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That idea comes from Ian Watson’s novels I think.

Iracundus wrote:
The current Ecclesiarchy is based off of the Confederation of Light, which swept the Temple of the Saviour Emperor from power with the fall of Vandire.

If one goes by the Dark Heresy RPG line, remnants of the Temple are in hiding with the aid of secret supporters, biding their time, hoping for a new counter-reformation to retake power and sweep away what they perceive as the heretics that have taken over the Ecclesiarchy.

Really? Because from the way it is worded in C:SoB 2nd ed, by the time of the Reign of Blood, the notion of "Temple of the Saviour Emperor" had faded into history and it was just "the Ecclesiarchy" by then.

That is also my understanding.

This is such a beautiful thread. An extended philosophical discussion on the human need for the transcendent — and our capacity for self-deception — that quotes everything from Rogue Trader to Jung. Exalted.

Beardedragon wrote:
Yet after his death and 10.000 years later in 40k, the emperor is the main figure of his own religion.

Im not Much of a warhammer lore nerd, but i did read some background Stuff about lorgar. Thats how i get it anyway. He scolded lorgar for spreading the word of the emperor being a god.

Am i mistaken? Also why would he grant miracles to the sisters of battle, if he does not want to be worshipped?

The Emperor didn't "hate" religion. Due to his rather limited ideas of how the Ruinous Powers operated, he took what he saw as a pragmatic stance and tried to stamp it out. But he failed miserably, and underestimated the power of faith as a weapon against chaos. Euphrati Keeler, considered to be one of the founders of the Imperial Cult, and its first Saint, could drive away daemons by quoting passages from Lorgar's Lectitio Divinitatus The Divinitatus cult was just one of several "Emperor Cults" on Terra at the time, given unofficial sanction by Malcador to see if faith in the Emperor could be utilized as a weapon against Chaos. It ended up becoming the basis of the Temple of the Savior Emperor in the centuries after the Emperor was interred on the Golden Throne. The role that faith has played in the constant war with Chaos over ten thousand years has, more or less, presented further proof that the Emperor was on the wrong track.

By the 41st Millennium, the Emperor has pretty much done away with the pretense that he was merely human, and accepts the fact that he is something more, if his meeting with Guilliman after the Primarch's return is anything to go by. It the faith of the masses that, in part, fuels his ability to maintain some degree of self-awareness in his fractured consciousness, and still continues to do the multiple, monumental tasks he has to do as an "ascended" being, to keep Terra from becoming a daemon world or another Eye of Terror.

Some "miracles" that have been witnessed by the Imperial faithful aren't just manifestations of Humanity's connection to the Warp as a psychic species. Beings, such as the Living Saints and Legion of the Damned, are likely more akin to the Emperor's version of Greater Daemons than psychic shenanigans , in my opinion. Unless, of course, there is lore that contradicts this notion.

 SisterSydney wrote:
This is such a beautiful thread. An extended philosophical discussion on the human need for the transcendent — and our capacity for self-deception — that quotes everything from Rogue Trader to Jung. Exalted.

While 40k may have been a kids game at first, the lore has gotten pretty dark and deep, with a lot of reffs to classical literature and serious psychological issues.

 SisterSydney wrote:
This is such a beautiful thread. An extended philosophical discussion on the human need for the transcendent — and our capacity for self-deception — that quotes everything from Rogue Trader to Jung. Exalted.

I think once any setting develops into a big enough entity with a coherent universe and background, philosophy will naturally and often unconsciously take their place in the canon.

For example, I like the idea of the chaos god's being dualities, being made up of both good and bad elements, and that the element that gets 'fed' hinges on the state of the human emotional psyche at large at any particular time. So if humanity is happy, free, moralistic, honourable etc, then those elements of the gods get fed, whereas if humanity is in a state of nihilism, the negative elements are fed.

Voss wrote:

Iracundus wrote:

Voss wrote:

 Manchu wrote:
We’ve spent a lot of time debating it and working it out. Think of it this way: alchemy and chemistry are both about the transformation of materials. But they are hardly the same thing.

They are the same thing though. The parts of alchemy that work are chemistry- and have consistent results that lead to scientific explanations as to why they work (chemistry). The rest is just fluff and nonsense. The local high school chemistry teacher can twirl his mustache about alchemy all he wants, but water is still H2O.

Additionally, one can be a psyker (and even an adherent of the Ruinous Powers) without being a sorcerer.

Sure. A sorcerer pretends his various candles and trappings work, or a devout follower of the Emperor calls a psyker a sorcerer. If neither of those happen, they're still just a psyker.

The point is, does the setting actually differentiate here, and if so, where? Otherwise, its all just unreliable narrator fluff and labels.

The GW, Black Library, and Dark Heresy stuff has never quite explicitly laid out the difference, though seems to imply the below (which is also my personal headcanon):

A psyker manipulates warp energy directly to create their effects, and the magnitude of effects is limited by the psyker's ability. Sorcery is interacting with the entities of the warp and getting them to do or power things for you, and is limited by the strength of the entity in question. This can be through pacts or through some form of coercion, such as using a daemon's True Name. A sorcerer need not necessarily have to be a psyker themselves. A sorcerer that is also a psyker can do both, manipulate warp energy themselves and get warp entities to do stuff for them.

The actual in-game effects might be similar or even identical, but the method of how the result is achieved is different.

Hmm. An interesting idea. It should still be possible to narrow down when that transition happened, at least roughly.
Rogue Trader actively avoided the idea- it was very Psychic/Psionics/Psykers and nothing but (though most of the psychic powers came right from WFB lists of magic spells- like Hammerhand, and were barely altered at all) and mutants were nuclear, biological or chemical in origin.

It wasn't the Realm of Chaos books- while there are Summoned Daemons (as a pre-battle ritual), it stomps on the idea of Daemon Summoning 'spells' pretty hard, and talks a lot about warp intrusion into the minds of psykers or even teleported accidents, so its keeping most of the veneer of pseudo-scientific psionics. It definitely opens the possibilities of rituals but mostly actively avoids them for 40k beyond a game mechanic (you have to do it during army creation and spend points, and keep in mind any army list limitations)

Have to do more digging to better track the possible transition points.

2nd edition Chaos Codex had Chaos units able to score summoning points based on certain criteria dependent on which Chaos god's daemons, and then summon daemons to the battlefield (that had already previously been paid for in points). For example, Slaanesh points were scored by forcing the enemy to take Ld tests (pass or fail) and the amount was 1/2 the Ld value of the unit. These points could be scored by any unit regardless of whether or not they were psykers. Marked Chaos units got double the points normally gained.

Does that count as sorcery per se? Maybe...maybe not. It is using the magical principle of contagion or like attracts like. Doing things in line with a Chaos god's interests attracts daemons of that god, with Marked units already being more tightly aligned to that god and hence more interesting/attractive to daemons of that god. Now one could argue the principle of contagion is itself an example of sorcery at a basic level.

I don;t think he grants miracles per-say. I think it is more of a symptom of his godhood and the faith of his worshippers rather than his direct intervention.

On the other hand he tried to destroy religion to weaken the chaos gods, becasue those were the main gods being worshipped, now that he is a god he is their direct opposition, so not all religion is bad now, as it makes him stronger instead of the chaos gods. So he could be granting miracules to fight his enemies.

Theoretically there could be alien races out there worshiping the emperor as well, without really knowing(in the same way the chaos gods were worshipped) as he has to have a pressence in the warp similar to the chaos gods. It'd be an interesting interaction if the imperium ever encountered them.

Like I said, you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.

 Kommissar Kel wrote:
On the Living Saints, and Sisters of battle:

We have established that strait-up Psykers and Sorcery are 2 different, but related, things.

Psykers are born with powers, can be girded to the warp, but have an easier time with it.

Sorcery can be done by anyone, easier for Psykers, but a group of "normies" can summon/create effects. This somewhat suggests psychic potential in all that can be gathered and focused into effect.

I think Living Saints and Sisters of Battle unknowing perform the latter. An entire Army focusing faith create the Miracles.

IIRC the only reason summoning rituals and the like work at all is because all Humans have a tiny spark of "psychic potential" due to their souls, but aren't all actually psykers like the Craftworld Eldar are. One of the Emperor's goals was to starve the chaos gods to death so he could uplift humanity into a fully aware psychic race like the Eldar without the... complications.

Also, imho, Living Saints are just Daemon Princes who draw their power from Big E rather than another Warp Entity. A Battle Sister invoking her "faith" to survive a Gauss round to the dome is no different to a Plauge Marine getting headpats from Papa Nurgle.

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
Like I said, you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.

I'm pretty sure the Emperor will always be his own hero, and would not have any issues with gaining more power to fight his enemies with, even if neither side is ever going to win. I mean there's only irony assuming that the Emperor isn't a massive hypocrite, which is as yet unproven.

Aye, but if he's becoming a god in the warp, then surely his characteristics would become those venerated and manifest in the real world, and considering that some of his negative values could include totalitarianism, tyranny and hubris, that could have some very negative consequences. It would depend on how powerful he was able to become, and whether that was enough to force the other gods to submit to his will.

This thread reminds me of a quote attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte. Something along the lines of “Man can do without god but cannot do without religion.” The idea that humans need rituals and the idea do something that transcends the mundane world is powerful one. I think the Emperor was trying to replace religion or worship of a higher power with worship of humanity and the state, but trying to replace those existential ideas with mundane proxies was probably bound to failure.

 agurus1 wrote:
This thread reminds me of a quote attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte. Something along the lines of “Man can do without god but cannot do without religion.” The idea that humans need rituals and the idea do something that transcends the mundane world is powerful one. I think the Emperor was trying to replace religion or worship of a higher power with worship of humanity and the state, but trying to replace those existential ideas with mundane proxies was probably bound to failure.

That's very true. Most people crave or feel they need some form of higher structure to their lives. It's a comfort blanket, allowing them to forget about the fact that they are small, insignificant and will die unremembered by the greater cosmos. In my opinion it's nothing but a crutch, but each to their own.

The Emperor knew that warp entities survive off emotion and veneration, so by steering humanity away from them, it would heavily weaken if not kill outright the chaos gods.

Or maybe it was a Xanatos Gambit and he wanted to become a Chaos God himself. Who knows.

 BaconCatBug wrote:

 agurus1 wrote:
This thread reminds me of a quote attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte. Something along the lines of “Man can do without god but cannot do without religion.” The idea that humans need rituals and the idea do something that transcends the mundane world is powerful one. I think the Emperor was trying to replace religion or worship of a higher power with worship of humanity and the state, but trying to replace those existential ideas with mundane proxies was probably bound to failure.

That's very true. Most people crave or feel they need some form of higher structure to their lives. It's a comfort blanket, allowing them to forget about the fact that they are small, insignificant and will die unremembered by the greater cosmos. In my opinion it's nothing but a crutch, but each to their own.

The Emperor knew that warp entities survive off emotion and veneration, so by steering humanity away from them, it would heavily weaken if not kill outright the chaos gods.

Or maybe it was a Xanatos Gambit and he wanted to become a Chaos God himself. Who knows.

I'd not think a chaos god, as he seems the opposite, personally I think he'd be the incarnation of order, worse case scenario: stagnated and absolutely dictatorial order.

 OldMate wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:

 agurus1 wrote:
This thread reminds me of a quote attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte. Something along the lines of “Man can do without god but cannot do without religion.” The idea that humans need rituals and the idea do something that transcends the mundane world is powerful one. I think the Emperor was trying to replace religion or worship of a higher power with worship of humanity and the state, but trying to replace those existential ideas with mundane proxies was probably bound to failure.

That's very true. Most people crave or feel they need some form of higher structure to their lives. It's a comfort blanket, allowing them to forget about the fact that they are small, insignificant and will die unremembered by the greater cosmos. In my opinion it's nothing but a crutch, but each to their own.

The Emperor knew that warp entities survive off emotion and veneration, so by steering humanity away from them, it would heavily weaken if not kill outright the chaos gods.

Or maybe it was a Xanatos Gambit and he wanted to become a Chaos God himself. Who knows.

I'd not think a chaos god, as he seems the opposite, personally I think he'd be the incarnation of order, worse case scenario: stagnated and absolutely dictatorial order.

Its less a comfort blanket, and more trying to figure out our ultimate human condition. but the emperor was foolish to do that, as it brings us, as mentioned, to a Nietzschean 'death of god', resulting in a state of nihilism. Only someone who is deluded would think that you could end up with an emotionless, yet satisfied humanity. Positive emotions cannot exist without negative and vice versa. you cant kill off human emotions. If you do try to repress human emotion, the general result is that they turn into something negative, which is ultimately why the chaos gods manifest themselves in such benevolent forms, after being empowered by the wave of negative emotions resulting from said nihilism. This is why killing off chaos is an outright impossibility.

And he wouldn't be able to become an incarnation of order purely for the reasons above. order too cannot exist without its opposite, chaos.

Also, if you remove religion, it generally just gets replaced with something else. without venturing too far into the real world, you can see this with the post enlightenment. people think the enlightenment did away with the concept of religion, but did it? or did it simply replace it with a new veneration of science itself? After all, science cannot prove its own existence. The precedents the scientific method are based on are taken 'on faith', same as any religious principle. you could also argue that in the absence of religious veneration, people have turned to the veneration of other things. celebrities, social media status, etc.

My philosophical/theological hypothesis of the chaos gods is that they consist of dichotomies of the positive/negative of what they represent, and the overall human emotional state determines which side gains power. so khorne manifests as bloodlust and murder, but if the human emotional state was happier, calmer and more moralistic, it would manifest as honour, martial spirit and a strong defence against enemies. Nurgle manifests as decay and disease, but its opposite side would be that of the circle of life. Tzeentch manifests as corruption and mutation, but could represent evolution and progress, and Slaanesh (which is my favourite because Nietzsches Appollo/Dionysus dichotomy fits it perfectly) manifests as lust, gratification and hedonism, could represent ordered beauty and the attainment of the highest standards.

basically, it depends on which wolf humanity feeds.

 BaconCatBug wrote:

 agurus1 wrote:
This thread reminds me of a quote attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte. Something along the lines of “Man can do without god but cannot do without religion.” The idea that humans need rituals and the idea do something that transcends the mundane world is powerful one. I think the Emperor was trying to replace religion or worship of a higher power with worship of humanity and the state, but trying to replace those existential ideas with mundane proxies was probably bound to failure.

That's very true. Most people crave or feel they need some form of higher structure to their lives. It's a comfort blanket, allowing them to forget about the fact that they are small, insignificant and will die unremembered by the greater cosmos. In my opinion it's nothing but a crutch, but each to their own.

The Emperor knew that warp entities survive off emotion and veneration, so by steering humanity away from them, it would heavily weaken if not kill outright the chaos gods.

Or maybe it was a Xanatos Gambit and he wanted to become a Chaos God himself. Who knows.

The Emperor tried to keep humanity in the dark by lying to them and keeping them ignorant of the existence of the Chaos gods, possibly in the belief that humanity couldn't handle the truth.

The Eldar by comparison all seem to know about Chaos, and by and large ward against it through their various methods. Though nothing is 100% effective, they don't seem to fall to Chaos worship at anything near the rates that humans do. An alternative approach the Emperor could have taken might have been to let people know there are entities that style themselves gods but warn people so they could more effectively resist being seduced by the Chaos gods' offers and tales.

By lying, the Emperor set people (such as the Primarchs) up for disillusionment when they discovered the lie, and then more likely to accept whatever the Chaos gods told them since their trust in the Emperor would have been destroyed. If for example the Emperor had instead warned Lorgar that there were evil entities of the warp that would try to turn him, Lorgar probably would have resisted since he was full of faith in the righteousness of the Emperor. It was only after his faith was destroyed and the Emperor's lies about the Imperial Truth and non-existence of the Chaos gods exposed that Lorgar was open for anything to fill the vacuum left behind by his former faith in the Emperor.

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:

 OldMate wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:

 agurus1 wrote:
This thread reminds me of a quote attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte. Something along the lines of “Man can do without god but cannot do without religion.” The idea that humans need rituals and the idea do something that transcends the mundane world is powerful one. I think the Emperor was trying to replace religion or worship of a higher power with worship of humanity and the state, but trying to replace those existential ideas with mundane proxies was probably bound to failure.

That's very true. Most people crave or feel they need some form of higher structure to their lives. It's a comfort blanket, allowing them to forget about the fact that they are small, insignificant and will die unremembered by the greater cosmos. In my opinion it's nothing but a crutch, but each to their own.

The Emperor knew that warp entities survive off emotion and veneration, so by steering humanity away from them, it would heavily weaken if not kill outright the chaos gods.

Or maybe it was a Xanatos Gambit and he wanted to become a Chaos God himself. Who knows.

I'd not think a chaos god, as he seems the opposite, personally I think he'd be the incarnation of order, worse case scenario: stagnated and absolutely dictatorial order.

Its less a comfort blanket, and more trying to figure out our ultimate human condition. but the emperor was foolish to do that, as it brings us, as mentioned, to a Nietzschean 'death of god', resulting in a state of nihilism. only someone who is deluded would think that you could end up with an emotionless, yet satisfied humanity. positive emotions cannot exist without negative and vice versa. you cant kill off human emotions, hence, the idea of killing chaos is an outright impossibility. if you do try to repress human emotion, you run a high risk of turning them into something negative, which is ultimately why the chaos gods manifest themselves in such benevolent forms, after being empowered by said nihilism.

And he wouldn't be able to become an incarnation of order purely for the reasons above. order too cannot exist without its opposite, chaos.

Chaos already exists in the forms of the chaos gods, I'm sure he'd have chaotic elements, as the chaos gods seem to have ordered elements to them, I mean if they were purely chaotic they'd never achieve anything. They have agendas so they are not entirely chaotic. They bring chaos by pursuing their separate agendas.

The emperor's agenda of making order would create more chaos in this mix, and therfore naturally be dualistic, order needs chaos to pacify, excess need moderation as a benchmark, disease needs the healthy to infect, war needs peace and prosperity to create fuel for it to burn.

If the emperor was to become a god of order, he wouldn't need to be chaotic for the same reason that Slaanesh need not be modest and why Khorne need not know how to recover a land burnt by war.
Because even in the absence of gods, others do it for them and those others are generally going to be the common folk.

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
The precedents the scientific method are based on are taken 'on faith', same as any religious principle. you could also argue that in the absence of religious veneration, people have turned to the veneration of other things. celebrities, social media status, etc.

No, they aren't. They are based on a set of axioms that are themselves open to scrutiny. Why do you think the "assumption" that light needs a medium to propagate was eventually proven incorrect? Because despite being an axiom of the theories, they were still open to be tested.

Unlike religion, science strives to prove fundamental understandings incorrect. It thrives off it, because the goal (for reductionist) is to find a theory that passes tests and scrutiny. Do all scientists live up this idea? Of course not, scientists are human and thus flawed, blinded by what they want to be true and rejecting what is true (see the opposition to Quantum Mechanics or the disapproval of the Steady State model of the universe), but science cares for facts, and facts don't care about your feelings.

I think this is a good representation of how much of a hypocrite the Emperor is - https://youtu.be/7XGX64XfSkU?t=3118

If you don't want to click the link its "If the Emperor had a Podcast - Episode 1: The Last Church" at about 52 minutes. The last priest destroys the Emperor.

 BaconCatBug wrote:

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
The precedents the scientific method are based on are taken 'on faith', same as any religious principle. you could also argue that in the absence of religious veneration, people have turned to the veneration of other things. celebrities, social media status, etc.

No, they aren't. They are based on a set of axioms that are themselves open to scrutiny. Why do you think the "assumption" that light needs a medium to propagate was eventually proven incorrect? Because despite being an axiom of the theories, they were still open to be tested.

Unlike religion, science strives to prove fundamental understandings incorrect. It thrives off it, because the goal (for reductionist) is to find a theory that passes tests and scrutiny. Do all scientists live up this idea? Of course not, scientists are human and thus flawed, blinded by what they want to be true and rejecting what is true (see the opposition to Quantum Mechanics or the disapproval of the Steady State model of the universe), but science cares for facts, and facts don't care about your feelings.

https://youtu.be/pYq5IItUvFM this video outlines what Scientism takes 'on faith' there's nothing saying that they can't be tested, but that is the same with religion. That's one of the purposes of philosophy.

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
The precedents the scientific method are based on are taken 'on faith', same as any religious principle. you could also argue that in the absence of religious veneration, people have turned to the veneration of other things. celebrities, social media status, etc.

No, they aren't. They are based on a set of axioms that are themselves open to scrutiny. Why do you think the "assumption" that light needs a medium to propagate was eventually proven incorrect? Because despite being an axiom of the theories, they were still open to be tested.

Unlike religion, science strives to prove fundamental understandings incorrect. It thrives off it, because the goal (for reductionist) is to find a theory that passes tests and scrutiny. Do all scientists live up this idea? Of course not, scientists are human and thus flawed, blinded by what they want to be true and rejecting what is true (see the opposition to Quantum Mechanics or the disapproval of the Steady State model of the universe), but science cares for facts, and facts don't care about your feelings.

https://youtu.be/pYq5IItUvFM this video outlines what Scientism takes 'on faith' there's nothing saying that they can't be tested, but that is the same with religion. That's one of the purposes of philosophy.

Religion, by definition, postulates untestable hypothesises. If they could be tested, they wouldn't be religion.

Did you watch the video? The postulates that scientism(eg the belief that the only true knowledge we can gain about the universe comes from science, as thats what I'm talking about here.) Takes a priori are that the laws it discovers are the same at every point in the universe at every time, and that what we experience through our senses is actually the truth. Sure, the facts you assert are facts, but only based on these faiths. But, this is off the topic here.

I think that the Emperor is in fact becoming the Chaos God of Order. Yes, that's a paradox, but the divine usually is. From the headcanon thread, here and here:

 SisterSydney wrote:

 Tiennos wrote:
"Miracles" that happen around the Adepta Sororitas are the result of their combined psychic energy. Their collective faith in the Emperor is so strong that they can unconsciously bend the warp to make the impossible happen.

They may not like it, but they basically work like the orks

Yes! So much this. (See also Ork & Sister buddy cop movie). Chaos’s way of using the Warp isn’t the only way: Orks, Tyranids, and Sisters of Battle/Living Saints all use the Warp too, but in very different ways.
My headcanon is that the Emperor is in the process of ascending as the Chaos God of Order. Not the natural order of the universe, mind you, but the human tendency to impose order on chaos even when it’s an illusion — like seeing constellations in the random arrangement of stars, or the face of Jesus in a piece of toast (see Pareidolia) — or in some cases to believe so intensely in a falsehood we make it real: I don’t like [group], I think they’re dumb, therefore I won’t let them go to good schools, therefore they really end up knowing less; I think my kid’s unruly, therefore I smack him all the time, so he’s traumatized and acts out; I think I’m going to screw up, so I get nervous and unfocused, so I screw up. After all, what could be more chaotic than believing in a lie so hard you make it real?

 SisterSydney wrote:
Love this thread. My favorite headcanon is that the Sisters of Battle are totally psykers and the Living Saints are totally Daemons of the Emperor, they just use a different frequency or plane of the Warp that Chaos can’t access, one that’s as mysterious to Daemons as the Daemon world is to normal humans, one that responds to disciplined faith rather than raw emotion. The Sisters only came into being around M36 because that’s how long it took for the Imperial Cult to generate a critical mass of faith energy and for the Emperor to manipulate human evolution to create this new kind of psyker. Unfortunately for Big E’s plan to create a new psychic race of humanity, the gene for this trait is only found on the X chromosome and the ability only manifests if you have two of them, so guys are out of luck....

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
Takes a priori are that the laws it discovers are the same at every point in the universe at every time

Wait that's not what scientific theories say, they explicitly postulate otherwise don't they?

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
and that what we experience through our senses is actually the truth.

The day you stop relying on your senses is the day you stop taking into consideration what is literally the only way you have to receive information about the world.

Nevertheless, they are still taken a priori. They cannot prove themselves by their own method. Just watch the video. it explains the concepts much better than I can. It's still a fairly new concept to me. I'm not decrying science or the scientific method, I'm just pointing out that there are still things that the concept takes 'on faith'

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
Nevertheless, they are still taken a priori. They cannot prove themselves by their own method. Just watch the video. it explains the concepts much better than I can. It's still a fairly new concept to me. I'm not decrying science or the scientific method, I'm just pointing out that there are still things that the concept takes 'on faith'

Descartes, Cogito ergo sum, is for some, the only truth verifyable of our existence that we can garner about ourselfs, preciscly because we can not prove our senses ourselfs by their methods.

Granted it takes the awarness also a priori.

Not Online!!! wrote:

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
Nevertheless, they are still taken a priori. They cannot prove themselves by their own method. Just watch the video. it explains the concepts much better than I can. It's still a fairly new concept to me. I'm not decrying science or the scientific method, I'm just pointing out that there are still things that the concept takes 'on faith'

Descartes, Cogito ergo sum, is for some, the only truth verifyable of our existence that we can garner about ourselfs, preciscly because we can not prove our senses ourselfs by their methods.

Granted it takes the awarness also a priori.

I think you actually need to read Descartes really horrible proof of that particular catch-phrase. He says the opposite of what you seem to think, prattling about dreams, drugs and demons, before coming up with an out-of-nowhere assumption that a benevolent god exists and wouldn't let evil demons trick us into thinking we exist, and so assuming the existence of god (and saying nothing about what this all powerful god could make us think), we think therefor we are... if the rather shaky bits about dreams and drugs are also true.

FYI - Emperor in the warp (aka the god) is not the same as the corpse on the throne. The warp entity is shaped by the people who believe in the Emperor. The Emperor was anti religion but you can bet the warp entity being fed by faith is not against it. In fact it should seek to spread it by any means necessary.

A standard imperial saying "The emperor protects" should be enough to understand what is being shaped by people who believe that.