Yes, of course. I'm having trouble explaining what I mean...I'm not saying there are any cultural implications about irreligiosity or that the difference is inconsequential.
Maybe it'll make more sense if I give you some examples of what I'm thinking of. (Or maybe it'll be super-confusing, but I have no idea how else to resolve the confusion, so...
).
In India (and IIUC in South Asia more generally), there are a lot of different indigenous religious traditions, most of which IIUC the British lumped together under one vague label "Hinduism." Some of these traditions hold one god to be the most powerful, some hold another to be the most powerful, some hold a goddess to be the most powerful, some hold snakes to be the most powerful, a bunch of these traditions differ as to the extent to which snakes can be considered deities, and so on and so forth. In areas where two or more of these traditions coexisted, they were often associated with people at different levels of the caste system - sometimes different castes, sometimes even different subcastes within the same caste. For example, people who believed Vishnu was the most powerful god and worshiped him were at the very top of the caste ladder in some parts of India, whereas people who put Shiva in a similar position were slightly lower on the ladder (though of course still much more powerful than (almost) everyone else), and devotees of Vishnu frequently discriminated against devotees of Shiva. I'm not aware of devotees of Vishnu considering devotees of Shiva
irreligious, just belonging to a different level in society and thus not deserving of certain privileges (not so much because of their beliefs, either, but rather because of who their parents/families are/were).
I also know that Buddha is often viewed in India as simply a reformer within Hinduism, but there's also a religious tradition in India that he is a reincarnation of Vishnu, so I'm guessing these may also be different religious traditions that coexist (or coexisted at some point) in India. If so, perhaps people who think Buddha is a reincarnation of Vishnu don't consider him dead, whereas people who think of him as a human reformer do consider him dead (and both sets of people believe all the other gods/deities/whatever are alive). Like the example I mentioned earlier, this doesn't necessarily imply that either group of people is somehow less religious or that the difference is inconsequential; the difference may be associated (for example) with differing positions within society, but with each group believing that people from different levels in society (or different castes/subcastes) have different religious beliefs, and they're more or less worthy of certain privileges depending on which level in society they're in.
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