There's been a little confusion lately, so I thought I'd try to clear that up! ^^
SotE's Earth is not
our Earth.
Now, when I first created SotE 10 years ago, it
was our Earth--destroyed and reborn and recreated some indeterminate time later. xD It sounded like a good idea to me back when I was 17 and SotE was a blank slate, but as the site grew and people asked questions, it became very clear very fast that that just didn't work or make sense. It posed too many issues, like the question of finding old artifacts or old characters who would remember the USA and general stuff like that.
Besides, there wasn't really much point in keeping that old premise. SotE was its own world, so nothing would be lost by nixing that premise except a whole lot of headache and embarrassment. xD
So just to be clear, SotE is its own world. The world is called Earth, because it's far too late now to change that and it's part of the name. ;D But 'Earth' is also a pretty danged generic descriptor! However, that said, it's not
our Earth. Heck, SotE isn't even set in the same galaxy. (Though that's more relevant to
Remnants of the Earth, SotE's fabulously dark future where space travel happens and which I'm totally not pimping at all, nope.
Though you should totally join it. *subliminalmessagessubliminalmessages*)
That said, things like gods and religions from
our world just don't exist in SotE. There is no Christianity, no Hinduism, no Wicca. It's perfectly okay to draw inspiration from these things to create your own things
based off of them; goodness knows Ansgarism was inspired by Catholicism and Thanatos's religion was inspired by a conglomeration of Asian faiths (no, not just Japan, folks; Thanatos is heavily inspired by China and India xD) and much of Serendipity's religion and folkloric practices were drawn from Irish folklore.
Use things from our world to inspire your own creations! Go for it! Basing fantasy elements from things found in reality can really help make things feel grounded and real and add a lot of depth to it. However, just remember that this is a fantasy world that is in no way connected to our world. ^^
