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Just read "The Last Church" short story in Tales of Heresy and I must say mind: blown. Reminded me of conversations I've had in real life. I think this is one of my favorite if not favorite BL story. Takes of Heresy has some other great stories too and its high on my list of Black Library books.

Yes, I really enjoyed this one as well. My particular views of religion (which I will not go into atm) are pretty inline with the reasoning described in the story by "Revelation" (the other main character, for those who haven't read it).

Mine too but I never felt the story was proselyting atheism. The Priest is a strong character too and the ending was tragic and ominous.

Really liked the story too. Question is though, are you the priest or the emperor?

What do you mean?

Myself, I am the Emperor. That is mostly how I view religion.

KamikazeCanuck wrote:What do you mean?

Well, one side you have the priest, he has lived a life of religion, and has all the good it has done; he chooses to die rather than live in a world that has no faith except in one warlord. The emperor, on the other hand, has seen religion do terrible things, and sees it as detrimental to people's behavior; he chooses to live in a world where no one dogmatically holds on to a faith.


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I might be over thinking it, but that's what I thought the story was conveying.

I guess I'll retroactivily warn people thread contains spoilers!

I enjoyed the exchange between the two but it is true that Revelation does dominate in their debate. Of course I would choose to side with The Emperor but I like feel that in the final pages The Priest makes his strongest points. For Example, The Priest says to him how is your crusade of atheism any different than the Holy Crusades of past which you condemn? To which The Emperor replies "because I know I'm right". Of course, all the others did too.

Or, you know,

Alpharius wrote:Or, you know,

Spoiler:

use the Spoilerr feature?

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Anyway, I googled this story to get Uriah's name and a board from B&C came up. They mentioned that B&C does not allow discussion of religon which I find lame on its own but also they seem to come to the conclusion That Revelation was an idiot using "cliches" to make his point. I thought you two guys paulgise and Nobody might find it interesting that their consenseus seemed to be the opposite of ours.
I thought Revelation made a convincing case and got fustrated that Uriah rebuttals often seemed to be "well that's what I believe" and "that's what I know in my heart". However, I wasn't fustrated with the story itself but with Uriah because he definately reminded me of some friends I've had intense discussions with years ago.

I really enjoyed this story for a couple reasons. It really cast the one side in a different light than I expected. My favorite part of the story was:



O, and this.

I liked the story.

Mainly because the the whole time he was convincing Uriah his beliefs are a lie, Emperor was the whole time completely full of malarkey. He knew what was best for mankind, did he? How about not putting Horus in charge of the Great Crusade, Mr. Smartypants?

Zeitgeist

Extinction Angel wrote:I really enjoyed this story for a couple reasons. It really cast the one side in a different light than I expected. My favorite part of the story was:

Spoiler:

When Uriah finally looked the Emperor in the eye and saw all the bad things he stood for. It was actually quite intriguing and makes you think about the motivations of the Emperor. And what if the Emperor knows what Uriah is saying will come to pass? Seems he's setting himself up to be the new dominiant Chaos power pretty well by making humanity stop caring/relying on Chaos/the Warp or any other entity besides himself.

Or, on the other hand, he was completely ignorant of what he was really doing, and by trying to remove all worship of anything (including himself) he would removed his warp presence as much as possible so that he might eventually sever humanities connection to the warp but still survive.

O, and this.

I now like Ricky Gervais even more.

I found it very interesting that Uriah says to Big E "how do you know they won't start worshipping you as God?" To which The Emperor says nothing.
That silence speaks volumes...or does it? A cynic could say The Emperor is just eliminating other religon to set himself up. Personally, I don't think so though. I found everything he said in all the previous pages denouncing religon very sincere.


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Monster Rain wrote:I liked the story.

Mainly because the the whole time he was convincing Uriah his beliefs are a lie, Emperor was the whole time completely full of malarkey. He knew what was best for mankind, did he? How about not putting Horus in charge of the Great Crusade, Mr. Smartypants?

Zeitgeist

There's a lot of Irony since we know how it all turns out. Once again Uriah has his best moments in the end where he basically says: What if your wrong? What if your wrong about everything?
And the ticking doomsday clock forshadows the Age of Inexplicable Events to come.

I think it was just regurgitated atheist/theist arguments that were likely kindled in ancient Greece. Or perhaps he read Thus Spoke Zarathustra and hoped no one else had. Really let down.



Note though, yet another person identified the Emperor as the Big E. It spreads and my plans continue unabated.

I don't know that reference and I'm not going to bother to check it out. What's discussed in the last church is nothing that any individual who's not afraid to think about the nature of their existence for more than 5 minutes has thought of. See the the above Ricky Gervais example for what a " normal" person contemplate. References to ancient Greek works is not required. It's existential simplicity is it's strength not it's weakness.

KamikazeCanuck wrote:I don't know that reference and I'm not going to bother to check it out. It's existential simplicity is it's strength not it's weakness.

Really, you should check it out. If you like the existential school of thought, Nietzsche would be enjoyable reading;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Nietzsche


His concept of the death of god, the rise of secularism and the Ubermensch (Supreme being) is found heavily in 40k (Whereas the Emperor is the Ubermensch heralding the rise of secularism, etc). Give him a shot.

AgeOfEgos wrote:
His concept of the death of god, the rise of secularism and the Ubermensch (Supreme being) is found heavily in 40k (Whereas the Emperor is the Ubermensch heralding the rise of secularism, etc). Give him a shot.

Compare the rise of secularism in the West though with a correspondingly weak church, add in muslim immigration (especially in Europe) and see what is happening. That secularism is targeting the traditional centres of christianity to the point where that religion is seen as meaningless by the masses, but in its absence there has been a huge rise in pagans, neo pagans, spiritualists etc but it is the uncompromising muslim faith that is forming a new core (and mirroring some of the "old fashioned" morals of our ancestors, at least in theory if not deed). The majority of us seem to need religion in some form, seem to need to believe in something other than what is in front of us, something to assure us that when we die we don't cease to exist.

I'm not using spoiler tags here, the story is a short one and has been around for some time, if someone doesn't want to know about the plot then they shouldn't look in this thread.
The point the Emperor is making is that Uriah has based his religious belief around a falsehood, even worse, that falsehood was created as a result of seeing the Emperor and thinking him an angel. The Emperor wants Uriah and those like him to see the universe for what it is, not some fantasy version based on ignorance and misunderstanding, quite where the mechanicum fits into that is another issue as they obviously are all about ignorance and misunderstanding and the Emperor forged an alliance with them rather than forcing them to adopt scientific principles. Who knows, perhaps if the Emperor had succeeded in reuniting the galaxy of man then he would have focused on issues like the machine god cult.

It may even be that the Emperor was so determined to stamp out religion because he had seen the nature of chaos and could see how chaos could gain a foothold by posing as a religious group. Uriah was wounded in battle when the Emperor found him and he mistook the Emperor as an angel of God come to save him, that was the moment he got religion and decided to become a priest. If that was all it took for him then it would be a simple matter for chaos to similarly appear to people on any world in the galaxy and have them become devoted believers, slowly corrupting them as they did so. I suspect this is another reason the Emperor opposed religion; maybe it was the major reason he did.

cadbren wrote:

AgeOfEgos wrote:
His concept of the death of god, the rise of secularism and the Ubermensch (Supreme being) is found heavily in 40k (Whereas the Emperor is the Ubermensch heralding the rise of secularism, etc). Give him a shot.

Compare the rise of secularism in the West though with a correspondingly weak church, add in muslim immigration (especially in Europe) and see what is happening. That secularism is targeting the traditional centres of christianity to the point where that religion is seen as meaningless by the masses, but in its absence there has been a huge rise in pagans, neo pagans, spiritualists etc but it is the uncompromising muslim faith that is forming a new core (and mirroring some of the "old fashioned" morals of our ancestors, at least in theory if not deed). The majority of us seem to need religion in some form, seem to need to believe in something other than what is in front of us, something to assure us that when we die we don't cease to exist.

I'm not using spoiler tags here, the story is a short one and has been around for some time, if someone doesn't want to know about the plot then they shouldn't look in this thread.
The point the Emperor is making is that Uriah has based his religious belief around a falsehood, even worse, that falsehood was created as a result of seeing the Emperor and thinking him an angel. The Emperor wants Uriah and those like him to see the universe for what it is, not some fantasy version based on ignorance and misunderstanding, quite where the mechanicum fits into that is another issue as they obviously are all about ignorance and misunderstanding and the Emperor forged an alliance with them rather than forcing them to adopt scientific principles. Who knows, perhaps if the Emperor had succeeded in reuniting the galaxy of man then he would have focused on issues like the machine god cult.

It may even be that the Emperor was so determined to stamp out religion because he had seen the nature of chaos and could see how chaos could gain a foothold by posing as a religious group. Uriah was wounded in battle when the Emperor found him and he mistook the Emperor as an angel of God come to save him, that was the moment he got religion and decided to become a priest. If that was all it took for him then it would be a simple matter for chaos to similarly appear to people on any world in the galaxy and have them become devoted believers, slowly corrupting them as they did so. I suspect this is another reason the Emperor opposed religion; maybe it was the major reason he did.

Well said and I agree with you. Since Chaos feeds on emotion and human frailty, it would make sense the more secular and logical we are(were, will be)...the less power the Chaos Gods would have.

I know of Nietzche of course I'm just saying I don't think Graham McNeil plagarized him or Machiavelli or anyone else. We've been talking about God for as long as we've been able to talk so some things are always going to seem reminiscient of previous works especially because this topic although heavy is actually quite simple. Anyways, one of BL's top stories imho and there was nary a shot fired!