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So, I have been wanting to ask this question for awhile, which was better for the Imperium, the Emperor's plan to make the Imperium of Man atheistic through the Imperial Doctrine or was a better plan to deify him? We all know the power of Chaos and how it is fueled by the emotions and thoughts of all the species that are connected to the warp like humans, Eldar and orks. This is how several of the gods of the warp have risen and fallen regardless if they are Chaotic or not, I mean Gork and Mork are going pretty strong and the Chaos gods have yet to best them. The Emperor knew this and he knew of the Chaos gods and the threat they would pose to humanity should they ever rise and his vision of humanity to be complete. Humanity did rise but instead of instilling a foundation of faith to combat Chaos (after he stole esoteric knowledge from them to make the Primarchs and Space Marines) like humans did in the past, he decided to create an atheistic society in the hope that if you didn't believe in the Chaos gods, they would loose their power which is a valid strategy but would total ignorance be that great of course? Obviously not because the Horus Heresy still happened. But I ask this question, would it of been better to do what Lorgar did without knowing it, and deify the Emperor thus putting humanities beliefs and thoughts into him and getting a human version of Gork and Mork or the Eldar Gods? Would that of protected the Imperium of Man better? Or is the answer somewhere in between like that society that Loken comes across in Horus Rising where the planet of humans had contact with the Eldar who taught them about Chaos and how best to avoid it? The Grey Knights do this, they know about Chaos and use their wills actively against but at the same time the Sisters do the same thing with full faith in the Emperor as their shield against corruption. Could it be a mix of the strategies? I always like to say that the Grey Knights and the Sisters are two sides of the same coin because both ways have shown to be the anathema of Chaos or are these too disciplined for the wiles of humanity? Does Chaos reflect the ultimate flaws of humanity?

So, let's discuss the philosophical implications of Warhammer 40k!

Was it right to avoid putting knowledge of the chaos gods (and chaos generally) in the hands of the general populace?

Probably.

Was it incredibly stupid to avoid giving his sons more detailled warnings than "don't, because I said so" when they had the skills, power and access to encounter the effects of chaos on their own?

Definitely.

Unfortunately the chaos gods don't require explicit belief in them. They feed/consist of the aggregation of emotions: Rage, Lust, Despair and Ambition respectively.
As long as their are emotional sentient beings in the galaxy, the warp won't be calm, and as long as you need to punch holes into and out of the warp for astropathic messages, interstellar flight and setting people on fire with lightning, chaos will have a way into the material realm.

Faith alone isn't an answer. Adepta Sororitas have fallen to chaos before.

And soon the first grey knight ever shall fall to tzeentch

Chaos reflects the flaws of mortality. An atheistic society would not be proof against it. Also, the Imperium is *vast*. There's no way you could maintain such a system for very long.

locarno24 wrote:
Was it right to avoid putting knowledge of the chaos gods (and chaos generally) in the hands of the general populace?

Probably.

Was it incredibly stupid to avoid giving his sons more detailled warnings than "don't, because I said so" when they had the skills, power and access to encounter the effects of chaos on their own?

Definitely.

Unfortunately the chaos gods don't require explicit belief in them. They feed/consist of the aggregation of emotions: Rage, Lust, Despair and Ambition respectively.
As long as their are emotional sentient beings in the galaxy, the warp won't be calm, and as long as you need to punch holes into and out of the warp for astropathic messages, interstellar flight and setting people on fire with lightning, chaos will have a way into the material realm.

Faith alone isn't an answer. Adepta Sororitas have fallen to chaos before.

So keeping the knowledge of Chaos out of the hands of the general public is good because the majority of humanity would be driven insane by the implications, half the reason why the Inquisition has the doctrine it does but to give that knowledge to the protectors and guardians of the Imperium is a good thing so they at least they know what they are protecting them from. I can definitely see that but at the same time, humans fall to Chaos whether they know it or not while the Eldar seem to do just fine with letting everyone know about Chaos and how to best avoid it.

Look at the orks, their own believes and will is direct opposition to Chaos with Gork and Mork being able to go combat Chaos if they ever care to.

The warp is a strange place and I am unsure if one strategy would ever work. Even the Eldar in their infinite "wisdom" fall to Chaos all the time, although the only part of Chaos they truly despise is Slaanesh besides that one Ulthwe and that one Craftworld who will even ally with humans to combat Chaos. Do they even really even worship their old gods besides Khaine? I know they have one of their goddesses being held by Nurgle but is she still being actively worshipped. Even then giving themselve to Khaine can sometimes mean they fall to Khorne.

The Emperor's plan was doomed to failure from the start, which adds more weight to the argument that the Emprah wasn't nearly as smart as he liked to think he was. The Chaos Gods feed on emotions, not faith. An axe-mad psycho killer doesn't need to believe in Khorne to feed him. He just needs to do the sort of things an axe-mad psycho killer does on a normal day. Nurgle doesn't need people to worship him, he just needs a lot of people to die from plague. Slaanesh doesn't need people to worship him, he just needs a lot of really kinky people having really kinky drug-fuelled orgies.

People can feed the Chaos Gods without even knowing of their existence.

The Emperor should have deified himself as hard as he could, because his power comes not from emotion, but from faith. If everybody worshipped him at the outset of the Heresy, the loyalists might have been able to perform acts of faith like the Sororitas, which would have been awesome to see.

squidhills wrote:
The Emperor's plan was doomed to failure from the start, which adds more weight to the argument that the Emprah wasn't nearly as smart as he liked to think he was. The Chaos Gods feed on emotions, not faith. An axe-mad psycho killer doesn't need to believe in Khorne to feed him. He just needs to do the sort of things an axe-mad psycho killer does on a normal day. Nurgle doesn't need people to worship him, he just needs a lot of people to die from plague. Slaanesh doesn't need people to worship him, he just needs a lot of really kinky people having really kinky drug-fuelled orgies.

People can feed the Chaos Gods without even knowing of their existence.

The Emperor should have deified himself as hard as he could, because his power comes not from emotion, but from faith. If everybody worshipped him at the outset of the Heresy, the loyalists might have been able to perform acts of faith like the Sororitas, which would have been awesome to see.

I think this is where I kind of stand on things as well. If people had faith in the Emperor and he had a whole bunch more when he faced Horus, he might not have lost against him or at least not be as wounded as he was. These are all what-ifs, of course.

What about Orks though, how does everything they do go to Gork and Mork instead of Khorne for example?

 raiden wrote:
And soon the first grey knight ever shall fall to tzeentch

Source? That would pretty much invalidate their purpose/lore if one fell to chaos

 WrentheFaceless wrote:

 raiden wrote:
And soon the first grey knight ever shall fall to tzeentch

Source? That would pretty much invalidate their purpose/lore if one fell to chaos

The quote in the Daemon Codex where the Changling was almost able to persuade a GK but it is never a confirmed fall to Chaos and is mostly speculation.

 Envihon wrote:

What about Orks though, how does everything they do go to Gork and Mork instead of Khorne for example?

That's easy. Khorne is the god of rage and hatred and killing.

Gork and Mork are gods of love and fornication.

Think about Ork psychology and biology for a second. Orks love fighting. They *love* it. There is nothing an Ork would rather do than fight. They don't even have to win, they just have to krump something. They also reproduce when fighting, via spores that get released. A battle is, to an Ork, religious worship, casual sex, a good way to make money (knock some teef out!) and the most fun he can possibly have while standing upright. Orks don't get joy from killing; they get joy from fighting. Yeah, a lot of stuff ends up dead when they fight, but that is a byproduct of a really good fight, not the whole reason for the fight. Orks also really love having opponents who can offer them a challenge and provide a really good fight. The better the opponent, the better the fight, the more fun the Ork has. Khorne just wants to spill blood, orks want to have a good time out with the ladz.

That's why Orks don't fuel Khorne; he feeds on emotions different than those commonly experienced by Orks during a battle.

Well, considering it was the Emperor's forced atheism that drove the Word Bearers to Chaos and got the Horus Heresy started, in hindsight it would have been better had the Emperor allowed his deification.

It should also be noted that the Emperor was worshipped as a divine being in his own lifetime by large sections of Humanity, right there on Terra. He certainly didn't do anything to stop them.

squidhills wrote:
The Emperor's plan was doomed to failure from the start, which adds more weight to the argument that the Emprah wasn't nearly as smart as he liked to think he was. The Chaos Gods feed on emotions, not faith. An axe-mad psycho killer doesn't need to believe in Khorne to feed him. He just needs to do the sort of things an axe-mad psycho killer does on a normal day. Nurgle doesn't need people to worship him, he just needs a lot of people to die from plague. Slaanesh doesn't need people to worship him, he just needs a lot of really kinky people having really kinky drug-fuelled orgies.

People can feed the Chaos Gods without even knowing of their existence.

Right, but before the Heresy, it was obvious that the baseline amount of anger and rage was not sufficient enough to manifest Chaos in most places.

Just as there was excess and debauchery before the Eldar birthed Slaanesh, there was hate, and decay and change. But it wasn't enough to spill the Warp into reality. It took a sex and magic party of galactic proportions to create the Eye of Terror. However, not educating the Primarchs, who were both vulnerable, and wielded great power, was potentially an error because the Ruinous Powers were able to trick Lorgar with false promises, and his subversion set off a chain reaction to create another cataclysmic event. Passing that knowledge of Chaos onto the regular masses would have been dangerous, and moreso, served no purpose.

However, it's not even a sure thing that the Primarchs needed to know about Chaos. Lorgar was vulnerable because he was emotionally weak, and was seeking validation after being rebuked at Monarchia. There's really nothing to say that if he had known about Chaos that he would have been able to resist him. He fell to Chaos because he wanted to be accepted, he wanted his existence to be validated, and the Emperor didn't give him that validation. If he had known about the Ruinous Powers, there's really nothing to say that he wouldn't have then just sought them out, instead of the other way around. Or that the lies they told him just wouldn't have been crafted a different way to exploit him. To prevent the Heresy, maybe all the Emperor needed to do was be less heavy-handed with Lorgar. Humiliating him in front of his legion, and using the one brother he was more jealous of than any other (Guilliman) to do it was pretty shortsighted. Or, you could even craft it as cruel if you want to argue it was intentional. I mean, did the Emperor use the Ultramarines because the Ultramarines were the most loyal and reliable of his Marines, or did he use them as a lesson of "Why can't you be more like Roboute?" which exacerbated Lorgar's feelings of rejection. Either way, you have Lorgar who loved the Emperor more than any of the other Primarchs, and then the Emperor told him "You're doing it wrong." and brought The Good Son (Guilliman) along with him to leverage the punishment. I mean, imagine being the scrawny child in a big family, and then your dad brings your older brother who is the student body president and captain of the football team, and has him break your toys.

But on the other point, the truth is, the rise of the Ecclesiarchy simply filled the gap in cult of personality. There's little functional difference between the Emperor when he was "alive" serving as the focal figurehead for Humanity, and the Ecclesiarchy turning him into a God. The Emperor was always an "idea" to most of Humanity rather than a real thing. Even at the height of the Crusade, how many of the individual soldiers would have ever seen him? How many of the countless billions across the galaxy? The Emperor as a "god" is no different from the Emperor as "the leader of the Imperium" to somebody who has never seen him. Religion is just another in a number of social controls, like nationalism and patriotism.

The rise of the Ecclesiarchy is just a small group exploiting the idea to grab power in the post-Emprah Imperium. Codifying the worship of the Emprah changed very little, effectively. It only changed the functional "worship" of the Emperor. If anything, the Ecclesiarchy's version is more dangerous than the Emperor's, because it changed the devotion to the Emprah from more or less voluntary, to compulsory. And compulsion almost always leads to dissatisfaction and unrest.

It's really a fairly complicated thing to analyze the cause and effect though, since it all exists in an imaginary universe of "Because I said so" by the authors of the setting, rather than a real place. One could hypothesize that the Heresy removed all of the constant reminders of the Emperor and how good everything is because of Him. The Pre-Heresy Imperium had the Emprah, and the Primarchs, and the Marine Legions, and the Great Crusade etc as constant visual reminders and a sense of unity. The slow societal decline Post-Heresy is also a huge contributor to the way Chaos can infiltrate the Imperium.

Things never happen in a vacuum. You can't really just look at the idea of "Would the Imperium be better with or without religion". Because the religion only came about as a result of a string of other factors. There was very little causal relationship between deifying himself, or not, and the Heresy. The Primarchs didn't need to worship him, and neither did the rest of humanity. Though worshiping him also isn't the reason why everything is goofed up either. The Ecclesiarchy is a necessary evil. With perhaps only a slight emphasis on evil, lol.

That is a well thought out analysis.

But here is another question, if it wasn't Lorgar, would it of been someone else? Magnus perhaps? In Thousand Sons a daemon of Tzeentch or even Tzeentch himself said it was suppose to be Magnus that fell and started the Heresy, not Lorgar and Horus. Would of the knowledge of Chaos changed the path that the Thousand Sons took? Would he have listened to the Rune Priest more if they had known. Would they freaking have familiars had they known what was actually in the warp? What about Horus? Even after Peturabo found out what Chaos was, he wasn't saved from his fate.

There is no way to completely shield ourselves from Chaos because it represents our most basic of instincts and emotions, the battle with the Imperium is the battle to civilize ourselves and the constant struggle to do so.

The issue with the Emperor deifying himself is that should he ever fall in battle, be defeated or even momentarily overpowered by a "mere mortal" then his deity status and dreams come crashing down around him.

To quote the bad guy in Iron Man 2 whose name eludes me "If you make God bleed, people stop believe he is God."

Which is true. Think how little faith the Imperium would have in him if they new he had fallen against Horus, even one backed by other/false gods?

 Deadshot wrote:
The issue with the Emperor deifying himself is that should he ever fall in battle, be defeated or even momentarily overpowered by a "mere mortal" then his deity status and dreams come crashing down around him.

To quote the bad guy in Iron Man 2 whose name eludes me "If you make God bleed, people stop believe he is God."

Which is true. Think how little faith the Imperium would have in him if they new he had fallen against Horus, even one backed by other/false gods?

He kind of did fall to Horus and yet people still are fanatical about him because of his sacrifice. Imagine the power he would of wielded if he had encouraged it though? Tremendous power to the point that Horus wouldn't of been anything to him. And I believe what got the Emperor more was not that Horus was going to beat him but that the Emperor had to fight his own son. This is the same guy that told the Chaos gods to feth off, I am stealing this knowledge from you which is what pissed off the Chaos gods in the first place. Just as the Chaos gods don't have to worry about this, I would say the same is true for the Emperor.

 Envihon wrote:

 Deadshot wrote:
The issue with the Emperor deifying himself is that should he ever fall in battle, be defeated or even momentarily overpowered by a "mere mortal" then his deity status and dreams come crashing down around him.

To quote the bad guy in Iron Man 2 whose name eludes me "If you make God bleed, people stop believe he is God."

Which is true. Think how little faith the Imperium would have in him if they new he had fallen against Horus, even one backed by other/false gods?

He kind of did fall to Horus and yet people still are fanatical about him because of his sacrifice. Imagine the power he would of wielded if he had encouraged it though? Tremendous power to the point that Horus wouldn't of been anything to him. And I believe what got the Emperor more was not that Horus was going to beat him but that the Emperor had to fight his own son. This is the same guy that told the Chaos gods to feth off, I am stealing this knowledge from you which is what pissed off the Chaos gods in the first place. Just as the Chaos gods don't have to worry about this, I would say the same is true for the Emperor.

The question is would he have been powered up by faith even in mortal form?
Also, he fell and then ascended to Divinity by shedding his mortal form. If the Emperor had claimed to be a God and then fallen the faith would have been shattered. It would be like the Orks watch Gork and Mork debate Socrates and other philosophy.

 Envihon wrote:

squidhills wrote:
The Emperor's plan was doomed to failure from the start, which adds more weight to the argument that the Emprah wasn't nearly as smart as he liked to think he was. The Chaos Gods feed on emotions, not faith. An axe-mad psycho killer doesn't need to believe in Khorne to feed him. He just needs to do the sort of things an axe-mad psycho killer does on a normal day. Nurgle doesn't need people to worship him, he just needs a lot of people to die from plague. Slaanesh doesn't need people to worship him, he just needs a lot of really kinky people having really kinky drug-fuelled orgies.

People can feed the Chaos Gods without even knowing of their existence.

The Emperor should have deified himself as hard as he could, because his power comes not from emotion, but from faith. If everybody worshipped him at the outset of the Heresy, the loyalists might have been able to perform acts of faith like the Sororitas, which would have been awesome to see.

I think this is where I kind of stand on things as well. If people had faith in the Emperor and he had a whole bunch more when he faced Horus, he might not have lost against him or at least not be as wounded as he was. These are all what-ifs, of course.

What about Orks though, how does everything they do go to Gork and Mork instead of Khorne for example?

The Emperor could have annihilated Horus from the start had he wanted to. He couldn't bring himself to do it because it was his son. IN many ways, the Emperor was eternally an optimist. I

At the same time, the Emperor let's his faithful know he is around because of everything that is done in his name, the Sisters literally banish daemons with faith, that would of confirmed that the Emperor was a God by itself.

As long as you continue to perform miracles after your death, people will still believe in you. Modern religions in the real world do enough to prove that point.

Read the official short story, "The Last Church". Pretty much answers the question explicitly. Well, at the very least, it's implied that the protagonist/narrator was the one who was correct when he warned that mankind would deify the Emperor anyways because that was their emotional need.


Emps simply could not understand the common man.

TiamatRoar wrote:
Read the official short story, "The Last Church". Pretty much answers the question explicitly. Well, at the very least, it's implied that the protagonist/narrator was the one who was correct when he warned that mankind would deify the Emperor anyways because that was their emotional need.


Emps simply could not understand the common man.

That is almost a tragedy in itself but at the same time, if the Emperor did everything "correctly" we wouldn't have this awesome grim, dark universe to play war in!

I think your logics goes in the opposite direction. The fluff's written not on the perspective of 'X caused Y which in return caused Z'. It's written from the perspective of 'Z is cool and grimdark! It's X now, so what should we add to make X go to Z...'.

This is one of the greatest threads I've ever read. Wow. Theory of Knowledge meets the Horus Heresy. Fantastic.

It is tragic, indeed, and the very idea of betrayal is what makes the HH so fascinating, I think. All these Primarchs are the Emperor's sons--they have tremendous faith, and even love for him, as the Space Marines do for their Primarchs--it's genetically encoded, almost. So I guess all of the "traitors" can be seen as losing their faith in him...or gaining faith in other forces, in the Word Bearers' case, at least.

I am ALMOST up to date with the HH books, and am really enjoying getting more insights into the psychology and motivations of the Primarchs. Angel Exterminatus, for instance, was great for looking into Perturabo's mind, which the OP hints at. Same with Magnus in Thousand Sons, obviously, and I am currently reading "Scars" which is cool too, since I know almost nothing about that Chapter or Primarch. Kharn was very interesting in "Betrayer" to me for much the same reason. This echoes the earlier theory that you don't have to love Khorne to please him, but merely slaughter things. Angron wasn't determined to join Chaos; just too tormented to avoid it, I guess. And Kharn had no interest in this, but I guess those nails just bite too deeply....

The character that is singularly dissatisfying to me is Mortarion. In the early novels, there are such meagre justifications of why he would "turn." There's more in the new HH Isstvaan books, in the fluff, about how he was taken forcibly by the Emperor from his planet (like Angron, in a way), and that helps, but I am hoping for a dedicated HH book about him, and his "loss of faith."

Anyway, awesome discussion--thanks to you all!

 pantheralegionnaire wrote:
This is one of the greatest threads I've ever read. Wow. Theory of Knowledge meets the Horus Heresy. Fantastic.

It is tragic, indeed, and the very idea of betrayal is what makes the HH so fascinating, I think. All these Primarchs are the Emperor's sons--they have tremendous faith, and even love for him, as the Space Marines do for their Primarchs--it's genetically encoded, almost. So I guess all of the "traitors" can be seen as losing their faith in him...or gaining faith in other forces, in the Word Bearers' case, at least.

I am ALMOST up to date with the HH books, and am really enjoying getting more insights into the psychology and motivations of the Primarchs. Angel Exterminatus, for instance, was great for looking into Perturabo's mind, which the OP hints at. Same with Magnus in Thousand Sons, obviously, and I am currently reading "Scars" which is cool too, since I know almost nothing about that Chapter or Primarch. Kharn was very interesting in "Betrayer" to me for much the same reason. This echoes the earlier theory that you don't have to love Khorne to please him, but merely slaughter things. Angron wasn't determined to join Chaos; just too tormented to avoid it, I guess. And Kharn had no interest in this, but I guess those nails just bite too deeply....

The character that is singularly dissatisfying to me is Mortarion. In the early novels, there are such meagre justifications of why he would "turn." There's more in the new HH Isstvaan books, in the fluff, about how he was taken forcibly by the Emperor from his planet (like Angron, in a way), and that helps, but I am hoping for a dedicated HH book about him, and his "loss of faith."

Anyway, awesome discussion--thanks to you all!

Angel Exterminatus is probably one of my favorite books because of how it paints Perturabo. It is something that makes me like the Iron Warriors despite being an Imperial Fist fanboy. Magnus will always be the most favored son, he did everything he could to do what he was suppose to in order to stop Horus from falling and then to make sure the Emperor was prepared for the betrayal but it all would be all for naught. I think the same could be for Angron as well and Kharn is a great character as well, the voice of reason to a Primarch that is almost half insane. They definitely need to characterize Mortarion more with my favorite appearance from him being when he battled Kaldor Draigo in Mortarion's Heart.

I have never looked at the Horus Heresy in the light of it representing the Traitor Primarchs loss of faith in man but now that I look at it in that light, it definitely looks like that and many of the Traitor Primarchs have good reasons why they are disgruntled, reasons that when I am reading them I can't help but relate to their struggles and how they feel.

The one thing I really like is how the note the personality differences between the Loyal and Traitor Primarchs to make them so contrasting. The thing I like about the Horus Heresy is that Chaos isn't presented as this big baddy full of evil but it is a matter of perspective because some of the Traitor Primarchs I absolutely adore like the Perturabo and Magnus while others I hate like Fulgrim but it isn't about what side they are on but their motivations for doing so. I think that modern 40k has kind of loss this.

This opens up a whole other can of worms though with analyzing why some of the Primarchs stayed loyal and the others betrayed. I especially like the struggles of Rogal Dorn and so far with all that I have read/listened to, he is the most fleshed out for me and I love his struggle to stay loyal and keep the dream of the Imperium even as it is falling apart around him. How were the Loyal Primarchs able to resist Chaotic temptation and keep their faith in their father? Primarchs like Magnus and Perturabo outright rejected Chaos as much as the Loyalist did but they were still turned into Daemon Princes, mostly because they were further betrayed by their brother Primarchs.

I think that with the mentality of mankind, to diefy yourself is to force it onto people. There would have been civil war. To ust do the deeds and have the people themselves diefy you "against your wishes" is to be much more powerfull. I think the Emperor knew this and with his power and lifespan, he could wait.

[quote}
The one thing I really like is how the note the personality differences between the Loyal and Traitor Primarchs to make them so contrasting. The thing I like about the Horus Heresy is that Chaos isn't presented as this big baddy full of evil but it is a matter of perspective because some of the Traitor Primarchs I absolutely adore like the Perturabo and Magnus while others I hate like Fulgrim but it isn't about what side they are on but their motivations for doing so. I think that modern 40k has kind of loss this.

This opens up a whole other can of worms though with analyzing why some of the Primarchs stayed loyal and the others betrayed. I especially like the struggles of Rogal Dorn and so far with all that I have read/listened to, he is the most fleshed out for me and I love his struggle to stay loyal and keep the dream of the Imperium even as it is falling apart around him. How were the Loyal Primarchs able to resist Chaotic temptation and keep their faith in their father? Primarchs like Magnus and Perturabo outright rejected Chaos as much as the Loyalist did but they were still turned into Daemon Princes, mostly because they were further betrayed by their brother Primarchs.

 Psienesis wrote:
Chaos reflects the flaws of mortality. An atheistic society would not be proof against it. Also, the Imperium is *vast*. There's no way you could maintain such a system for very long.

Right, this is a good point. Either way, Chaos will be able to influence societies. Changing creeds doesn't proof against it, willpower is what can provide some protection.

I think that the advantage offered by going fully zealous is that it's easier to whip the citizens up into a frenzy against any malacious influences. If the Imperium's people are raisied believing that they must serve a divine power, and be ever-wary of dark forces looking to attack them, then it's moderately easier to deal with Chaos overall. It's certainly not a guranteed shield, but it's a slight edge.

 Envihon wrote:
Or is the answer somewhere in between like that society that Loken comes across in Horus Rising where the planet of humans had contact with the Eldar who taught them about Chaos and how best to avoid it? The Grey Knights do this, they know about Chaos and use their wills actively against but at the same time the Sisters do the same thing with full faith in the Emperor as their shield against corruption. Could it be a mix of the strategies? I always like to say that the Grey Knights and the Sisters are two sides of the same coin because both ways have shown to be the anathema of Chaos or are these too disciplined for the wiles of humanity?

Yeah, I think the GK/SoB methods are some of the best ways that a person can resist Chaos, they're not really methods that can be adopted for general use. GKs and SoBs are very special individuals, who have all gone through very gruelling training regimes that not all trainees succeed in. While it does allow these particular forces to resist Chaos very well, I'd say that most of the general population couldn't manage it. The GK method of understanding Chaos to fight it especially wouldn't work too well, as that would mean spreading knowledge of Chaos, which rarely ends well.

Overall, I'd say that the Imperium's current stance is more or less the best it can do, considering the circumstances. It probably was best to shift gears to a more aggressively zealous society, so as to have some marginally better protection against Chaotic influence. Though, granted, this policy isn't perfectly applied (there are plenty of dissatisfied peasants who probably aren't very enthusiastic about their faith).

I don't think the emperor was trying to make society atheistic, instead that was just a step on the way toward his ultimate goal.

Atheism is the refusal of a divine creator such as a god. In order for there to be atheism there must first be some kind of notion of a creator. Both of these standpoints are beliefs. Beliefs bring about emotion, and are formed through inner contemplation and shared experiences. The emotions and experiences that go into religion are those that carry over into ones whole life. Religion, and atheism seek to answer, justify, and or rationalize these experiences into having some kind of meaning.

Religion and atheism are both central to human emotion. They allow us to justify or villainize actions and emotions. Someone that is religious might look at the world and think it is impossible for this existence to exist without some kind of a creator. An Atheist might look at the world and not see the need or justification for any meaning or purpose.

Both atheism and religion are the sum of our experiences, thoughts, beliefs, opinions, emotions, and everything else. The formation and growth of one or the other contains everything that that makes that person who they are. Religion and Atheism are then the most powerful and important reason as to why humanity has such a large warp presence.

Religion and atheism both emit a warp presence, and thus the emperor sought to end all notions of these beliefs, and thereby create a state of unbelief.

Atheism rejects the idea that there is a God, but there is still a notion of a God. Over time and generations due to the lack of worship, and the belief in a god there will come a breaking point. At this point no one will remember what a God is. There will no longer be a god, and thus there will no longer be atheism.

People can't deny something that they have never thought of, nor can they believe in something if there is nothing to believe in. This eventually leads to the death of chaos, as differing beliefs don't exist, as there are none. War doesn't exist as people have nothing with which to justify their actions, nor why they should fight against one another. The fear of death is gone as there are no longer notions of heavens, hells, and perpetual sleep.

Chaos will die because that which empowers them also makes us human.

The state of unbelief is a state in which there are no humans. Either we keep our beliefs and disbelief's and die because of them, or we cast them aside and die without them.

 Envihon wrote:

 WrentheFaceless wrote:

 raiden wrote:
And soon the first grey knight ever shall fall to tzeentch

Source? That would pretty much invalidate their purpose/lore if one fell to chaos

The quote in the Daemon Codex where the Changling was almost able to persuade a GK but it is never a confirmed fall to Chaos and is mostly speculation.

except he doesn't "almost persuade" him. all he does is sow some DOUBTS.

To the OP- considering that the first method blew up in his face, and the second method is failing, I'd say pick a third option.