Akatosh vs Auri-El

Athan1

It's so confusing that these gods are the same, because they represent opposing themes re how they treat humans.

Why do humans believe in the god that killed so many of them during the war with Lorkhan?

Why do elves believe in the god that eventually made a pact with Alessia and protected humans?

Also since Lorkhan/Shezarr defended humans from Auri-El why do they treat him like evil? Humans should worship Lorkhan for creating the world and despise Akatosh for trying to kill them. It doesn't make sense.

I know that every race has its own mythology but the god variations mentioned above are indisputably the same gods and this strong contradiction creates a plot hole imo.

vestahls

Humans sort of adopted an adjusted version of the elven pantheon after Alessia tried to make a sincretic religion between what humans worshiped up to then, and the Ayleid gods (not counting daedra worship). So that's sort of why that caught on, it was an attempt at cohabiting with the remaining Ayleids who held all the technology, architecture, and military power (before the Imperials decided to kill off all the innocent Ayleids anyway).

Regarding the elves, the Altmer weren't the Ayleids, so if Akatosh made a pact with Alessia the Altmer wouldn't particularly care, because they didn't lose anything. Bosmer as well. And the Dunmer never worshiped Akatosh.

Also, humans don't see Lorkhan as evil (except for the Redguards). Nords actually do worship Lorkhan, but they call him Shor, and the Bretons call him Sheor. Reguards call him Sep, and he's evil for them because of their whole philosophy regarding the Walkabout, but that's a pretty long discussion.

Incidentally, the Dunmer - though I'm not sure it's ever made explicit - are the only elves who don't see Lorkhan as evil, because of their own philosophy. Lorkhan took away immortality from elves, and stuck them in an uncomfortable mortal existence, but Dunmer believe that sort of adversity makes you stronger so they respect it.

Ratzkifal

Akatosh and Auri-El are not the same anymore. They used to be, but the first dragonbreak occured when the Maruhkati Selective of the Alessian Order split all Aldmeri influence from Akatosh by dancing with the Staff of Towers on the top of the Whitegold Tower, causing 1000 years (agreed upon length but not proven) of nonlinear time.

In a sense Auri-El is much more comparable to Alduin in the nordic pantheon, being an antagonist to the races of men. This incident is also probably what caused Alduin to switch from being the Nord version of Akatosh to being "Akatosh's first-born".