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Has it helped the IoM survive the brutal 41st century or prevented the IoM from attaining its ancient glory?

I feel like it's doing both.

It's holding them back as the Imperial Faith restricts a lot of technology research among other things and such the Human race can't really advance as fast as it likely could.

On the other hand, it's helping as the Imperial Faith is one of the few things majority of Humans can agree on and is such one of the only things holding the IoM together as one Imperium

Faith in the Emperor serves as a rallying point for the Imperium, a single constant in a galaxy where two groups of humans might very well need to work together, despite having no common aspect to their culture.

 washout77 wrote:
I feel like it's doing both.

It's holding them back as the Imperial Faith restricts a lot of technology research among other things and such the Human race can't really advance as fast as it likely could.

That's Adeptus Mechanicus caution, compounded with the difficulty of improving upon the already highly optimized Imperial tech. The AdMech knows how dangerous untested technology can be, particularly considering the possibility of warp influence in something that manages to surpass their current systems.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:

 washout77 wrote:
I feel like it's doing both.

It's holding them back as the Imperial Faith restricts a lot of technology research among other things and such the Human race can't really advance as fast as it likely could.

That's Adeptus Mechanicus caution, compounded with the difficulty of improving upon the already highly optimized Imperial tech. The AdMech knows how dangerous untested technology can be, particularly considering the possibility of warp influence in something that manages to surpass their current systems.

This. The AdMech would keep innovation stagnant regardless of the imperial faith.

I think that, ultimately, the Imperial Faith is beneficial - not completely, but largely.

On one hand, it continuously creates a whole lot of smaller problems:
- it causes the occasional religiously motivated civil war (either due to clashes in Creed interpretation, or due to corrupted individuals abusing the devotion of their congregation)
- superstition, suspicion and fanatism can result in useful loyal subjects being unjustly killed (occasional troop purges, see communique)
- it can undoubtedly be labeled a huge consumer of resources, both in manpower and materials

On the other hand, it also continuously creates a number of effects of undoubtedly advantageous nature, which I believe outweigh the negatives:
- religious indoctrination and state-controlled worship creates a greater sense of unity (with the aforementioned civil wars being locally limited affairs - generally the entire Imperial Church coming down on some deviating planetary sect excommunicated for heresy)
- superstition, suspicion and fanatism can also be used to augment the willpower, conviction, and ultimately morale and fighting ability of Imperial troops and even citizen militias ("The Emperor protects!")

In the end, mankind needs a unifying force, and religious indoctrination is the easiest and safest tool to do the job - especially given the rather backwards nature of many Imperial worlds. Honest fear of divine retribution or forsakenness is a much greater deterrent against sedition than simple knowledge that many thousand light-years away, on some planet none of the local rulers has ever been to, there sits a group of people who may or may not send their armies against you, sometime in the next couple decades or centuries, should you choose to cease pay their outrageous tributes. The Imperium demands a lot, and the promise of salvation after death is a nice pacifier for the toiling masses. As such, I believe that the relative stability the Imperium has enjoyed in the time following the Horus Heresy is in large part due to the workings of the galaxywide operating Adeptus Ministorum, the many Clerics attending to the spiritual needs of a thousand worlds, and its tireless armies of Missionaries converting newly re-discovered human worlds to the Imperial Creed, backed up by bolter and powersword of the Sisters Militant and the countless lay-devotees within the Frateris Militia.

Given the circumstances the Imperium exists in, the vast distance between its semi-isolated worlds and the peculiarities of interstellar travel and communication, humanity is too weak to exist without faith as a unifying force to turn to for comfort in these dark times. The impressive speed with which faith has spread throughout Imperial space following the Emperor's death has proven this.

The millions of innocents that end up on the pyre, the mutants scolded and hunted for their twisted form, are merely collateral damage. Welcome to the 41st millennium.

It's the ideology that binds but at the same time holds back the Imperium. Interesting paradox.

Religious zealotry is a powerful tool for manipulating the uneducated masses.

As terrible as it may sound, I think it is actually a good in the way the Imperium is using it. I can't imagine an appeal to reason working in the Imperium as a method for unifying the disparate and ignorant throng lower echelons of humanity. Only because the typical Imperial citizen is portrayed as being quite ignorant.

Faith drives soldiers on through hell.

Imagine being a IG stationed with space marines defending a lost planet and you know it. Then a chaplain starts bellowing out war cries in the name of the Emperor, no doubt it would get you pumped up to be reminded of eternal glory to die in the name of the Emperor or that the Emperor watches over them.

Both. And this thread is going to explode once Melissa arrives.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:

 washout77 wrote:
I feel like it's doing both.

It's holding them back as the Imperial Faith restricts a lot of technology research among other things and such the Human race can't really advance as fast as it likely could.

That's Adeptus Mechanicus caution, compounded with the difficulty of improving upon the already highly optimized Imperial tech. The AdMech knows how dangerous untested technology can be, particularly considering the possibility of warp influence in something that manages to surpass their current systems.

Hmm, fair enough. I always saw them as more connected then they are I guess.

I still feel that if the Imperial Faith didn't exist then things would be less restrictive on Humans. Regardless however, it's the only thing holding them together at the point so it's one of those things that needs to be there

The Imperial Creed as laid out by the Church of the Saviour Emperor is the glue that holds the Imperium together. Without it, daemons and monsters would have overrun the Imperium a thousand times. There are no atheists in foxholes, and the Imperium has a lot of foxholes - without the Creed, those foxholes would be full of daemon-worshippers and chaos adherents.

The Cult Mechanicum on the other hand is a majorly detrimental force towards Imperial progress... but at the same time, without it it's entirely possible that the Imperium would have lost what little technological savvy it yet retains. The Cult Mechanicum provides a safe, easily distributable form of mechanical knowledge that is simple to remember because it has the structure of rote.

washout77 wrote:Hmm, fair enough. I always saw them as more connected then they are I guess.

They're actually fierce rivals and keep messing with each other whenever they're forced to the bargaining table. It's almost funny.

Like I've said many times, the Eclessiarchy is one of the most destructive forces in the Imperium. It is oppressive, resistant to change and new thought.

Which makes sense since it is basically a caricature of all the worst historical elements of organized religion. This is 40K after all. Everything is derivative.

But, at the same time, it's also an important element that keeps the Imperium together. And this is also deliberate, and part of the historical allusion. Essentially the Faith is a unifying element in the galaxy for humanity. So while ultimately it is a corrupt, depraved, violent, and unpleasant entity, it exists in a universe where being that way is what ensures survival. Only war, remember?

Keeping humanity united under a single faith keeps people from accidentally turning to the worship of other, more sinister things like Chaos, or alien cults, etc.


So, yes, the Imperial Faith is a bad thing. But it's also a necessary evil in a galaxy devoid of the Emperor or one of his primarch sons to lead it. Essentially, the Imperial Faith became the stand-in for the cult of personality provided by the Emperor, and for a short period of time, by Guilliman following the Heresy.

"There are no atheists in foxholes"

Space Marines are atheists

 Admiral Valerian wrote:
Space Marines are atheists

They might have started that way, but they aren't now.

 pretre wrote:

 Admiral Valerian wrote:
Space Marines are atheists

They might have started that way, but they aren't now.

Really? AFAIK, they certainly hold the Emperor in high regard, but it's more like veneration rather than actual worship. At least one novel I've read indicates they are atheist.

Yep, some of the chapters now have a religious approach.

 pretre wrote:
Yep, some of the chapters now have a religious approach.

Some, but not all. Faith in Humanity...RESTORED!

Technically spacemarines are not really humans anymore.....

No. The pre-Heresy Imperium called them "Legiones Astartes trans-Humans", while the post-Heresy Imperium calls them "Adeptus Astartes super-Humans". Make of that what you will.

Space Marines are humans at their absoloute prime

The Emperor decided to create the Space Marines. Even with the Horus Heresy, he decided to continue using Astartes, hence the founding of the Grey Knights by Malcador the Sigillite by Imperial Decree. So to those who believe the Emperor was wrong to create and deploy the Primarchs and Astartes while professing your support for the Ecclesiarchy...who are you to question the decisions of the God-Emperor?

It seems some people in this thread are questioning the Emperors word, do I have to do some enforcing?

Lol

It would be interesting to find out that the original genetic material used to make the zygotes and organs of the marines, were obtained from alien races that had the desired traits.....

Might explain why so many aspirants die in the process of implantation.

 Soo'Vah'Cha wrote:
It would be interesting to find out that the original genetic material used to make the zygotes and organs of the marines, were obtained from alien races that had the desired traits.....

No, they were obtained from the Primarchs. Who in turn were altered clones of the Emperor.

 Admiral Valerian wrote:

 Soo'Vah'Cha wrote:
It would be interesting to find out that the original genetic material used to make the zygotes and organs of the marines, were obtained from alien races that had the desired traits.....

No, they were obtained from the Primarchs. Who in turn were altered clones of the Emperor.

and where did the genetic material to give those organs to the primarchs come from......

 Soo'Vah'Cha wrote:

 Admiral Valerian wrote:

 Soo'Vah'Cha wrote:
It would be interesting to find out that the original genetic material used to make the zygotes and organs of the marines, were obtained from alien races that had the desired traits.....

No, they were obtained from the Primarchs. Who in turn were altered clones of the Emperor.

and where did the genetic material to give those organs to the primarchs come from......

Arcane genetic equipment from the Golden Age of Technology? His own psychic influence?