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I've been fairly familiar with the background of the game since the latter part of 2000. But with the more "recent" introductions of the atheistic history of the Imperium, how did it actually take over the entire government? I understand that Lorgar wrote and initially distributed the Lectitio Divinatus. However, even with the Emperor's ascension to the Golden Throne, the Imperium was basically held together by primarchs and astartes. Even after the primarchs died or became lost there were still astartes and custodes who I would have thought been more able to keep the Imperium in line with its traditions. I understand from the intro in the Inquisitor rulebook that the members of the Inquisition encouraged the cults early on and wouldn't let the Emperor come off the Golden Throne to keep the Imperium together.
I understand it's the way it is now because of past fluff and for the sake of grimdark. But purely for the sake of conversation would you say long standing organizations like the astartes and custodes even parts of the inquisition to an extent really dropped the ball here?

Removing the Emperor from the Throne would cause the Astronomicon to end and throw the entire Imperium into (literally) chaos. It would be the beginning of the end for humanity if this were to happen. The Star Child theory states that the Emperor would then be reborn somewhere amongst mankind if this were to happen, but it's extremely unlikely that theory will ever be tested. The risk would be too great for the Imperium, and GW has no interest in advancing the plot.

Well the Emperor controlled the Astronomican far away from Terra in the past. I guess the issue would be the brief moments he's disconnected or being transferred into another body. That and that whole party of demons behind his chair. The Inquisiton seemed more concerned about a civil war than anything else when talking about his return.
But my question is not regarding the star child or the Emperor coming back in any capacity. It's more why the Imperium is in the mess it's in now and how it wasn't prevented by remaining atheistic forces after the Emperor ascended. There are still most likely more than a few custodes on Terra who were around before the heresy. I say that because they don't really go anywhere outside of Terra or the solar system.

 kasrkinmullet wrote:
Well the Emperor controlled the Astronomican far away from Terra in the past. I guess the issue would be the brief moments he's disconnected or being transferred into another body. That and that whole party of demons behind his chair. The Inquisiton seemed more concerned about a civil war than anything else when talking about his return.
But my question is not regarding the star child or the Emperor coming back in any capacity. It's more why the Imperium is in the mess it's in now and how it wasn't prevented by remaining atheistic forces after the Emperor ascended. There are still most likely more than a few custodes on Terra who were around before the heresy. I say that because they don't really go anywhere outside of Terra or the solar system.

The Custodoes guard the golden thrown,and were his personal bodyguard. They dont leave Terra,so they dont really care I assume about the state of the Imperium,as their sole purpose is too protect the Emperor. I believe that it became the a Theocracy after the Age of Apostasy, and everyone got in a giant religious fever.

Well, the Ecclesiarchy became the state church of the Imperium in M32. So that's quite a long time before the Age of Apostasy.

 kasrkinmullet wrote:
Well, the Ecclesiarchy became the state church of the Imperium in M32. So that's quite a long time before the Age of Apostasy.

I know that. I believe that it didn't really start too majorly control things until after the Age of Apostasy. I could be wrong though.

I imagine its part convenience. Large groups of the population started worshiping the Emperor even before he 'died' so much so he couldn't even stop it. Once he's gone, he is still a unifying figure the High Lords will want to cling to, so he is revered in a Kim Il Sung way (despite dying in 1994 he is still officially president of the DPRK), bigged up and combine that with the grassroots, 'folk religion' growing I can see them being united. If nothing else I imagine the Imperium seeing this cult rise and knowing it would be difficult to destroy and not a negative thing it terms of stability decide to codify and co-opt the movement.

In the Soviet Union in the 1930s former churches were converted into 'Stalin Houses' part propaganda museums part Marxist temples across the country with little to no involvement from Moscow. Hero Worship in authoritarian countries with no religion/heavily anti-clerical tend to create political cults. Stalin, Mao, Hitler, the Kims, even people like Hugo Chavez to an extent.

 Retrogamer0001 wrote:
..and GW has no interest in advancing the plot.

I think we can no longer hold this as a truism. Fantasy's plot line is being advanced, which is a bell weather for 40k. There is a finite and rapidly decreasing amount of kits that can squeezed from the current setting without advancing the timeline. I'd say it has moved from if to when

 kasrkinmullet wrote:
I've been fairly familiar with the background of the game since the latter part of 2000. But with the more "recent" introductions of the atheistic history of the Imperium, how did it actually take over the entire government? I understand that Lorgar wrote and initially distributed the Lectitio Divinatus. However, even with the Emperor's ascension to the Golden Throne, the Imperium was basically held together by primarchs and astartes. Even after the primarchs died or became lost there were still astartes and custodes who I would have thought been more able to keep the Imperium in line with its traditions. I understand from the intro in the Inquisitor rulebook that the members of the Inquisition encouraged the cults early on and wouldn't let the Emperor come off the Golden Throne to keep the Imperium together.
I understand it's the way it is now because of past fluff and for the sake of grimdark. But purely for the sake of conversation would you say long standing organizations like the astartes and custodes even parts of the inquisition to an extent really dropped the ball here?

- The Imperium being atheistic pre-Horus Heresy is hardly a recent introduction. It's been there since the early 90s.

- The Astartes were severely weakened after the Heresy, probably seen with suspicion by most Imperial authorities. By dismantling the legions and declawing the Imperium's branch of posthuman warriors, Guilleman basically bought the Astartes a second chance not everyone was eager to grant them.

- It's been 10.000 years. Historical accounts wane, first-person witnesses die, records get lost, memories fade, facts are distorted for political convenience, re-interpreted by scholars and reshaped by folk culture. Think of it, it's been less than a century after WW2 and already some facts are beginning to get fuzzy as ideological bias, political discourse and pop culture are starting to replace (or challenge) the established historical truth.

I can understand that kind of mindset for some of the forces within the Imperium. But it makes it sound almost like there was no resistance to the change either. There should have been some people fanatically loyal to the traditions the Emperor actually laid down and given heavy resistance to the idea of religion within the Imperium.

Oh, there was quite a lot of resistance. Look for the Nova Terra Interregnum - The entire Segmentum Pacificus rejected ecclesiarchal rule and seceded, plunging the Imperium into civil war.

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Nova_Terra_Interregnum#.Uxv-IIWIcdg

Sadly, not much is known about this. It's one of those bits of 40k fluff I'd love to see expanded in the future.

I'm a little aware of the Nova Terra period. But like you said we don't really know all that much about it. Was it motivated by the original principles of the Imperium. I can't even find if they disregarded worshipping the Emperor or not. There is mention of a holy war against them, but that's as much evidence in that favor as I can see.

The Ecclesiarchy rose to power long before the Age of Apostasy. The Age of Apostasy occurred because the Ecclesiarchy started to abuse their existing power and take too much, which then led to Vandire seizing control over it.

Their power rose because the original High Lords - Malcador the Sigillite's cronies - decided that the Emperor was more useful as a distant figure to rally around than as a direct ruler. According to the opening scrawl of the Inquisitor rulebook, it was a council of three (might have been four) who made the decision to seal the Emperor into the Throne rather than attempting to revive him. They then took power, and pushed the Lectitio Divinatus as a method of cementing power in them as the priests rather than the oracle (Emperor) directly.

It kinda always was, I mean even when the Emperor was an atheist he acted like a god, making clone children of himself, the people of the Imperium even regarded him and his children as being Godlike

My point being the literal state religion set up. I know there was somewhat a cult of personality in the pre heresy days, but I'm talking about the more extreme version the Imperium is now.

The Imperial Truth was that daemons and magic were primitive superstitions with absolutely no basis in fact. Even the Astartes were led to believe this was true. By the time Horus and his daemonic hordes were finished laying waste to human civilization there was nobody of any importance - including the Astartes - left alive with any doubt that the Imperial Truth was a lie.

The Imperium is not a theocracy. The Ecclesiarchy has some, not all, power over its governance.

 Silverthorne wrote:

There is a finite and rapidly decreasing amount of kits that can squeezed from the current setting without advancing the timeline.

That is simply not true. You want me to make a list of the models/units that didn't exist in neither fluff nor reality when I started playing this game back in the Rogue Trader days?


..

How did the Ecclesiarchy get to where it is today? Essentially, what happened is that after the Emperor got put on the Throne and the Horus Heresy was all over, cults sprung up all across the Imperium that worshiped the Emperor as a god. The strongest of these cults was the Temple of The Saviour Emperor. Two important factors made it the storngest: it was started by an Imperial Army officer named Fatidicus, so it had military support, and it was started on Terra. Eventually the Temple absorbed or destroyed all of the other cults and became so widespread that it was declared the state religion. As for why it wasn't stopped, well, presumably it had gotten too widespread and influential to be stamped out, and those in charge may've seen advantages to controlling people via religion.

Also, I notice that you mentioned the Lectio Divinatus. As it's a common view that that book single-handedly started off the whole Ecclesiarchy, I'll clarify that firstly, the cults that eventually made up the Ecclesiarchy were all over the Imperium, so a wide variety of belief systems would've been going in, not just Lorgar's version. Secondly, it seems odd that the Inquisition would allow the writings of a known traitor to just freely spread around like that. Though it's certainly possible that the teachings of the Divinatus ended up in there somewhere, it doesn't seem to be the case that it alone created the Ecclesiarchy.

 kasrkinmullet wrote:
My point being the literal state religion set up. I know there was somewhat a cult of personality in the pre heresy days, but I'm talking about the more extreme version the Imperium is now.

People worshipped the Emperor as a god in his lifetime, while he was walking around and doing things.

You know what the Emperor didn't do? Stop them. He didn't bat an eye. Let people go on worshipping him as a deity made flesh. The Emperor most certainly, himself, was not an atheist. He knew well that the gods of Chaos existed. The idea that the Imperial Truth was some sort of golden age of enlightenment is a very, very over-simplified view of what was going on at the time, and what the Emperor's goals were.

There were hundreds of such cults. Of these, one of them was based on Terra itself, and had, within its congregations, many, many soldiers of the Imperial Army, as well as very high-ranking officials of the same. This gave the Temple of the Saviour Emperor (as this cult was known) a hefty benefit over its rivals: it could out-gun them. In the wake of the Heresy, the Temple of the Saviour Emperor preached a message of unification through a common faith. This lead to any other rival cult being either absorbed or stamped out. Thus, the Ecclesiarchy was born.

Acknowledging the existence of the Chaos "gods" does not make one religious. The Emperor could certainly have acknowledged their existence and remained an atheist by classifying them as aliens from a different dimension rather than deities.

The only cult worshiping the Emperor that we know he knew about is the Word Bearers. And he certainly put a stop to that.

No, it would have made him agnostic, but not an atheist. An atheist not only does not worship gods, he does not believe they exist. The former is an apostate or a heretic, the latter is not what the Emperor was (since he damn well knew what they were).

No, an agnostic is someone who makes no claim about the existence of gods.

The Emperor said there are no gods, which makes him an atheist. We have no evidence to suggest he thought of the Ruinous Powers as gods.

* And FYI: An apostate is someone who stops believing in their religion. A heretic is someone who believes something contradictory to the authoritative teachings of their religion.

...and if you believe that what the Chaos Gods teach, that they are the ultimate, inevitable truth of reality, then that does make the Emperor a heretic.

Agnostic

a person who holds that the existence of the ultimate cause, as God, and the essential nature of things are unknown and unknowable, or that human knowledge is limited to experience. Synonyms: disbeliever, nonbeliever, unbeliever; doubter, skeptic, secularist, empiricist; heathen, heretic, infidel, pagan.

Atheist

a person who denies or disbelieves the existence of a supreme being or beings.

... the Emperor knew the Gods of Chaos existed. He knew (or believed that he did) how they functioned and how they operated, and sought to beat them at their own game (in a sense).

There's nothing "atheist" about his actual beliefs. What he professed to others, well, that's a different matter entirely.

Let's say there is an island where people considered a volcano to be a god.

I could know of the volcano and yet not believe it is a god.

Similarly, the Emperor could know of the Four without considering them gods.

The Chaos "Gods" are only gods according to their followers.

 Manchu wrote:
The Imperium is not a theocracy. The Ecclesiarchy has some, not all, power over its governance.

I would say that the Imperium is a theocracy since a divine being (the God-Emperor) is oficially acknowledged as its ruler and the High Lords rule in his name.
The Imperium did not just suddenly become a theocracy, it was a very slow, gradual process. The Emperor had already been worshipped in life, and after his "death", worship of him became more and more popular. Worship of the Emperor continued to grow and grow in popularity, and at some point one of the cults (the Eclessiarchy) managed to eradicate all others and eventually became so large that it was recognized as Imperium's state religion.
There wasn't really much that one could have done to fight it, short of somehow punishing those who believe in the Emperor's divinity. But as the infamous Word Beared incident has shown us, that would probably work out wrong. Many Humans just need to worship something.

Then you would first need to define "god" to say what something is or is not, but I think the Chaos Gods are the closest thing the setting has to anything that would meet that definition.

The Emperor might have claimed to not believe that they were gods, that would be an agnostic, but he was certainly aware of their existence, which means he isn't an atheist.

Using the volcano as an example, the standard would have to extend to all volcanoes. If all volcanoes are worshipped as gods, then you would need to state that these volcanoes are not gods, and then also have an explanation for what they were, instead... when the volcanoes are granting wishes and powers and answering prayers and doing things that volcanoes do not, in our world, actually do.

 Iron_Captain wrote:
The Imperium is a theocracy since a divine being (the God-Emperor) is oficially acknowledged as its ruler and the High Lords rule in his name.

I suppose that depends on what constitutes the Imperium. If the Mechanicus is included (the Fabricator General is one of the High Lords), then it becomes problematic since there are many tech priests that do not consider the Emperor to be divine. Same problem with the Astartes.

 Psienesis wrote:
The Emperor might have claimed to not believe that they were gods, that would be an agnostic, but he was certainly aware of their existence, which means he isn't an atheist.

The Emperor said there are no gods, which makes him an atheist. The fact that he knew about powerful psychic aliens in another dimensions does not make him any less an atheist.

You can say he privately believed in gods all you like but there is no textual basis for that opinion.

 Manchu wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:
The Imperium is a theocracy since a divine being (the God-Emperor) is oficially acknowledged as its ruler and the High Lords rule in his name.

I suppose that depends on what constitutes the Imperium. If the Mechanicus is included (the Fabricator General is one of the High Lords), then it becomes problematic since there are many tech priests that do not consider the Emperor to be divine. Same problem with the Astartes.

The Mechanicus officially sees the Emperor as an aspect of the Omnisiah and thus officially considers him to be divine. Unofficially and off the record, many (not all) of them believe that's horse gak and don't see him as divine, but they generally don't wave that belief around publically, I think.

The Astartes for the most part aren't involved in governing the Imperium. Therefore the Imperium can still be considered a theocracy despite the Astartes' beliefs as long as the governing body itself is based on religion. Um....I think. I haven't looked up the exact definition of theocracy to check so I could be wrong.

 Psienesis wrote:
The Emperor might have claimed to not believe that they were gods, that would be an agnostic, but he was certainly aware of their existence, which means he isn't an atheist.

The Emperor said there are no gods, which makes him an atheist. The fact that he knew about powerful psychic aliens in another dimensions does not make him any less an atheist.

You can say he privately believed in gods all you like but there is no textual basis for that opinion.

I guess it depends on whether you define "god" as a "universal eternal truth" or instead as a "being with ludicrous power, to the point of being able to break physics". The Chaos Gods seem to sincerely believe the former. The Emperor, on the other hand, might define god as "a universal truth" but actually see the Chaos "gods" as a "bunch of warp entities that just THINK they're gods, but really aren't a universal truth at all despite their power" (the Emperor likely would believe himself to be similar in this hypothetical case)

Of course, we don't know what Emps actually believed or what Emp's personal definition of a god was. Only what he told others.

TiamatRoar wrote:
The Mechanicus officially sees the Emperor as an aspect of the Omnisiah and thus officially considers him to be divine.

I have been looking for a citation to that effect for some time. Would you kindly provide your source; the title and page number would be appreciated. A direct quotation with the citation would be even better.

TiamatRoar wrote:
"being with ludicrous power, to the point of being able to break physics"

As you seem to point out, the Emperor is obviously such a being. And yet he did not hold himself up as a God -- quite the reverse, actually. Therefore, he did not think of "gods" as simply very powerful beings.