

[NorrKnekten]

I would probably suggest looking closer at Terry Pratchet and his work regarding the discworld. It would make great inspiration.

are there entities of divine origin? absolutely, Death is a person after all. Gods exists to the point that if you were to slay one then another would rise from the beliefs of the living.

Especially as both Occult, Arcane and Divine are represented within that setting. Gods exists purely from the belief of the living and their ability to perform divine acts is represented from the belief people hold in them.

Arcane exists in the form of wizards who much akin to pathfinder view it trough the lens of science, They used to have crystal balls but such outdated methods are frowned upon as you should have thaumometers and omniscopes to fully understand magic. And magic is flashy, Channeled as fireballs trough magical staves.

Occult is the opposite as witches don't have the same scientific understanding but rather a learned tradition passed down from witch to witch. It has to do as much with the psycology of others but also about an understanding that comes from more than just knowledge, After all.. an old breadknife is more powerful than a runed sacrificial dagger if the breadknife means something to you. There is a perfect example from Wyrd Sisters where a similar subtitution happens.

Divine exists in a weird place, Dieties exists from the minds of the people but typically dont care about their mortal followers on an individual basis, There was however this "DIY religion" where you create a divine spirit and feed it to create a 'god' of moderate power for a specific purpose.

Simply put, It wouldnt be entirely out of the question to say that divine comes from how strong shared beliefs are, wether or not they manifest as personified entities.

[Castilliano]

If divine magic works, that means religious paths deliver.
How?
The believers can be wrong about this, but you need to determine this. And to factor in for the other divine casters too. That answer (answers?) should inform most other questions.

So if it's because sticking to Edicts & Anathema provides a personal power to tap into it, cool. Or maybe they're illusory too, and simply help w/ the caster's self-confidence or connection to their community & cultural heritage. Then if personal, that might make being religious resemble how Monks have divine focus spells. If illusory, it might act more like Arcane magic, being about lore which one's Edicts & Anathema help keep organized in one's mind. Both lend themselves to philosophies also unlocking divine magic, but not if the magic comes from some cosmic karma/fortune wheel (or maybe deistic or capricious deity). Fate as an answer would make Clerics more like Oracles & Sorcerers, simply using a different mental (empathic, perceptive) path to tap/control it, which then implies even extreme faith & belief won't deliver magic to some (or most?)...though maybe that unlocks something else??

So yeah, answer that question for yourself, and its impact should follow with extrapolation.

Plus, what do the angels (etc) say, and why? And wouldn't they (and others one step down from gods in the hierarchy) simply become the targets of worship? Or two steps, etc. down to what highest peak?

[Mangaholic13]

Another setting I'd suggest taking notes from is Eberron:

While some religions in it are physical (The Silver Flame proves the Church of the Silver Flame is actually worshiping something that exists) and others are unclear (The Sovreign Host and Dark Six), yet they all have clerics using Divine Magic.