Err, I’m sure Niara can and will speak for herself but you might want to rethink your post as your quotes don’t in any way disprove anything she has said and if anything support her argument over yours. She has never denied that some, or even most, paladins follow one or more deities, only clarified that not all do and that there is an in-universe explanation of this.
No I dont think I will.
If someone wants to talk down to me and try to belittle my view/playstyle as somehow inferior, homebrew, or Most importantly NON Canon, by using the back of their hand. When they are actually talking out of their ass, then they deserve a barb or two in return.
People do many things which are not canon. And that doesn't make it inferior or lesser. It just makes it not line up with WoTC's current corporate vision. Saying a particular viewpoint goes against the most recent established setting is not the same thing as belittling. It is just pointing out that it is not a binding rule for official properties.
Both paladins and druids use divine magic, yet no one is demanding druids must also have gods? The reason seems to be, as I mentioned in my previous post on this topic, and as FreeTheSlaves mentions as well, Druids and Paladins are capable of drawing on Divine Magic not through a particular patron, but through particular portfolios allotted to those patrons. Druids would draw on the portfolios of relevant nature deities, while Paladins would draw on divine magic from the portfolios of relevant oath-aligned deities.
The "most" claim you are making is not the point you think it is. Logically speaking, "most" would imply a large proportion of paladins, but not all, so ∃ (there exists). If your source said ALL, then we could use the universal quantifier ∀ (such that ALL). If it says "most," then it does not imply that paladins which do not follow gods cannot exist. In fact, it implies that there likely ARE some paladins which do not follow gods.
