Editing The God-Emperor of Mankind (section)

==Worship of the Emperor==
[[File:646545.jpg|thumb|300px|What the Emperor looked like before Horus decided to [[Rip and tear|bitchslap]] Him so hard he ended up spending the next 10,000 years on the Golden Throne as a rotting corpse. Notice the giant skull. How did that skull get so big? Is it a plastic faux-skull, or is it an mutant or even an alien skull? <s>(What He doesn't want you to know is that The E is actually a midget, the armor is a mech and that that's a regular-sized skull)</s> [[Blam| '''*BLAM!*''']] Anyway, back to the topic at hand. You don't get to see the Emperor out of armor very often. But he still looks ''fabulous'' without his armor.]]

{{Topquote|We believe in one Lord, the Emperor, the Almighty, ruler of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen.<br>We believe in one Lord, Emperor of Mankind, the only Lord of creation, eternally begotten of Humanity, Human from Human, Light from Light, true Lord from true Lord, begotten, not made, of one Being with Humanity; through him all things were made.<br>For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven, was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and came among us.<br>For our sake he has faced down Chaos; he withstood death and was enthroned.<br>To this day he lives on in accordance with the Scriptures; he resides upon Mother Terra and is seated upon the throne of Humanity.<br>He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.<br>We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Emperor, the giver of life, who proceeds from Humanity and from Terra, who with Humanity and upon Terra is worshiped and glorified, who has spoken through the prophets.<br>We believe in one holy true and divinely guided Ecclesiarchy.<br>We acknowledge one path for the defense against Chaos.<br>We look for the justice for our dead, and the life of the worlds to come.
<br>++ Ayhmen ++|the [[Imperial Cult|Creed]] of the Mankind's Council of Nicene of Holy Terra (Most Christian elegan/tg/entlemen will recognize it as a bastardized version of The Apostle's [[Creed]])}}

{{Topquote|Did Horus not say that you sought godhood? He built a [[Horus Heresy|rebellion]] upon that claim. How he would gloat, to see the Imperium now|[[Roboute Guilliman]]}}

The Imperium advocates worship of the Emperor as the one true God through the [[Imperial Creed]]. This creed is propagated and its adherence is enforced by the [[Ecclesiarchy|Adeptus Ministorum]] and the [[Inquisition]]. All citizens and fighters of the Imperium have little-to-no say about their choice in faith (or lack thereof); they ''must'' worship the Emperor through the various Ministorum-approved faiths throughout the galaxy (due to varying cultures, many planets have their own way of worshiping the Emperor. Although these are heavily regulated by the Ministorum to weed out any heretical influences.), there is no middle road or compromise that doesn't involve the apostate being on the receiving end of a state-sponsored public lynching. Anyone who defies or deviates from the teachings of the Imperial Creed (or even is just perceived to defy it), whether willingly or unwillingly (after all, incompetence is inexcusable in the eyes of the Emperor), is condemned as a heretic and is executed (whether its going to be fast or excruciatingly slow is dependent on the person judging the condemned). Even if someone hasn't disobeyed the Imperial Creed but is deemed to have will be treated as if they broke the Creed. Forgiveness for one's sins is possible, although these cases are exorbitantly rare (at least the ones that doesn't end with the accused being condemned to a glorious death, and it usually is extremely painful.). It doesn't help that some of the members of the Ecclesiarchy and Inquisition are so batshit insane that they are killing countless innocent followers of the Imperial Creed for no reason.

Now, the only reason the Imperium worships the Emperor is that after His fight with Horus and His internment into the Golden Throne, the religion that Lorgar founded on the Emperor had already begun to run amok before the Heresy had even ended. Without the Emperor to specifically demand it be rooted out, and with the unifying effect it appeared to have on the population of the galaxy who rallied behind it's banner of salvation, the Imperial Truth slowly lost it's foot hold for secularism. The Imperial Truth kept on teaching that there were no other gods (for modern Imperial citizens are forbidden from knowing of the Chaos Gods even existence) and was corrupted to espouse that there is only the God-Emperor. Ol' Empy did not actually tell anyone of the Chaos Gods, withholding the information even from the Primarchs in hopes of protecting them from corruption by hoping that ignorance is bliss, unfortunately, this became part of why the Horus Heresy happened in the first place. Some saw that the Emperor [[Mortarion|lied to them by holding the truth hidden]], some did [[Magnus|not know how to handle the temptation]] the Gods conveyed, some did [[Fulgrim|not even know that they were manipulated]] all this time and by whom, some would [[Lorgar|try to seek out something to place their faith upon]], not realizing what would needed to be done to become chosen in the eyes of the Gods. Plus, it's pretty damn hard to fight against something if you don't know that it exists. The Horus Heresy novels also mentioned the [[Interex]], another atheist empire who understood that threat of Chaos, but treated that information secularly and scientifically: they told every citizen everything that was known about "Kaos", and thus resisted the taint altogether (though this is an example of what's possible on the micro scale, unlikely to have worked on the macro scale considering Chaos was already waiting for the Emperor on Colchis in the form of Erebus and Kor Phaerom who'd have found a way to fuck things up one way or another). Unfortunately this still made them targets and the Imperium was used by Chaos as a cats-paw to wipe them out.

In the Emperor's long game, he knew that humanity was evolving into a psychic species with even more potential than the Eldar, and look what happened to them? E-money wanted mankind to be [[Star Trek|a utopia of science and reason]], by eliminating religion (and thus preventing the temptations of daemons), controlling psykers (and thus preventing random daemonic possessions), and eliminating warp travel by creating the Human Webway (and thus eliminating all human contact with Chaos when traveling through the Warp). He wanted to isolate humanity from the Chaos Gods, cause who gives a shit about the Ruinous Powers if they're stuck in the Warp with no way of getting out?

However, He made a critical mistake in disregarding the human need to believe in something greater than oneself, and despite His best efforts, nothing was enough to fill the place of religion in human society. Ironically, left without supervision, faith has proven to be an effective shield against Chaos. After He went off being the most powerful psychic cucumber in the universe, and lost direct control of the Imperium, belief in Him sort of helped the Imperium stand together against all odds. With the Warp being what it is, the act of worshiping the Emperor supercharged His power in the Immaterium to the point of being truly godlike, even while His body shut down and died. The Imperium's faith in the Emperor is basically their biggest anchor of bravery and perseverance in a universe where humanity is constantly beset by:

*[[Tyranids|Unimaginably massive swarms of voracious space locusts who exist only to feed and multiply their biomass]]...
*[[Necron|Older-than-Chaos-itself zombie-terminator robots set on culling all life from the galaxy]]...
*[[C'Tan|Diabolical celestial beings literally as old as the stars, whose single desire is harvesting all living souls]]...
*[[Orks|A race of nigh-unkillable barbarians, genetically engineered to have pastimes, ambitions, job skills, and dreams only be about rip and tear]]...
*[[Tau|Technologically superior but naive and dangerously unaware fish people wanting to assimilate everyone into their hierarchical caste system]]...
*[[Kroot|Humanoid wingless bird men cannibals who absorb traits from what they eat]]
*[[Vespid|Humanoid insects with claws capable of ripping through the toughest armour]] 
*[[Eldar|Snooty and uncaring space elves that can read minds and who eat, sleep, and have Heterosexual Sex in the Missionary Position in planet-sized battle cruisers]]...
*[[Dark Eldar|Psychotic, hedonistic space elves who routinely torture others to the point of death for sheer amusement before grinding their remains into refined cocaine and are callous enough to taunt their normal cousins over having to ally to survive]]...
*[[Leagues of Votann|A diverging offshoot from humanity that are now clones bio-engineered for their job and that are led by A.I.'s; and while willing to negociate/cooperate at times, are just as whimsically able and not particularly shy about killing everyone present in order to harvest all the resources off a planet if it serves their interests better]]...
*[[Chaos|Fanatical zealots that knowingly devote themselves to all that is insane or arrogant fools who think not being devoted makes their souls safe]]...
*[[Daemon|Nightmare horrors made real who will rape and eat, usually simultaneously, any sentient being they get their goat-hooves on]]...
*[[Chaos Space Marines|Deformed, demented traitors clad in power armor and aided by the evilest forms of weaponry and sorcery ever conceived]]...
*[[Lost and the Damned|Traitors who turn their backs on the Imperium and try to destroy it, perhaps out of legitimate causes being coopted by the aforementioned infohazard horrors or out of shits and giggles]]...
*[[Rak'gol|Homicidal alien, lizard, insect, cyborg type monster-pirates that horribly kill you for fun (and who may be the puppets of an older and even more malignant civilization)]]...
*[[Slaugth|Giant swarms of worms in cloaks who might be older than the Old Ones, are more sadistic than the Dark Eldar and more manipulative than regular Eldar, and feed on humans in the most disgusting and painful way imaginable (it involves maggots.)]]...
*[[Enslavers|Huge floating obese octopi that eat psykers souls and use theirbodies into warp portals]]...
*[[Q'Orl|Massive insectoid hive mind filled to the brim with heavy firepower and has a slow but growing empire that is one of the largest in the galaxy, dwarfing the Tau several hundred times over and is seen as the next successor of galactic domination after humanity's potential fall (if the traitors don't take over, which isn't exactly better for the average human]]...
*[[Hrud|Humanoid rats that cause anything, living or not, to rapidly decay through touch]]...
*[[Khrave|Powerfully psychic humanoid bats that feed on the minds of sentient beings, that can possess people from far away, and forge weapons from slid warp matter]]...
*[[Games Workshop|Malignant, omnipotent intelligence from beyond the cosmos, exerting all the power at their disposal to prevent any faction from breaking the stalemate or upsetting the dreadful status quo]]...
*[[Sly Marbo|And fuck knows who the guy in the cardboard box is]]...
	
Without their faith in the Emperor after His internment into the Golden Throne, the fragments of the Imperium would inevitably sought to change the mechanisms the Emperor set in place that keep the Imperium running to this day, not to mention the inevitable conflict that would've erupted over a militant athiest empire allied to a very religious technocracy. Much like IRL religion, whilst it can give hope and courage to fight on and survive in a universe that leaves the [[grimdark]] faucet running everyday and night, it also causes as much harm to the everyday mans lot through intolerance, having atrophied any possibility for change.

It's worth noting that good ol' Empy wouldn't have had nearly as much of a problem with all this unwanted worship if He hadn't, just as a quick example, insisted on wearing horrifyingly ornate solid gold armour and a big glowy halo at all times. Or on carrying a flaming sword of righteousness. Or on building continent-sized monuments to His vanity. Or on decking all His personal troops and favored genetic experiments in as much bling as they could possibly carry. Or on shapeshifting being eleven fucking feet tall. Or on creating a functional pantheon of genetically engineered demigods, one of whom looked like and was referred to as a literal Angel. If you look like space-Jesus and act like space-Jesus, people are going to take those observations to their extreme conclusions, like what Lorgar did when he wrote the ''Lectitio Divinitatus'', which can be summarized as "Ordinary men can't blow up suns and carry big glowy halos at all times, only a God can, therefore the Emprah is God." This is made even more relevant given that the fluff very strongly implies that the Emperor '''was''' Jesus. But you could also argue that when a man says I'm not a god, and I'm as close to one as you'll ever meet, you gotta admit how stupid mankind has got to be to ignore his advice entirely. Because mankind is so primitive that if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck even after being told scientifically that it is human fecal matter; he is willing to tell himself it is duck and will taste like one if he's hungry enough.

That said, to Games Workshop's credit His being buttfucked by His own hubris and disregard for the humanity He claimed to be guiding in this manner was probably [[Grimdark|intentional as a classic tale of Greek Tragedy]] or in an absolute grimdark alternative him having the foresight to see there really was no other option but an eternal stalemate. If ever there was a greater example of the man being just a man and not a god, you couldn't find it anywhere else than here.