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Maybe it's just me but I see some serious continuity issues between the Index Astartes articles and the Black Library fiction. The Indexes state time and time again that Marines almost universally do not consider the Emperor to be a god so much as just a progenitor (like good old granddaddy E) in direct conflict with the dogma touted by the Ecclesiarchy but I swear ever time I pick up a BL novel some battle brother manages to spend half the story spouting one liners about the GOD-Emperor. Sorry if I'm accidently beating a dead horse here but you'd think GW could manage to stay on top of something as simple as this.... any thoughts?

The same Index Astartes (Chaplains) you're quoting also notes that many Chapters worship their Primarch as a god or demi-god and the Emperor above that.

Either way, different marines believe different things and writers write different things. OMG big deal? Not so much.

Also, keep in mind that God-Emperor is basically a nickname for the guy. Just saying. Afterall, what else do you call a immortal guy who basically keeps the universe from devouring humanity?

Lastly, keep in mind that although the space marines as a whole may revere him as an ancestral patriarch, marines were once human and may still have the prejudices of their past lives.

Calling something a god isn't the same thing as worshiping it. Marines talk about the four gods of chaos, but they don't worship them.

In reguards to the God-Emperor they are using the term as a title, not indicating they worship him.

Excuse me for asking a question?

Index Astartes I

p.22 - "The Dark Angels Chapter gives praise the Emperor of Mankind but, much to the chagrin of the Ecclesiarchy, do not revere him as a god. Like most first Founding Chapter, the Dark Angels venerate their Primarch as much as they do the Emperor, who they worship as the founder of the Imperium and as their creator, to the Dark Angels the Emperor is a man, not a god."

p.45 - "The White Scars Space Marines hold true to the vision of Jaghatai Khan in the ultimate unification of Humanity. They venerate the Emperor as the ultimate Uniter and as their founding father, but not as a deity."

Making such straight forward unequivocal statements seems at odds with letting it slip in fiction on the grounds that it's "basically a nickname".

VoxTraffic wrote:Making such straight forward unequivocal statements seems at odds with letting it slip in fiction on the grounds that it's "basically a nickname".

Again, 'The God-Emperor of Mankind' is one of the ways that the Emperor is referred to. So when someone says 'for the Emperor' or 'For the God-Emperor' they are cutting it down to a more manageably usable size.

For non-space marines, they literally do pray to the emperor and expect him to make their crops better, cure their athlete's foot or come down and actually protect them from the Chaos Marine about to split their head in half.

Marines don't do that. No, marines exclaim their devotion to the Master of Mankind and know that they are responsible for making those things happen or they will die trying. Marines have always done this back to their creation. Being devoted to him can look like worship to the unitiated, but it is quite different.

And I would say that simply using the term implies acknowledgement of his divinity. Otherwise why use it? It's not like they're liable to confuse people if they just refer to him as the Emperor. In fact you have to put in some effort to say God-Emperor instead.

VoxTraffic wrote:And I would say that simply using the term implies acknowledgement of his divinity. Otherwise why use it? It's not like they're liable to confuse people if they just refer to him as the Emperor. In fact you have to put in some effort to say God-Emperor instead.

Using a title doesn't necessarily imply that you agree with the title. I think you're just being a bit nit-picky about it.

How many Emperors are there in the galaxy? Now how many God-Emperors of Mankind are there. That's right.

Heck the first Horus Heresy book fakes you out with its opening line because of that.

When it's God I think it does considering the Imperium was originally founded on principles of secular atheism and would willingly commit genocide against religious populations. And they manage to call him just the Emperor half the time and nobody gets confused so it just seems like a very silly slip up.

Not to mention your example is singularly unique and used in an intentionally facetious manner.

VoxTraffic wrote:When it's God I think it does.

Yeah, well, that's just, like, your opinion, man.

And they manage to call him just the Emperor half the time and nobody gets confused so it just seems like a very silly slip up.

It isn't a slip-up. It is intentional. You just don't like it. That's the problem.

And your example is singularly unique and intentionally facetious.

I said that when I quoted it, although I managed to not try to sound so pretentious.

And what would be the problem with them acknowledging his divinity exactly ?

To me it just seems "god" in the 40k setting is used to indicate an extremely powerful being that some have come to venerate. You don't have to worship something to recognize it as a god if "god" here means essentially "creature that could decimate a planet with mind-bullets". Kind of like an acknowledgement that it is powerful enough to warrant veneration by some.

To reiterate when the Emperor was willing to sanction genocide on the basis of belief in his own divinity I'd say it's a pretty big deal fluff wise whether or not even his greatest creations have lost so much connection with their ancient roots that they have allowed public perception to sway such a supposedly autonomous institution and have come to subconsciously accept the idea of him as a god even if the don't consciously and proactively worship him in any large numbers.

Remember this, some of the only marines who worshiped him as a god (of first founding) were the Word Bearers, and look how that turned out.

I can't recall the emporer ever saying he was a god, but I do remember him chastising the Word Bearers for worshiping him.

VoxTraffic wrote:To reiterate when the Emperor was willing to sanction genocide on the basis of belief in his own divinity I'd say it's a pretty big deal fluff wise whether or not even his greatest creations have lost so much connection with their ancient roots that they have allowed public perception to sway such a supposedly autonomous institution and have come to subconsciously accept the idea of him as a god even if the don't consciously and proactively worship him in any large numbers.

That's the irony of the Imperium. The Emperor and his marines fought and died for a truth that was lost in the time since he fell.

And that's my point - are the Astartes the last bastion of Rationalism or aren't they? Cause I'm getting mixed messages from the available literature.

Isn't there some sororitas here to burn heretics which do not worship the God-Emperor ?

VoxTraffic wrote:And that's my point - are the Astartes the last bastion of Rationalism or aren't they? Cause I'm getting mixed messages from the available literature.

That's not just your point; that's the point of the setting. There is no last bastion of Rationalism. Even the most rational voices in the setting have a bit of reverence for the Emperor as a God in their background, which colors their interpretation. They may think of him just as a Primogenitor, but they still act as if he is more than that.

VoxTraffic wrote:And that's my point - are the Astartes the last bastion of Rationalism or aren't they? Cause I'm getting mixed messages from the available literature.

I have an urge to say "don't trust novels", because I cannot imagine how you could maintain a coherent background with multiple authors with varying levels of respect for the official stuff ; from what I've gathered GW doesn't even care about consistency.
I for one don't give it a second thought when I encounter something contradicting the original fluff in a novel ; it's nothing, just artistic licence or a little confusion.

I try not to think too hard about it, but it's basically glorified fanfiction.

pretre wrote another possibility I had in mind, but at that point it's kind of... blurry. Maybe they acknowledge him as Humanity's god even though they do not venerate him as such themselves.

Eh fair enough. In the end we'll never really know (unless somebody's up for kidnapping Jervis?) but I thought it was worth a little discussion.

I'm with you VoxTraffic.

When the Wolftime comes and the Allfather is reborn he will not be happy that humanity worships him, as the Great Crusade was intended to bring enlightenment to humanity and stop them from worshipping false gods.

Finally someone. Thank you Toast.

Oh, I agree with that. The Emperor would not be happy with where humanity is, but that doesn't change the fact of where they are.

VoxTraffic wrote:considering the Imperium was originally founded on principles of secular atheism

The Imperium of 40k was established only 3 thousand years ago specifically as a religious state.

The Emperor's Imperium was never even founded.

VoxTraffic wrote:Eh fair enough. In the end we'll never really know (unless somebody's up for kidnapping Jervis?) but I thought it was worth a little discussion.

Jervis has nothing to do with it. You want to grab Alan Merett. He's the keeper of the IP.

Really though, GW doesn't care about consistency. THey've said this many times. Take all of the fluff, even the contradicting stuff, and build your own universe to play in out of it. This is why arguing about 40k fluff is stupid.

pretre wrote:

VoxTraffic wrote:To reiterate when the Emperor was willing to sanction genocide on the basis of belief in his own divinity I'd say it's a pretty big deal fluff wise whether or not even his greatest creations have lost so much connection with their ancient roots that they have allowed public perception to sway such a supposedly autonomous institution and have come to subconsciously accept the idea of him as a god even if the don't consciously and proactively worship him in any large numbers.

That's the irony of the Imperium. The Emperor and his marines fought and died for a truth that was lost in the time since he fell.

No, the irony of the Imperium is that the Imperial Truth was a lie from the very beginning.

It depends on the chapter. The black templars believe in him as a god. Other chapters do not. No chapters are alike.

VoxTraffic wrote:And they manage to call him just the Emperor half the time and nobody gets confused so it just seems like a very silly slip up.

I wouldn't say it's a slip up - the 40k franchise seems to deliberately lack a canon policy for the sake of greater freedom for its various writers, possibly even to maximize profits by appealing to certain segments of the fanbase with how powerful "their" favorite faction is presented in some book or video game. Since these segments usually do not consume the books and games that have their factions' opponents as protagonists, few people notice that there is actually very little consistency in the 40k setting when it comes to details. On their forums, THQ even went so far as to state that their Space Marine computer game takes place in an alternate timeline to explain the existence of a different 2nd Company Captain or various weapons that don't appear elsewhere.

It all comes down to different interpretations, and the more people you have writing in any given setting without strict enforcement of continuity, the more opinions and preferences you'll end up with, some of whom may simply not be compatible to others.

As Gav Thorpe once wrote on his blog:
"Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 exist as tens of thousands of overlapping realities in the imaginations of games developers, writers, readers and gamers. None of those interpretations is wrong."

Or this one from Andy Hoare:
"It all stems from the assumption that there’s a binding contract between author and reader to adhere to some nonexistent subjective construct or ‘true’ representation of the setting. There is no such contract, and no such objective truth. I understand that Tolkien took decades developing his setting before publishing the stories set within it, and still made mistooks. 40k is an ever-evolving setting designed first and foremost to house a really cool game, and as such things don’t always mesh or translate, or they (actually very occasionally) get changed outright. I know which I’d rather be reading and writing. "

And from Aaron-Dembski Bowden's blog:
"I’ve read 40K novels that categorically violate my opinions and perceptions of how 40K works, and I have no trouble ignoring them afterwards."

The only thing that keeps creating a lot of confusion amongst the fanbase is that a vast number of people still maintain that everything is supposed to "fit" to anything simply because it bears the 40k label. Everyone points at Lexicanum for informations, which admittedly is a neat repository of fluff, but makes the huge mistake of trying to lump any bit of info into a single continuity when in reality it's "just" a dozen different interpretations from a dozen different writers. The only thing I can do about it is advise caution and don't put everything you read on the golden scales as I once did.

tl;dr: Some people like the "God-Emperor" stuff as one of the typical 40k clichés and use it even in combination with Marines. Others stick to the Codex descriptions about the Astartes' thinking of him as a normal man as being a defining trait. Neither is wrong, there's just a lot of material catering to both crowds. If you're lucky, you know an author who sticks to an interpretation that is "in line" with your own, so you can focus on what he or she writes and simply not bother with the rest.