"Choosing nonbelievers to grant wishes feels like an excellent way to spread faith, but there's one problem."
Batman spoke first. Zorn still had a smile on his face as he nodded to everyone. "But when ordinary religions spread their faith, there's usually a specific god's name or idol to receive worship. Even the most primitive religions have some kind of tangible symbol—fire, mountains, anything that people in the Main Dimension can clearly recognize."
Zorn knew quite a bit about the Mystic Side. After all, Bruce had once guarded against Justice League Dark every day as though they were thieves, worried that they might lose control someday, so he had done plenty of research.
Gods might not exist, but Batman believed faith was a form of spiritual power. And if it was power, it could potentially be gathered and exploited by certain means. Those so-called gods were supernatural beings who possessed such methods.
Emotions could be used to establish the various Lantern Corps, so by the same logic, faith should be usable in the same way.
Seen that way, all that gods-and-ghosts nonsense could be explained with science. The details were still open to debate, but the broad direction was absolutely right.
"This is easy to explain, Zorn. What we're dealing with is Blank. She has no divine name—or rather, nothingness itself is her divine name." Deathstroke put a cigarette between his lips, had Strangle light it for him, and took a shallow drag. Amid the curling smoke, he continued, "The faint sound of air passing through someone's teeth when they open their mouths to make a wish, or the sound of air being inhaled through their nose—perhaps all of that can be regarded as her divine name."
"So you're actually looking for a New God that doesn't exist?" Lucifer caught