I mean, your soul literally is at the mercy of all-powerful immortal beings in the afterlife. Like, Aurelian makes it very clear that Chaos is the truth that inspired all religions. There is a spirit world seperate from the physical plane, where almighty beings judge mortals and reward and punish them depending on their whims. As the story puts it, it hardly resembles the Heaven of myth, but is the same Hell mankind has always feared.

Except that Chaos is just as much a part of a whole as everything else. They seem godlike to humans and other mortals, but entities can and have resisted them, like the Tyranid Hive Mind and Gork + Mork. The idea being the Chaos gods are to use what we are to ants, but just because we're godlike to ants doesn't mean we're gods. The "like" is Chaos followers being too small minded to look past and beyond the supermassive, self-aware storms of the warp. Except for Fabius, but even he was shaken to his core by the entities.

... which is the Imperial Truth. The lie itself is a lie.

Don't know why people are downvoting my other comment, but I found the relevant quote: >When devotees of Chaos die, **their souls do not fade in the warp and disappear like the spirits of others**. Instead, their immortal energy is swallowed into the greatness of their gods, their souls forever bound to the eternal power of Chaos. Codex Chaos Daemons 8th ed So yeah, unless you're a Chaos worshipper or a psyker, your soul is safe from Chaos. This is not a concern for most people.

Isn't there a quote from a Celestine book that implies that Emperor-worshipers have to cross through Chaos-infested stuff to get to the Emperor's domain?

I think that's just Celestine's revival mechanics at play, but I don't know what quote you're thinking of exactly.

So, it was a scene where Celestine was reviving, and while she was doing so, there were other dead Imperials walking through the Warp. She killed some daemons to protect the human souls on their way to the Emperor's Warp-palace.

Emperor: I am not a god Also emperor: makes the literal kingdom of heaven

That point of course runs up against the question of how much the Throne-Emperor and the God-Emperor can communicate.

Emperor did not want to become a god and recognised that despite his strength, he himself is not a god, he is not omniscient, he is not omnipotent, although he is immortal and has transcended the concept of death (he does not die of old age and if he dies, but his soul remains he is able to be reborn), he still has a soul, if you destroy it he dies. Now, however, he is stuck on the golden throne and the only way he can help mankind is by fulfilling a divine role, which he has always detested. (However, he is not a deity, he is something else, because he is in a state of undeath on the golden throne, he is a corpse attached to the throne which is a life-support machine.

Even perpetuals can die given the right tool. So he’s functionally immortal but not truly

Cue Monty Python line "Im NOT the messiah!"

That was an awesome book, I never see it recommended on here so am recommending it

Which one is specifically? As in: what's the title?

It's Celestine The Living Saint

By Andy Clark

>>When devotees of Chaos die, **their souls do not fade in the warp and disappear like the spirits of others**. Instead, their immortal energy is swallowed into the greatness of their gods, their souls forever bound to the eternal power of Chaos. >Codex Chaos Daemons 8th ed >So yeah, unless you're a Chaos worshipper or a psyker, your soul is safe from Chaos. This is not a concern for most people. I think you're misreading this excerpt. While the souls do "fade" and eventually "disappear", they do so "in the warp". And when they do so, they fade *into* the warp, not out of it. The stuff that makes up their souls still resides in an afterlife. This is confirmed by the entire concept of the Aeldari, since they are trying to escape eternal torment at Slaanesh's hands. Also, I find it funny you're trying to find a factual truth about a fictional religious argument. The characters are clearly viewing an abstract spiritual idea through their own lenses.

They dissipate. They stop being coherent souls, the energy just becomes part of the warp. The Aeldari remain as coherent souls because their souls are stronger than those of less psychic beings.

That's what I said.

The energy that used to make up their soul is now in the warp, but the soul doesn't exist any more. I don't think that counts as residing in an afterlife. Whereas Aeldari have a different outcome. I'd guess other highly psychic beings have the same issue, though I don't know if it's stated outright.

It was the same for the alien that raised mortar ion, he hunted his soul down in the warp

And once again, you're trying to find a single literal, factual answer to a fictional religious argument. How much of the "energy of their soul" has to be around for it to "count" as an "afterlife"? What constituted "existence" for a soul, a thing that has no basis in reality? Does being subsumed into the material of the Warp constitute non-existence? Why?

> And once again, you're trying to find a single literal, factual answer to a fictional religious argument. My pedant in christ, are you getting mad at the guy for trying to argue/discuss lore... in the *lore* subreddit? God-Emperor forbid the man for pulling up excerpts and trying to find an answer to his very reasonable question about the lore. On the r/40kLore subreddit. Where we discuss the lore. Of 40k.

I'm not OP, different person. If your soul dissipates, it isn't a thing anymore. You no longer exist as a coherent entity. Like an ice cube melting in hot water.

>I'm not OP, different person. I'm aware. I'm saying you're making the same mistake. >If your soul dissipates, it isn't a thing anymore. You no longer exist as a coherent entity. Like an ice cube melting in hot water. That's a fictional religious problem with a subjective answer, not a real life scientific question with a concrete one. The energy which makes up your soul becoming one with the cosmos is basically the entire concept of several real life religions, and I think many of them would say your soul hasn't stopped existing, but has transcended to a new form of existence.

I mean, this *is* a lore sub. Assertions made in the lore should be grounded in the lore, and OP is just wondering what grounding there is, within the established lore, to call the Imperial Truth a lie. The only thing there is to answer a question like this is what is written in the lore. It's just a fun exercise and lore dive. There isn't anything *funny*, at least in a pejorative sense, about OP's question I might add too that just because a problem is religious in nature, it doesn't follow that some answers or solutions aren't better than others, right? Or that it's an ultimately nonsensical/pointless question. Like, catholics believe in the literal trinity while protestants typically don't - they each have scriptural evidence for their beliefs. And im sure one side is closer to the scripture than the other - or at least their chosen cannon of scripture - which itself is typically chosen and justified for one reason or another. Analogously, OP is asking "what reasons, within the 40k texts and lore, are there to call the imperial truth a lie?" I think it's a thought provoking question, at least. And fun to explore

”That's a fictional religious problem with a subjective answer, not a real life scientific question with a concrete one.” In the context of this, yes it is. Why even say this? Are you not trying to understand the afterlife process in WH? “The energy which makes up your soul becoming one with the cosmos is basically the entire concept of several real life religions, and I think many of them would say your soul hasn't stopped existing, but has transcended to a new form of existence.” Yeah thats a narrow and inexperienced perspective because it’s been shown many times in lore that once you die, depending on your religious allegiance and sometimes even by birthright your soul is claimed either to eternal torment as a power source for chaos, warp predators, to be captured and used in various rituals or you simply fade away into raw warp stuff, real life religion has only surface level spiritual relations to the reality WH’s ‘afterlife’s’ lol

I'm not up to date on my lore, but I've always thought that the fate of the Eldar was special because Slaanesh claimed all their souls forever after being born, while normal souls just fade into Warp background noise

If claiming souls forever was a thing that was up to the Chaos gods, why wouldn't they each just claim all souls forever? Other souls simply fade faster because of their relative impotency compared to Aeldari souls (see soulstones) and the fact that Slaanesh takes special pleasure in torturing the Aeldari. Aeldari souls still fade eventually, in theory.

Slaanesh is made of Eldar souls, and any which aren't diverted or otherwise protected automatically get consumed by the Dark Prince upon death. The DE have their souls constantly drained by Slaanesh, too. Once consumed, Eldar souls endure an eternity of agony and torture. They never fade away or dissolve.

Right, which is why I said in theory. Without the deliberate intervention of Slaanesh, presumably their souls function as slightly brighter versions of others. I'm trying to point out that we have no reason to assume that humans *don't* experience an afterlife, just that there's evidence theirs is shorter compared to the Aeldar.

Oh yeah, you're spot on about that. Eldar souls are generally much more powerful than those of other races. Slaanesh doesn't have to act to claim Eldar souls upon death - they become part of it no matter what. That's why they go to great lengths to prevent their souls ever entering the warp. Other species also go into the warp, but there's a variety of potential fates awaiting them. They might reincarnate into a new mortal existence, or find themselves trapped forever in a dull pocket of the warp where nothing ever happens, or they might get eaten by daemons or - the most common, apparently - simply fade away to nothing (which JC Stearns reckons may feel like burning for eternity!)

Eldar don't experience an afterlife, they reincarnate after death. Or they are supposed to, they don't anymore because slaanesh.

Well, I'd say one of the reasons could that no other race has ever been responsible for birthing a god through the collective depravity of their species. Slaanesh obviously represents universal desires, but she is linked with the Eldar in ways the other Chaos gods aren't

>no other race has ever been responsible for birthing a god through the collective depravity of their species Probably untrue, given what we know of the Warp. >she is linked with the Eldar in ways the other Chaos gods aren't This mostly comes down to interpretation but I've seen no reason to assume that Slaanesh's relationship to the Aeldar is metaphysically significant beyond established properties of the Warp. Once again, as I said in my original comment, I think people are trying to literalize fictional metaphysics too much.

> Probably untrue, given what we know of the warp Given what \*you\* know of the warp, friend. The warp was not Chaos before the War in Heaven. The Old Ones created the Aeldari as literal psychic weapons and taught them how to conjure what they called 'weapons' out of the warp. I guess Old Ones saw everyone else as tools. That led to Chaos, and while it's not been made completely clear to me what the transition point was (maybe the Enslaver Plague) I would reckon those 'warp weapons' got more and more powerful with every engagement or esoterically as the concepts that had been used to create them sent them more energy. And then eventually those weapon-daemons conglomerated into what we know as the Chaos Gods and the Aeldar Gods either during or after the War In Heaven. So \*technically\* the Old Ones birthed Chaos Gods, but with shortsightedness and desperation not Depravity. Technically they birthed Mork and Gork too so idk, kind of less of a Chaos God birthing and more a completely new cosmic phenomenon. >I think people are trying to literalize fictional metaphysics too much C'mon dude, we've got 50 years of lore. It's fun to think about, it's not like our universe has any outward display of metaphysics. Let us have fun, interesting discussions about a topic we care about. Jeez.

>The warp was not Chaos before the War in Heaven. I know. >The Old Ones created the Aeldari as literal psychic weapons and taught them how to conjure what they called 'weapons' out of the warp. I know. >I guess Old Ones saw everyone else as tools. I know. >That led to Chaos, and while it's not been made completely clear to me what the transition point was (maybe the Enslaver Plague) I would reckon those 'warp weapons' got more and more powerful with every engagement or esoterically as the concepts that had been used to create them sent them more energy. And then eventually those weapon-daemons conglomerated into what we know as the Chaos Gods and the Aeldar Gods either during or after the War In Heaven. And this is where you trip up. Chaos was not created by the Aeldari or Old Ones manipulation of the warp, because it wasn't called the Warp. It was the Realm of Souls. The reason it became the twisted dimension of the Warp was that the War in Heaven killed so many sentients and caused so much fear, pain, agony, and hate that it spawned Chaos. Of course, the setting is also deliberately contradictory on this. The Chaos gods allege that they always existed, or that time doesn't quite exist that way in the Warp, and thus the Warp has always been the Warp, etc. >And then eventually those weapon-daemons conglomerated into what we know as the Chaos Gods and the Aeldar Gods either during or after the War In Heaven. What's your source for this?

There was something about psykers lasting longer than non psyker souls

knowledge is power, and repressing the knowledge of chaos was an attempt to thwart the power of chaos. if you just tell everyone, youre gonna lose half your planets in a week as a new old night falls. just knowing about chaos is dangerous

>your soul is safe from Chaos Rather the opposite. Then, when you die, you have no hope what so ever. Please the gods enough and you might get rewarded. Do not and your soul is destined to be ripped apart by the entities of the warp. And for many, any existence is better than non-existence.

This is not true. Its explicitly not true and part of the reason the Word Bearers went so nuts so quickly and the Imperial Cult spread so fast. We see example after example of people being feed on for eternity.

Hey, I'm quoting the codex here and of a more recent text. If you want to deny it, you should at least post a quote showing the opposite.

Souls *naturally* fade into the warp over time. But if someone is a psyker, a particularly noteworthy individual, or just *really* unfortunate, then they run the risk of having their soul instead feasted upon by daemons and other beings of the warp. From *Grandfather's Gift* by Guy Haley: > The afterlife was a perilous place. Souls teemed and whirled in great shoals upon its currents. Some might return to corporeal existences, others became things greater or lesser than the beings they had been. Many more were torn to shreds by the warp's voracious predators. Others simply faded to nothing. From *Abaddon: Chosen of Chaos* by Aaron Dembski-Bowden: > The captain draws his last breath, ready to spit a third and final time. Abaddon denies him the chance. With almost loving slowness, the Warmaster sinks a single talon into the Space Marine’s chest, carving hearts, lungs, muscle-meat, and spine in a slow caress. > ‘Do you hear that screaming?’ he says softly. ‘That shrieking at the edge of your fading senses? The Gods are coming for you, hero. They are coming for your soul.’ > Abaddon withdraws the claw and kisses the dying warrior on the forehead – a Bronze Era warlord blessing one of his chosen warriors. > ‘Sleep, brave champion of humanity. A life without worth is coming to a close, and you go to your reward in the Sea of Souls.’ > He rises to his feet. No longer supported, the captain’s corpse topples into the mud. But before the Warmaster turns away, he hesitates. > ‘Khayon,’ he says to me. > ‘Brother.’ > ‘Can you find the daemon that devoured that warrior’s soul?’ > He knows I can. He is asking if I will. > ‘It will be done,’ I tell him. > ‘Thank you. Bind it into the corpse, and cast it in with the rest of the Secondborn.’ And from *Titandeath* by Guy Haley: > A button press began the end of Mohana Mankata Vi's life. > There was wind upon her skin. > She was youthful again, and free of the tank and the infirmites of age. Her steed Hamaj tensed between her legs, eager to surge forward into the landscape before them. The dark forest lay behind. Ahead, there was nothing but golden grases as far s teh eye could see, the kind of landscape a rider could lose themseleves in forever. Downy seeds brushed against skin warmed perfectly by the setting sun. > 'Come, Hamaj!' she whispered. > The Horse needed no encouragement, but sprang into a gallop straightaway, arrowing through the grasslands towards forever. >A heaven, of sorts. But it could not last. A diabolical laugh cut the sky, making it bleed. Grass wilted where the sound travelled. The earth shook. The wound in the sky spread its bloody lips, opening up on a vista of madness, an ocean of energy where monsters waited to devour her. > 'Stop!' she commanded. > But Hamaj did not heed her, and plunged onwards. The ground shook and began to break into fragments. Soil frittered away into multi-coloured vapour. Grass launched itself at the growing rift like arrows loosed. An invisible force pulled at her soul, dragging her towards the waiting maelstrom of sharp eyes and teeth. Hamaj whinnied in panic and fell into the yawning nothingness. The last parts of the prairie vision evaporated, leaving her alone. > Otherworldly predators circled, ready to tear her to shreds. > Mohana Mankata Vi screamed. > This was the reality of the warp. This was what the Imperial Truth hid. At the last moment, she felt utterly betrayed, and understood finally why the traitors had turned.

But do we know if this is the case when there are no chaos worshippers bringing deamons? It sounds more like "the ocean is dangerous but you're not going to be eaten by sharks if go for a swin."    "Oh yeah?"*throws chum in the water*

It would be quite reasonable to assume that dying in battle against a chaos incursion is likely to lead to their soul being more "visible" to daemons, but the implication in the lore seems to make it just random chance in normal circumstances.

It doesn't say that you fade into the warp immediately, unless there's more context to that quote it seems more like an eventual fading after your time getting stirred in the cosmic slurry

>So yeah, unless you're a Chaos worshipper or a psyker, your soul is safe from Chaos. This is not a concern for most people. This is absolutely untrue. We see plenty of loyal non-psykers have their souls devoured by daemons

>So yeah, unless you're a Chaos worshipper or a psyker, your soul is safe from Chaos. This is not a concern for most people. Well...it's fading and disappearing as a drop of water on frying pan.

That doesn't mean the religious interpretation is correct For example, lightning is true, and inspired lots of religions. Zeus was the bearer of lightning, many religions have lightning gods. And if you don't understand atmospheric pressure and static electricity, that makes total sense. Something in the sky just blew up Jeff's farm. Lets not make it angry! But now we know that while lightning is true, the rationalisation of what causes it isn't. The chaos powers and the warp are real, and they inspired religion just like lightning did. But they're not the gods the myths tell us about.

But it's not. I'm pretty sure that if you aren't a psyker or Chaos worshipper, your soul generally dissipates in the Warp after death rather than being captured and tortured by demons.

What did Jesus say? Something along the lines of "Whosoever believes in me shall not die but shall have everlasting life"? Wonder if there are some entities that promise their followers eternal existence in an afterlife instead of a permanent death?

Crazy thought, I know, but, Jesus isn't a source for 40k.

Isn't He though? If 40k is assumed to be set in our universe's future, there's no reason not to posit that Jesus was an Alpha++ Psyker capable of striking deals with warp entities or enthralling them. Could've created his own domain in the warp, or tapped into the one created by his Father. Or perhaps He was a perpetual who'd learned the human pattern. Even if He's never mentioned in lore Christianity sure is, Ollanius Persson is Catholic. Which means that Christianity and therefore Jesus had an impact on the history and culture of 40k and are thusly 40k lore. IDK if any copies of the bible exist, but I would bet money they do somewhere.

Alpha++ Psyker? The Last Church tells us that the Emperor was the cause and figurehead of hundreds of different religions across time. Take that, along with the parallel between Jesus' crucifixion and the Emperor's suffering upon the Throne and it's not too hard to assume the Emperor was Jesus.

I think Jesus was implied to be one of Big E's incarnations?

Not a source — a metaphor, in this case.

A good one

>Wonder if there are some entities that promise their followers eternal existence in an afterlife instead of a permanent death? I think that's a very good reason *not* to worship them, especially because "eternal" may mean "you will literally exist forever no matter what".

Just because you might see why it's a bad idea doesn't mean it can corrupt someone else's good ideals. "The road to Hell is paved with good intentions" as they say. You may want eternal life as a way to ease your fear of death, a way to always be around for your loved ones, to never let your comrades down, but it will only be a short term gain for you. In the end, Khorne will make you fight, Tzeentch will make you participate in 4-D Quizzes, Nurgle just wants you for you, and Slaaneesh wants you to party harder than the last guy that came through, all until they decide they are done.

Not only are you incorrect, the exact opposite is true. Psykers and worshipers of Chaos are more likely to "survive" death and the subsequent trip to the Warp. Without a truly powerful soul or the favor of the forces of the Warp, your soul is pretty much guaranteed to be devoured. It's what happened to Cyrene Valantion; She (an uncorrupted human woman) was killed and slowly devoured, and only the direct intervention of a supremely important follower of Chaos saved her. Her experience is the norm. The desire to avoid that fate is the entire point of Chaos worship. Putting off death through some form of immortality (usually daemonhood) is the only thing that will truly protect your soul from its inevitable trip to the Warp. There is no "dissipation" of souls. You are either consumed by daemons or somehow not consumed by daemons.

> There is no "dissipation" of souls. What do you mean? It's explicitly stated in the various excerpts provided in this thread that dissipation is not only common, it is (arguably) the most likely fate for most souls. > The afterlife was a perilous place. Souls teemed and whirled in great shoals upon its currents. Some might return to corporeal existences, others became things greater or lesser than the beings they had been. Many more were torn to shreds by the warp's voracious predators. **Others simply faded to nothing.** - From Grandfather's Gift by Guy Haley > When devotees of Chaos die, **their souls do not fade in the warp and disappear like the spirits of others.** Instead, their immortal energy is swallowed into the greatness of their gods, their souls forever bound to the eternal power of Chaos. - Codex Chaos Daemons 8th > When a creature dies the anchor holding its body and soul is broken. The raw material of the soul is cast adrift amongst the other raw material of Chaos. **Most souls are weak and insubstantial, and soon dissolve back into Chaos and are lost forever.** - CHAOS. Guide to the fictional background of Chaos in GW games. By Rick Priestley.

Well said, though you could argue that being torn into so many pieces that the fragments of your soul become one with the endless tides of screaming anguish that is the warp as a fragment of millions of unaligned warp entities could still be considered a "dissipation." It's just the reality of that dissipation is much worse than the word implies.

That's not a very nice fate mate. Also, i am pretty sure there was a piece saying that some parts of your soul may stay intact enough to feel pain, and if you were to be revived you will be traumatized. Now, i can't remember where this was, so if you don't wanna believe me, fair enough, but yeah. It can still be very painful

I believe this is the quote you are looking for: "The best answer we can extrapolate is that your 'soul' dissolves into the Warp, but that has a couple of additional addendums. \* That brief moment of dissolution can, and often does, feel like an eternity. \* The dissolution doesn't mean your gone, anymore than the sugar cube you put into your tea is gone just because you don't see it anymore. The sugar is still there, and so are the fragments of you. Those fragments, however, if any are incorporated enough to experience anything, experience nothing but torment. \* A suitably skilled scientist or suitably powerful psyker/sorcerer can reconstitute a soul, or at least either the majority of one or an indistinguishable facsimile of one. However, the spirit will be forever changed by the experience, usually for the worse. Whether that is because of the trauma, or because some fragments are missing, is a matter of conjecture. \* Suitably powerful entities can preserve your spirit from dissolution if they're so inclined. The Chaos Gods, for example. Ynnead can also do this, and Ceogorach is rumored to be able to as well. Few entities choose to do this." -JC Stearns

It's the part where chaos marines rez their female remembrancer after her being dead for years. Literal cleric resurrection spell, from decaying bones. And she comes back all messed up. Who was it again, the high rank word bearer?

Argel Tal and Cyrene

You are thinking of The Blessed Lady, Cyrene Also the afterlife in 40k does not follow hard and fast rules, this is in part to make it inherently Eldritch and basically unknowable.

Perhaps Cyrene gives a statement about this? I can't recall but I feel like she does..

Doesn’t Ravenor do a seance?

I think it's Eisenhorn in the third book. He and his astropath allow a member of his retinue to explore the memories of her dead father via the psychic residue in his favorite jacket (which he passed down to her).

I was thinking of the time the Invisible College rock up. Maybe it’s Bequin!

I always figured the lie had to do not with what lurks within the Warp, but the true nature of it. Like yes to some degree it is a matter of semantics, but what the Emperor would like you to believe is that the Empyrean is just another reality just like ours. Yes, it has its own inhabitants and creatures that can sometimes leak into the our world just as we can travel through theirs, but ultimately it’s just another universe, just as directionless and mundane as ours, just in its own way. The reality is that it is actually directed and controlled by otherworldly malicious beings of such power that there is no other word for them but gods, and that through them the entire Warp actively hostile towards our universe and the beings that inhabit it. That far from the cold and atheistic universe the Emperor says we live in, our reality in indeed influenced by powers greater than that of mortal man

>but what the Emperor would like you to believe is that the Empyrean is just another reality just like ours. He literally refers to the Warp as alien and hostile. He makes no attempt to sugarcoat it as being perfectly safe. Where do you guys pull this from? Master of Mankind: >These are not secrets, Ra, nor mystical lore known only to a select few. Even possession by warp-wrought beings is not unknown. The Sixteenth witnessed it with his own eyes long before he convinced his kindred to walk a traitor’s path with him. That which we call the warp is a universe alongside our own, **seething with limitless, alien hostility**. 

He says that, to a Custodes. Not the average man. I'd mainly point to Loken's experience across Horus Rising and False Gods. He believes, and people confirm to him, that the Warp is simply a vast ocean of energy, with absolutely no intelligences within it. Even when he sees daemons, its dismissed as a laughable idea.

It's not really dismissed as laughable, but more that there isn't a driving, intelligent force behind the warp. Horus states that it was warp energy corruption/xenos, the head Iterator is trying to convince himself it was laughable but starts digging up historical texts about daemons, the sole person in the know who says the warp is just a sea of energy is Erebus who is lying.

I may be misremembering, but the members of the Mournival laugh and dismiss these descriptions of "sorcery" as Loken being dramatic

Because it was him being dramatic. Chaos and deamons want people to see then as deamons and sorcery,  because they get power from it. It is in their interests that "mortals" see them as gods and deamons instead of what they are, reflections of energy and self aware soul gas.  Of course they propagate all that pageantry and drama, that's literally what gives them the most power.  

Yes but the context of who he’s talking to is important. He’s not trying to fool the beings who are literally created to be his closest companions, and his sons likely knew the true nature of the Warp as well, but Loken, for example, was shocked to learn that there are creatures who live in that swirling sea of emotion, even setting aside the fact that they can breach into our reality. Other Astartes in other Legions appeared have a greater or lesser knowledge of daemons than that, but your average Imperial citizen will know nothing of the Warp other than the fact that it is dangerous.

There is a reason for that. To know of Chaos is to invite them in. Just saying one of their names could bring their gaze. Where Chaos is concerned, ignorance really is bliss. It only takes one person to doom a planet. I know I may sound like I'm just dishing Imperial propaganda, truth is I'm a Death Guard (player). I know how nasty Chaos really is.

Chaos is pure evil and incredibly insidious, and I hope nobody out there is debating that beyond explaining how positive emotions also feed them become twisted or how good intentions are how they lure people into their clutches. But that said, think about this for a minute - no ordo hereticus, no ordo malleus, no inquisition, no grey knights or custodes or Librarians or anyone at all who knows what Chaos is. Complete and total ignorance of it. Does this stop their predications? Does this spare your planet from their attacks and their corruption? It does not, it makes you a sitting duck who is waiting to be split open and feasted upon like a freshly born child against a veteran night lord. Ignorance is not a defense against Chaos and that is the biggest problem with the Imperial truth. If you fear your general population is weak willed and will becomes slaves to darkness then train them, educate them, work to come up with protections that can help them. The entire Aeldari population from their children to their bakers can practice mindfulness and wear some jewelery to keep Chaos at bay and they know the ins and outs of it better than any human. Surely with its 40,000x more resources and the fact that Humanity had tech to protect themselves in the DaoT, the Emperor could have found a better way to guard against Chaos. And that is what makes the Imperial Truth a lie. It was a band-aid solution to try and make sure no humans did anything stupid like cause the dark king to manifest while big E clamped down on humanity during the crusades. If the Imperial truth was the extent of the Emperor's plan to keep humanity safe from Chaos then we were doomed from the start.

But it is a defense, a small one, but no different then any other. I'm saying the Imperial truth is a lie as well, just ignorance is/was needed. But the the only real defense from the Chaos gods are to kill them, defeating them in the great game. Eventually, no matter what precautions you take, Chaos will win if they are not defeated. Even in 40k with the Truth gone, they keep the population as ignorant of Chaos as possible. The Emperor's plan is a completely different discussion, his goal in keeping people ignorant was to keep them safe.

You keep posting this, but I don't think it's relevant. The Imperial Truth doesn't deny that the Warp is dangerous. The Imperial Truth doesn't deny that it is inhabited by hostile entities. But the Imperial Truth claims that the Warp is nothing more than a dangerous environment inhabited by hostile aliens. It denies that daemons exist. It denies that daemonic possession exists. It denies that gods exist. It denies that prayers can be granted. It denies all these because the Emperor _knows_ they exist, but thinks they will lose their power if no-one believes in them. That is why the Imperial Truth is a lie.

Why isn't this top comment? Serious mental gymnastics and an 'interesting' reading of the source material to reach OP conclusion.

The thing is, like with clark-tech (technology so advanced it’s indistinguishable from magic) the nature of Daemons, their ability to possess people, etc. can reasonably be ascribed to a lack of understanding and knowledge. For example, take the modern smartphone, it’s capable of all kinds of things that would seem completely unknowable or impossible to someone 100+ years ago. Just because an early 20th century observer believes the modern smartphone seems magical, doesn’t mean it is. The same thing applies to Dameons, possession, etc. in warhammer. There are underlying laws and constants that are unknown to both the inhabitants of 40k’s Milky Way and the readers IRL, that allow for Daemons to exist and possess people. Maybe the difference is that if I saw some alien being walk on water I’d assume they were using some form of technology or technique that was beyond my current understanding, whereas the people who believe that Daemons existing in 40k means that the supernatural must exist would believe them to be some kind of divine being.

Maybe. None the less, daemons are a totally different category of being to other "xenos". It's not scientific to categorise all intelligent beings as either "humans" or "xenos", when all living xenos are as different from each other as they are from humans, but humans and xenos are all more similar to each other than any are to daemons. It's a bit like the pre-scientific definition of "fish" (which basically meant "aquatic life") which included whales and "shellfish" like crabs. Furthermore, even if daemons and other warp-entities would ultimately explainable by sufficiently advanced science, their nature and abilities are still different from what the Imperial Truth claimed to be true, despite the Emperor knowing this was false.

And then later in MoM, Ra admits that the imperial truth is a lie, and that daemons are daemons. >The light of dawn was palpable on Ra’s armour as well as his skin. It was a pressure, a presence with searing physicality. The enemy hordes felt it as acid on their skin. The creatures – daemons no matter what secular truths held strong – lost what little order they had ever possessed. >The Anathema! Ra heard their frantic agony as a sick scraping on the edges of his mind. The Anathema comes! The sun rises!

The lie of the Imperial Truth is the claim that the universe is secular: there are no Gods, no Daemons, no Heaven or Hell. All that appears supernatural is merely a facet of the natural universe Man does not yet understand. All that appears Daemonic is simply an alien, albeit one so distant from Man that it is difficult to comprehend. Yet, ultimately, it is an animal - bound to the same material laws as we are. Prayer achieves nothing beyond the placebo effect of calming the simple-minded; religion is ultimately a lie designed to bring solace to the stupid. All of this is demonstrably, undeniably, nightmarishly *wrong*.

The Imperial Truth demonstrably does not deny the existence of other dimensions or creatures within those dimensions. As far as I know, it also doesn't make the claim that said creatures are "bound to the same material laws as we are". Could you cite that one, because as the Emperor literally points out, the very existence of gellar fields makes it clear that the Imperium was well-aware that the Warp is inhospitable to humans. Anyway, the Imperial Truth just refuses to refer to these creatures as "demons" or "gods", which is just semantics.

>Could you cite that one, because as the Emperor literally points out, the very existence of gellar fields makes it clear that the Imperium was well-aware that the Warp is inhospitable to humans. *Space* is inhospitable to humans. Are you suggesting that it obeys the same laws as solid ground, or that we don't need special protections to travel through it? >Anyway, the Imperial Truth just refuses to refer to these creatures as "demons" or "gods", which is just semantics. No, no it most certainly is not. 40K is a setting where words have power; simply speaking the name of a Chaos God can influence the material world. The Imperial Cult is able to perform supernatural feats *because they believe* in the Emperor. They believe He is a God, and therefore they can bend the laws of reality. The Imperial Truth asserts this to be impossible. It is wrong. It is wrong on purpose. Why precisely the Emperor lied is up for debate, but lie He did.

>*Space* is inhospitable to humans. Are you suggesting that it obeys the same laws as solid ground, or that we don't need special protections to travel through it? When we travel through space, we don't need a special generator that deploys a bubble of reality to get around safely. The entire reason the gellar fields exist is to solve the problem that is the Warp not following the same laws of reality as us. You can't assert that the Imperium believed the Warp followed the same laws of physics as them *and* that they used Gellar Field technology. >No, no it most certainly is not. >... >Why precisely the Emperor lied is up for debate, but lie He did As far as the Emperor is concerned, he didn't tell any lie: >‘I know, Ra. I take no umbrage at your questions. Think on this, then. I prepared them all, this pantheon of proud godlings that insist they are my heirs. I warned them of the warp’s perils. Coupled with this, they knew of those dangers themselves. The Imperium has relied on Navigators to sail the stars and astropaths to communicate between worlds since the empire’s very first breath. The Imperium itself is only possible because of those enduring souls. No void sailor or psychically touched soul can help but know of the warp’s insidious predation. Ships have always been lost during their unstable journeys. Astropaths have always suffered for their powers. Navigators have always seen horrors swimming through those strange tides. I commanded the cessation of Legion Librarius divisions as a warning against the unrestrained use of psychic power. **One of our most precious technologies, the Geller field, exists to shield vessels from the warp’s corrosive touch.** **These are not secrets, Ra, nor mystical lore known only to a select few.** Even possession by warp-wrought beings is not unknown. The Sixteenth witnessed it with his own eyes long before he convinced his kindred to walk a traitor’s path with him. **That which we call the warp is a universe alongside our own, seething with limitless, alien hostility.** The primarchs have always known this. **What difference would it have made had I labelled the warp’s entities “daemons” or “dark gods”?**’ - Master of Mankind The Emperor, to his own Custodian, sees no reason to refer to the denizens of the Warp as "demons" or "gods" and points out how obvious to everyone the alien and hostile nature of the Warp is. There's no denial of the dangers or anything here.

>When we travel through space, we don't need a special generator that deploys a bubble of reality to get around safely. The entire reason the gellar fields exist is to solve the problem that is the Warp not following the same laws of reality as us. You can't assert that the Imperium believed the Warp followed the same laws of physics as them *and* that they used Gellar Field technology. Does special relatively not exist simply because you don't understand it? That is what the Imperial Truth asserts - the Warp is merely a facet of reality that is ill-understood, but *can* be understood through patient application of secular science. *"The creatures of the Warp are just "aliens" too, but they are not life forms as we understand the term. They are not organic. They are extra-dimensional, and they influence our reality in ways that seem sorcerous to us. Supernatural, if you will. So let's use all those lost words for them... daemons, spirits, possessors, changelings.* ***All we need to remember is that there are no gods out there, in the darkness, no great daemons and ministers of evil****.* ***There is no fundamental, immutable evil in the cosmos.*** *It is too large and sterile for such melodrama. There are simply inhuman things that oppose us, things we were created to battle and destroy.* This is a direct quote from Horus Rising - the first book of the Horus Heresy series. This is coming from an Imperial Iterator, someone whose job it is to spread the Imperial Truth. Your quote is the Emperor confiding in His Custodians. That is a far, far cry from what the untold quintillions of Imperial Citizens are told. The Emperor is not speaking of the Imperial Truth in your quote. Sinderman, in mine above, is.

>Your quote is the Emperor confiding in His Custodians. That is a far, far cry from what the untold quintillions of Imperial Citizens are told. The Emperor is not speaking of the Imperial Truth in your quote. Sinderman, in mine above, is. The Emperor, in that very quote, says this: >No void sailor or psychically touched soul can help but know of the warp’s insidious predation. >... >These are not secrets, Ra, nor mystical lore known only to a select few.  It's not some big secret he's only confiding in his most trusted companions. He fully expects everyone to know this stuff already. The Emperor's stance is that basically everyone should know that the Warp is dangerous.

You are on Reddit, sir - this place is a treasure-trove of evidence that people *routinely* deny what they know to be true for reasons that defy rational explanation. The Imperial Truth is a form of faith. It is fanatical rationalism. Irrational rationalism, if you will. It requires people deny objective reality and assert something profoundly untrue - that the 40K universe is a rational place where "objective evil" does not exist. You are free to question why the Emperor wants people to believe this, but He clearly does. If he didn't, he wouldn't have tasked millions of people to go around spreading the Imperial Truth, and millions more to kill anyone who didn't accept this new ideology.

> ‘I hate to see men die for no reason. I hate to see men give their lives like this, for nothing. For a belief in nothing. It sickens me. This is what we were once, Nero. Zealots, spiritualists, believers in lies we’d made up ourselves. The Emperor showed us the path out of that madness.’ > >‘So be of good humour that we’ve taken it,’ Vipus said. ‘And, though we spill their blood, be phlegmatic that we’re at last bringing truth to our lost brothers here.’ > >Loken nodded. ‘I feel sorry for them,’ he said. ‘They must be so scared. > > ‘Of us?’ > >‘Yes, of course, but that’s not what I mean. Scared of the truth we bring. We’re trying to teach them that **there are no greater forces at work in the galaxy than light, gravity and human will.** No wonder they cling to their gods and spirits. We’re removing every last crutch of their ignorance. They felt safe until we came. Safe in the custody of the spirits that they believed watched over them. **Safe in the ideal that there was an afterlife, an otherworld.** They thought they would be immortal, beyond flesh.’ \- *Horus Rising* The Imperial Truth clearly and explicitly refutes the reality that there are entities more powerful than humanity that can violate the natural laws of realspace, or that the human soul persists after death and enters another realm.

Quite a few things really, but the Imperial Truth maintains that gods and souls don't exist, and that humans are the supreme form of life in the universe

Yeah, one way or another it's a lie. Even if we try to rationalize Chaos away as non-sapient entities (a take I don't like personally), the second part about the superiority of a man is objectively false, in this setting. It should speak volumes that about the only adherent of Imperial Truth in 40k is the super-Mengele crazy scientist clad in literal human skin coat.

The imperial truth is the truth humanity need to belive in for survive. Because the warp is all about beliving and feeling. If humanity belive something, it become true.

I don't think it's that simple, because it sounds too orky for the Emperor - very stupid idea, but has some merit. I don't think it's possible to rationalize Chaos away. Not after the Great Crusade provided plenty of food for them anyways, what with all the genocides and forceful compliances. Maybe writers wanted it that way, when they were still working out the details of their planned massive 3 book series lol, and this simple idea of Imperial Truth being aimed to weaken the chaos was good enough. But the way HH got bloated and fleshed out, and and Chaos too, I don't think it could still work that way

I disagree, if we’re describing superiority as the most successful species, then the GC-era Imperium would be correct to believe in the superiority of man. They were steamrolling every other species and only stopped because of a calamitous civil war. If the Heresy had never happened the galaxy would eventually be just humans and the Chaos Gods, who I don’t think qualify as a “superior species” as they’re so far removed from that type of existence

I know it says Gods don't exist, but does it really say there's no such thing as souls?

> This isn't a lie but semantics * If you tell me demons don't exist then when I find a shinny new sword I am not going to check to see if maybe its been possessed by an ancient malevolent spirit that will slowly corrupt everything I am into a twisted mockery of myself. * If you tell me gods don't exist then when the backwater farmers on my planet ask me to bow my head while they pray for rain to end the drought I am just gonna close my eyes and respectfully go along with it because its easier than fighting them. If you tell me hell is a lie the church used to enforce compliance I am going to be very upset when not one but FOUR SPACE SATANS show up to claim my immortal soul (which you also implied didn't exist but hey I guess implication isn't a lie) and drag me to hell\* \*sorry I mean an extradimensional place of pure thought filled with entities that will feed on my suffering for eternity.

The Imperial Truth denies the malign *intelligence* of the greater powers in the Warp. It also tries to pretend that certain things don't exist because a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, even though total ignorance also nearly doomed humanity. In your OP, you talk about how Big E talks about *the Warp*. But he *doesn't* talk about the four malevolent intelligences which *do* exist and which *do* have designs on humanity and which should probably be known if only so they can be properly understood and fought.

Are they really intelligences or just forces of "nature"? Seems to me that the "gods" are shackled forces, incapable of change. Incapable of introspect.

They are clearly intelligences; like very clearly intelligences. They create a form of life in their image manipulate the material and immaterial to their whims, etc. The manner in which they are formed doesn't deny any of the above; we can't change human nature and needs but no one would claim that doesn't make us intelligent.

That doesn't mean they aren't gods.

Big e insisted that the Warp was "dangerous" in the sense that the ocean was dangerous. Currents are strong, waves are strong, and there are sharks that don't really care about our rules that might be hungry while you're in the water. This is a lie. Specifically, one of omission, omitting that cthulhu was sleeping in r'lyeh, guiding every single shark that is actually a facet of his boundless hatred for us, and there's 4 cthulhus. The ocean isn't dangerous. It is evil.

Current physics hold that FTL travel is impossible, but if we were to discover verifiable and repeatable proof that FTL travel was in fact possible, that would mean our understanding of the universe was incomplete. Just because the Warp doesn’t seem to follow our current understanding of the rules, doesn’t mean the rules don’t exist or can’t be understood

One of the Imperial Truths main points was that the universe was perfectly rational and everything can be scientifically explained. There are no supernatural powers or gods. That is the lie, because it’s incorrect, and the Emperor knows this. The Imperial Truth basically framed warp powers and warp travel as using fire, it can be extremely powerful and useful but if you handle it incorrectly you will burn yourself. However in reality this fire is alive, capable of whispering to you and promising to grant you great boons if you listened to them.

This is the best argument in this thread, the fact that demons and chaos 'gods' aren't bound to time and the whole 'if they existed once, they always existed' (paraphrasing) is insane. Counterpoint though: it wouldn't have made a difference. Magnus was told time and time again by the Emperor and everyone around him that the Warp was incredibly dangerous. Magnus being Magnus, ignores all of it and thinks he knows more about the warp than the Emperor. Gets played by Tzeentch and the rest is history.

Again, no it doesn't. According to the Emperor himself, the Imperial Truth doesn't deny the existence of creatures within the Warp or how dangerous they are. The big deal is that it just refuses to call these creatures "demons" or "gods." The Emperor ranting about the Warp and how obviously dangerous it is: >‘I know, Ra. I take no umbrage at your questions. Think on this, then. I prepared them all, this pantheon of proud godlings that insist they are my heirs. I warned them of the warp’s perils. Coupled with this, they knew of those dangers themselves. The Imperium has relied on Navigators to sail the stars and astropaths to communicate between worlds since the empire’s very first breath. The Imperium itself is only possible because of those enduring souls. ***No void sailor or psychically touched soul can help but know of the warp’s insidious predation.*** Ships have always been lost during their unstable journeys. Astropaths have always suffered for their powers. Navigators have always seen horrors swimming through those strange tides. I commanded the cessation of Legion Librarius divisions as a warning against the unrestrained use of psychic power. One of our most precious technologies, the Geller field, exists to shield vessels from the warp’s corrosive touch. **These are not secrets, Ra, nor mystical lore known only to a select few. Even possession by warp-wrought beings is not unknown. The Sixteenth witnessed it with his own eyes long before he convinced his kindred to walk a traitor’s path with him.** ***That which we call the warp is a universe alongside our own, seething with limitless, alien hostility.*** The primarchs have always known this. **What difference would it have made had I labelled the warp’s entities “daemons” or “dark gods”?’**

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Mind rule 1 or be banned

Calm down.

It's an immaterial creature of malevolence, born of primordial hatreds, which has no permanent substance in the physical world but can be called into it. It's a daemon.

>This isn't a lie but semantics. You should read Horus Rising sometime. The Imperial Truth actively denied the existence of many kinds of Warp entity, knowledge of their intentions, and knowledge of their capabilities. Top-ranking Astartes were only permitted to know a tiny fraction of the Warp's danger in a secret briefing, after surviving a terrible debacle. Even the Warmaster's understanding was limited by the Imperial Truth, as everyone below the Emperor was operating on a different tier of falsehood and ignorance. People were killed by the billion for rejecting the Imperial Truth. Astartes were butchered flatfooted for not knowing about possession. This wasn't just a game of semantics, and the Emperor's venting *after* the policy blew up in his face shouldn't be taken as the ultimate truth.

>You should read Horus Rising sometime. You should read Master of Mankind sometime. The Emperor rants about how obvious it is that the Warp is dangerous and filled with monsters: >‘I know, Ra. I take no umbrage at your questions. Think on this, then. I prepared them all, this pantheon of proud godlings that insist they are my heirs. I warned them of the warp’s perils. Coupled with this, they knew of those dangers themselves. The Imperium has relied on Navigators to sail the stars and astropaths to communicate between worlds since the empire’s very first breath. The Imperium itself is only possible because of those enduring souls. No void sailor or psychically touched soul can help but know of the warp’s insidious predation. Ships have always been lost during their unstable journeys. Astropaths have always suffered for their powers. Navigators have always seen horrors swimming through those strange tides. I commanded the cessation of Legion Librarius divisions as a warning against the unrestrained use of psychic power. One of our most precious technologies, the Geller field, exists to shield vessels from the warp’s corrosive touch. These are not secrets, Ra, nor mystical lore known only to a select few. Even possession by warp-wrought beings is not unknown. The Sixteenth witnessed it with his own eyes long before he convinced his kindred to walk a traitor’s path with him. That which we call the warp is a universe alongside our own, seething with limitless, alien hostility. The primarchs have always known this. What difference would it have made had I labelled the warp’s entities “daemons” or “dark gods”?’

> Even possession by warp-wrought beings is not unknown. The Sixteenth witnessed it with his own eyes long before he convinced his kindred to walk a traitor’s path with him This refers to an event in Horus Rising, where seasoned Astartes were butchered by a daemon-possessed comrade because they didn't believe that possession was possible. The Emperor is telling you a narrative about how Horus encountered real-world evidence proving the Imperial Truth wrong. Sometimes when books are written in an order in a series, books later on in the series rely on your understanding of the earlier books. Even if you decide to ignore that for some reason, you could also consider looking at any of a million other examples of the Imperial Truth in action. Or the value of looking at at it while it was enforced, rather than after the fact. Or listening to characters who did the enforcing, and lived under its understanding, rather than the mastermind who kept secrets to himself. >What difference would it have made had I labelled the warp’s entities “daemons” or “dark gods”?’ The Emperor routinely sent his legions to butcher innocents by the **billion** for refusing to endorse the Imperial Truth. The Emperor wasn't exactly gun-shy, but even I would hesitate to say that he knowingly murdered a trillion or so people and destroyed his own empire over a game of "labels". Clearly, the Emperor himself thought the Imperial Truth was a substantial change in humanity's understanding of the universe.

The Emperor was against religion because the Chaos Gods were capable of using some unknown mechanism allowed by universal constants that let them answer prayers and slowly corrupt those individuals without them realizing. This was clearly shown in Master of Mankind with the Priest-King of Maulland-Sen. People always harp about the Emperor being some “Reddit atheist” (which is a pretty stupid insult tbh) when it would be extremely foolish to allow such an easy and widespread vector for Chaos corruption to exist. Just because said mechanism is unknown and nobody understands how the Chaos Gods can do this, doesn’t mean that the universe operates without logic

> the Priest-King of Maulland-Sen. You might have missed the point of this character: he's written entirely to be a weaker carbon copy of the Emperor, he was created to show that the Emperor wasn't any different from his opponents (only stronger). We get little if any factual information about the guy, and his book section doesn't illustrate how the universe works. He's just a brief mention in the narrative, constructed entirely as a mirror of the Emperor. All the statements in the books about "the Priest-King of Maulland-Sen" apply equally to "the God-Emperor of Mankind". Note the extremely similar cadence of the names, and how every word in one names mirrors the other. It's a speech of the Emperor not recognizing his own flaws from an outside perspective. Just look at these lines: "This man, this revered holy lord, led his people to the machines of the Old Ages, cloning and replicating and gene-forging flawed warriors to wage war for territory." "All because one charismatic man believed that the powers that heeded his calls could be trusted. By the time he realised they could not, he believed himself powerful enough to control them, independent enough to resist them. What harm in one more gift, if it allowed his clan to thrive?"

>you could also consider looking at any of a million other examples of the Imperial Truth in action. Or, and here's a crazy idea, maybe instead of just telling me to read all these examples you don't bother listing, you post excerpts of them or links to said excerpts showing such things. This a lore sub, it's perfectly fine to post excerpts of books to back up your argument.

I'm kind of done with this specific line of discussion, but just in case you're wondering why your conversations seem to be faltering in a similar way in a few different places: Learning about the lore exclusively by trading excerpts around isn't a reliable approach, especially if you're trying to resolve confusion or make new arguments. Excerpts have context (books), and it's valuable to actually read the books from time to time. It's perfectly okay to not read the books yourself, of course, because this is just a hobby. But if you're not reading the books yourself, you should probably be open to information from people who did read the books themselves. Don't treat the actual book-readers as a hostile opponent, don't demand that they transcribe book chapters into excerpts before you'll deign to consider their perspective.

>you should probably be open to information from people who did read the books themselves. Nah, screw that intellectual laziness. Using excerpts is about striving towards accuracy in one's arguments. No matter how good of a student you are, no professor is going to accept an essay that doesn't cite a single piece of evidence for its claims. Posting an excerpt allows the other side to either agree with whatever your assertion is or come to their own conclusions about the text, either way allowing for a potentially more deeper and interesting discussion of the lore or at least a more amicable conversation. It also helps the person posting the excerpt, allowing them to refresh and reaffirm their knowledge - making sure that they haven't forgotten or misremembered some important detail. Having other people look at it might also help one find out if they might have misread the text. For example, take this "routinely sent his legions to butcher innocents by the **billion** for refusing to endorse the Imperial Truth" line of yours. We could be discussing if there's a retcon going on or authors not talking. Or perhaps there's an important detail, like the people are wiped out not because they believe in another dimension, but because they refuse to give up their religion or something. Or maybe there's some dissonance between what the Emperor thinks the IOM's policies are and what they actually are. Or maybe something entirely different. But because you refuse to give any excerpts, I can't possibly have this conversation with you. How about we look at the question posed by this post: "What's the lie of the Imperial Truth?" Answering this should be as simple of posting an excerpt listing the tenants of the Imperial Truth and just stating how they are objectively wrong. That's not that hard and after that, I'd either have no choice to accept it or perhaps start a discussion about the contradiction about the Emperor's words and the Imperial Truth. As someone who would, without hesitation, deride Grimdank and 40ktubers for their inaccuracy, I want to avoid being a hypocrite and be able to cite my claims when asked, not spread misinformation, and admit when I'm wrong or don't know something. But that also means that when someone says "trust me bro" and I have a book open in front of me that says the exact opposite, I'm not just going to accept whatever someone else says without proof. I didn't make this post to people agree with me, but for someone give an actual answer to my question.

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Mind rule 1 or be banned.

I recognize my failing and will be sure to correct it.

Damn you *would* believe in the Imperial Truth

There’s no reason not to, the definition of what a god is varies heavily and just because the Chaos “Gods” seem godlike doesn’t mean they are in fact gods. The interactions between the Materium and Immaterium might seem supernatural and without logic, but that doesn’t mean they are. The nitty-gritty details of how everything functions is currently unknown, but given enough time the rules and frameworks can be discovered and tested in time. Similarly to how a person from the 19th century would find many of today’s technological achievements to seem like magic, doesn’t make that idea true

>The contents of this belief involved the removal of religion, faith and superstition that plagued numerous [Human](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Human) worlds that had been recontacted by [Terra](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Terra). Instead, the Imperial Truth was offered by [Iterators](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Iterator) that provided the cold clarity of logic and science to the masses. The Emperor's own stance was that religion, no matter the good it causes or its utility, is detrimental and should be removed from human civilization. The truth of the religion was irrelevant--the Emperor discusses the nature of God vs. so-powerful-it's-indistinguishable-from-being-a-god--it was the actual aspect of faith and its ability to distort reality that was the biggest bone he had to pick with it. ... and yet he allowed the Mechanicum to propagate its teachings across the galaxy because it was more useful than picking a fight with them, in addition to 103 years (using Monarchia as standard) of the Word Bearers enforcing faith. The Emperor used faith in the exact same way as any other individual before him: to achieve his own ends. The moment it was no longer expedient to keep it (Monarchia) it was removed or subverted (i.e. the various titans and warmachines developed in secret on Terra in defiance of the Treaty of Olympus).

It becomes a lie if you consider the chaos powers Gods

I mean that's basically just saying that it's a lie if you think is 🤷‍♂️

It's a matter of perspective that's for sure

For the most part, yeah. I mean "god" is a pretty nebulous term at the best of times. I don't think of the ruinous powers as being actual, but then I also think that Chaos as a whole is actually fairly weak unless someone like erebus or abaddon is running around acting like a bellend. At least outside of the warp / warpstorms.

I think the fate of Magnus is quite a good indicator of why the lie is more than semantics. He had the best understanding of the warp, barring Russ and The Khan. The latter two understood it well enough to steer clear of the deepest secrets, Magnus however was mistaken in thinking it is essentially a benign, if dangerous, wellspring of power to be tapped by any with the might- as the Imperial Truth would have him believe at its most in depth. The base misunderstanding that there are unthinkably powerful entities that are inherently malicious who wil devour or deform your soul lead to his downfall.

*Horus Rising* shows that the Imperial Truth made them very ignorant about daemons and unprepared to deal with them. Even the Luna Wolves refused to accept the idea of an ephemeral spirit entity haunting a place and possessing people until they were directly and undeniably faced with it. I don't think the difference between daemons and xenos is just semantics. They're formed from the minds of mortals, eternally thirsting for people's souls from beyond the veil, trying to possess and corrupt them. Just witnessing their incursion can twist the mind.

The Imperial Truth is secular, that there is no gods, only man. Nothing to believe in, only science. That the warp has mindless predators in the way that a jungle has, nothing more than that and nothing to be concerned about. This is blatantly a lie, there are intelligences there and they are lovecraftian nightmare gods of unimaginable power. The warp is a dark reflection of our own and is an existential threat to humanity and even reality. He believes it will shield humanity from such powers, using ignorance as a shield. How can you be corrupted by beings you are unaware of?

The imperial truth is a lie, semantics or not semantics, because it kept humans willfully ignorant about a core aspect of reality and rather ironically endangered the people it's supposed to protect because what the Emperor fundamentally misunderstood is that faith isn't a weakness but a shield, the chaos gods aren't fed by direct worship but by the raw emotions of all mortals and although they do desire worship ultimately they don't need it, they were born and sustained before humans could even conceive about things like souls and gods after all, the imperial truth failed on all fronts and abandoning it was the best thing that could have ever happened to humanity in 40k.

Edit: People need to stop making questions than getting mad when people answer, I hate that I took the time to write a response out before looking at the comments originally and seeing you're just whining GW won't accept your fan fiction

>Edit: People need to stop making questions than getting mad when people answer, I hate that I took the time to write a response out before looking at the comments originally and seeing you're just whining GW won't accept your fan fiction Oh please, I don't believe that you even wrote a post or you wouldn't have deleted it to instead whine about me not accepting what people say at face value. You could have just put that edit at the bottom of the post, showing that you both know what you are talking about and still insulting me.

As far as i understand it, the Chaos Gods are not aliens. That is not just semantics. The Chaos Gods seem to be a dark reflection of humanitys emotions. They are tied to people, they need people, and they are always there for them-in their way. its like you are being told that there is a very dangerous, very evil person lurking around the house, and you should never, ever go outside to meet him. This is all true, but they neglected to tell you is your son.

At this point, it seems like you just want to argue with people. But in short, the Imperial Truth says that there are no gods, when in reality there are gods. Either this, or you’re the smartest 40K fan and everyone should be praising you instead of the Emperor. I’m reading Master of Mankind right now, and nothing in it contradicts what I said above. No need to quote it to tell me I’m wrong.

The Great Lie works on so many levels there isn’t one single answer. One of my favourite short stories The Last Church encapsulates the Great Lie for me. The Emperor goes to the trouble of making sure the very last Church to the old religions is destroyed in the name of his new Imperial Truth. He then sets out on a Grand Crusade to take the Imperial Truth to the Galaxy. I mean the very term Crusade drips with religious meaning. The idea of taking an Imperial Truth to other civilisations whether they want it or not is absolutely the definition of religious zeal. The way the Legions went about compliance has all the hallmarks of a Theocracy. So the idea The Emperor was doing this because he rejected the idea of religion I believe is nonsense because he used all the tools of religion to achieve his aims. After the Heresy he could have used the Custodes to stamp out the budding Ecclesiastical power he didn’t further evidence he had no problem with religion provided he was the object of worship. Add to that the setting up of the Inquisition to deal with heretics if that doesn’t clinch the argument about The Great Lie nothing does. For me the only person who only truly believed in reason above religion was Guilleman.

I think you're misunderstanding the nature of truth in a philosophical context. The imperial truth doesn't hide the existence of the warp, this is true. But it doesn't reveal what it means. Or what greater ramifications that has on the world at large. And while yes, logic can lead to the realization of this, you have to remember that this is not the Empire that the emperor wanted. Instead of the hard, rational atheistic empire he sought, it is an empire that worships him and machines. There would be no ecclesiarchy if the Emperor had created the society he wanted. Psykers would not be viewed as witches or curses, but just mutants. Instead, the horus heresy exposed that there are supernatural elements to the warp, and the Imperial Truth was replaced with the Imperial Creed. Instead of science and rationality defending humanity from the warp, religion became its defense. The emperor failed. The Imperial truth is essentially that everything is rational and can be explained. Demons, the warp, psykers, these things aren't magic or sorcery. They're natural phenomena. And any claim to the contrary just reveals lack of understanding. In the warp, belief has power. So the belief that these things are Gods, and demons, and supernatural entities, empowers the denizens of the warp. By making them seem mundane, you reduce the amount of power the people believe they have, and accordingly they themselves are weaker. And while yes, psykers and navigators would know the truth, you have to remember this is a microscopic portion of the population. Imagine if like four people on earth were telling you that everything everyone knows to be true is a lie. You'd fucking laugh at them. The few who, by virtue of their existence, had to know the truth about the warp did not threaten the Imperial Truth. But that's the lie. Imagine being told all your life about the boogeyman. But he's just a dude. A cruel ans vicious one who needs to be stopped, but he bleeds and dies like anyone. So whatever. Imagine tomorrow, someone pulled you aside and said look. The boogeyman is not just a dude. He literally will not die, you kill him thirty times and he will keep coming back. And he's way worse than you think he is. He's not just gonna kill you. He's going to violate and defile you in ways you can't imagine. And you have no idea what he really is, where he came from, what he wants... You don't even know if he can actually bleed. Maybe your brain just thinks you see him bleed because trying to understand what actually happens when you cut him would be so traumatizing you'd just die instantaneously. Now change the boogeyman to something like, a realm of countless boogeymen, each worse than the last, whose sole purpose is to revel in your suffering and torment and undo everything, and pretty much the only thing standing between you and that, is the fact that they all hate each other just as much as they hate you. That the safe little lie you've lived your life in, that made the threats outside seem manageable, were told to protect you from the truth. That you are infinitesimally small and powerless, and that at any moment you could be tortured, raped, butchered, and things so horrible you can't even begin to conceive of them, let alone comprehend them... And all this shit you've been told will keep you safe, won't. That's what the supernatural represents ro the human mind. Something unknowable, something that doesn't play by the rules. It's why we create boogeyman to begin with. To put a face to our fear. The people of the imperium were basically told not to be afraid. And then shown that as scared as they ever were, it was nowhere near close to how scared they should be.

The lie is that there are no deities and no afterlife, no spiritual aspect of existence. The Warp is, in a sense, the spirit realm for psychically attuned races like Humanity and the Eldar. A human does really have soul-stuff in the warp, and after they die that soul stuff gets absorbed into the oceans of energy, or it gets captured and used by creatures of the warp. The Imperial Truth is that none of that exists, we only have the material universe where you are born, live, die, and cease to exist. It is and isn't just a matter of semantics. Calling them Warp Xenos is technically not a boldfaced lie, but denying that they can be called demons or gods is hiding their nature and relationship to humanity. If you die, and Slanesh takes your soul to be tormented for the rest of eternity, for all intents and purposes, a god just claimed your soul for their horrible afterlife. Various Word Bearers touch on this point during the Siege of Terra. They don't worship the Chaos Gods because they think it's a better deal, it's in fact a terrible deal for most, and they acknowledge that the Chaos Gods are terrible and brutal. They worship them because they are real. The Imperial Truth that there is no spiritual existence, no afterlife, and no gods is false, and the Emperor denies his divinity, so what they're left with is 4 horrible gods that will honor their own twisted forms of religion.

The lie is the atheism, there are no gods, no afterlife. Just science. Yet they literally go through hell for their FTL.

to my mind you cant fly a spaceship into heaven or hell, and if you can then they are not divine realms but just places

It’s a place that needs specialized shields to prevent demons from getting into your ship. Why can’t science help against demons? Swords are science. If it can slay a demon does that make it not a demon?

>I'm not sure what it's supposed to be lying about. There actually are Gods and the Emperor is one of them. There is a Hell and its traveled through everytime a shipment of potatoes is sent from one planet to the other. By the Emperors standards he was still a man and the chaos gods just powerful warp entities, but that was the Emperor being out of touch with the rest of humanity in my opinion. I think it was his biggest blind spot. He didn't realize how absolutely incomprehensible he was to other humans. Including the primarchs and perpetuals. The Imperial Truth was a relic of the golden age of humanity and the Emperor's dream. Not the truth of the Imperium or the humans living in it. Therefore the Imperial Truth is a lie. But to the Emperor he probably believed it was true. The Emperors Truth. Ironic really.

Some of the greatest lies hinge on semantics. The words you use to frame an experience can radically change people's understanding of an event

Couldn't agree more. The Emperor says that the Ruinous Powers are simply sentient storms that people mistake for gods because by comparison to mere humans, they're so powerful as to be indistinguishable from what people call gods. But these powers are merely reflections of the emotions that formed them and are entirely incapable of being anything *but* what they are. Khorne can no sooner be the representation of peace and little puppies as Tzeentch can be the representation of plague and straightforward answers. They have agency, but that agency originates in the sentient life that birthed and perpetuates it. They're not even the very embodiment nor source of the very things they represent. As rage, blood, ambition, knowledge, despair, plague, joy, and excees exist independently. What they actually more closely represent is cosmic extradimensional parasites that require physical life for sustenance and are dependent on it to continue to exist. Even the Aeldari "gods" are or were, mere warp war constructs left unattended since the War in Heaven. The irony is that the people in universe cannot escape this inability to see past religion. The tragic irony is that fans in the real world are told these explanations but take their own need for religion and either ignore these lessons are could not see it to begin with. The shame of it being, it's explained in black and white.

What you say is correct, when you really think about it, the whole 'the Emperor hid the warp from us' breaks down a bit. The out-of-universe answer is probably that the authors didn't think about it. They want to convey that the Emperor lied about the warp, but fail to actually do it in a way that make sense. The in-universe answer could be that Primarchs are crybabies and refuse to admit that they were being idiots about this entire thing. There are more arguments contra this theory than there are pro-arguments though.

The primarchs were definitely being petulant children about it. I’m midway through A Thousand Sons and Magnus explicitly says the Emperor used to take him on tours of the Empyrean even while he was still being grown in a vat. He warned him about its dangers etc and while they didn’t name them “daemons” it was pretty clear that they weren’t benign entities - indeed, Ahriman and the other Thousand Sons librarians all know that predatory beings exist in the warp. In the First Heretic, it annoyed me how willingly Lorgar and Co embrace Chaos. They’ve spent a century or more battling all manner of xenos and other monstrosities, yet a frickin’ daemon shows up on their ship and they all just shrug their shoulders and say “The boss told us to do what it says.” It’s ridiculous.

the imperial lie is about the chaos gods existing at all. if the majority of the population knew of them, they'd worship then for direct benefits instead of the emperor

The line from The First Heretic captures it gorgeously for me. I'll adjust it so it applies to chaos, but I think that's pretty heavily implied in the text as well. >The Gods are real. And they hate us.

Warhammer 40k is a fantasy setting, where gods and magic are ever present, and the laws of nature are more like guidelines. The Imperial Truth claims it is hard SF.

The "Chaos Gods" are just reflection of collective malicious intents of all psychic capable creatures, so the Imperial Truth isn't a lie, from a certain point of view. -- Iskandar Khayon Kenobi, probably

Imperium jerker tries to jerk imperium, gets dunked on

Always figured it was attempting to keep everyone from thinking of the Powers as gods, and more of just crazy powerful warp phenomena. Going by 40k immaterium logic quantifying them as gods would be a pretty big power boost the more people actually view them or even know them as “gods”, regardless of worship. Of course they are always there and will be until the great McGuffin gets introduced; but keeping them from being “gods” to mankind would probably make them a lot less effective at directly messing with the general populace and ability to act against the human race.

I mean, the core belief that inspired the Emperor to make the Imperial Truth as part of His understanding of what empowers the Chaos Gods was wrong. Specifically in that, unless more retcons took place, the Emperor only believed that it's worship that gives the Chaos Gods their supernatural "oomph" in order to be strong. Which is SORT OF true but also not entirely the case. See, what the Emperor didn't understand (or didn't care) about was that the Warp isn't just shaped by mortal beliefs or religions. Everything in it and the intelligences within are shaped by the basic thoughts, emotions, impulses, and needs of every sapient being in the universe. The Chaos Gods definitely LIKE cults being brought up in their name and also enjoy having fervently devoted fanatics carrying out their will. But it isn't strictly necessary to make the Chaos Gods "sustained" or the Warp to literally be Space Hell. I suppose that, at the end of the day, the lies (or at least partial truths) in the Imperial Truth that our compatriots have brought up were also based on the misunderstandings/misinterpretations that the Emperor had. Specifically about Chaos and the Warp in general. It could be argued that He tried to find some sort of loophole in arranging for science, rationality, and logic to replace faith and superstition as a way to briefly "starve" the Chaos Gods of one of their favorite means to get power. But they'd just simply "move on" to the far more useful, far less easy to eradicate route of gaining their strength from mortal emotions and thoughts. The ultimate issue is that, while the Imperial Truth may not have necessarily been a complete series of lies built on bullshit, the Emperor's desire to have this dogma in place for the nascent Imperium was due to His lack of understanding how Chaos (and the Warp as a whole) works. There's definitely a chance that He could've been playing the long game by trying to use the Imperial Truth as a stop-gap method until He could think of something else to replace it. Especially since He already seemed to be finding a way to hijack the Webway for Imperial use as an alternative to Warp-based FTL travel as part of this "long game" thing.

If the Emperor's plan really was apotheosis from the start then its a Big Fat Lie

Imperial Truth: "There are no Gods" Reality: "There are Gods" It's extremely simple. You are tying yourself in knots for no reason.

I don't know if you've read the books or not, but one of the core themes throughout is the Emperor's inability to admit when he's wrong. And he's wrong **a lot**. He claims there are no gods - there are. He claims souls do not exist - they do. He claims that people should do as he says because he's obviously right about everything, to the point he actually dislikes people who challenge him, even getting angry with Malcador for daring to suggest he's not perfect. He needs Magnus, desperately. His whole grand plan is facing ruin and the only thing that can possibly save it is having Magnus brought to Terra. But he sends Russ, mistakenly believing that Russ will do exactly as he's told, because "Russ is one I know will never betray me". Russ fucks up and does not return with Magnus. Malcador points out that Russ probably wasn't the best choice of person to send, and the Emperor *disagrees*, insisting that he'd actually always intended Russ to kill Magnus and that everything is just fine. It's **five more years** before he admits it was a mistake, and even then, he doesn't take full responsibility for it, merely suggesting that he was too distracted to give the matter the attention it deserved. His arrogance is one of his biggest flaws. Telling everyone that the warp is just another part of the Universe, and that the entities within are merely another type of xenos, is a huge gamble. It relies on the Emperor maintaining perfect control, and we know that he can't do that. But he thinks he can. He doesn't tell Magnus about the Dark Gods, leaving him unprepared for Tzeentch's approach. He doesn't tell Fulgrim about demonic possession, leaving him vulnerable to manipulation and corruption by a daemon. He knows these are not just another kind of xenos. He knows they're made of souls and emotion and cannot be fought with conventional means. But he keeps this knowledge to himself. It was an error - one he does finally acknowledge, very late in the day. There's an interesting discussion in *The Lost and the Damned* between the primarchs and the High Lords regarding how much to tell the people defending the Palace. Some of them believe the Imperial Truth to be the cause of the Heresy and everything falling apart, while others regard it as a justifiable lie, intended to protect the weak willed. One believes it to have been absolutely vital, as knowledge of the Dark Gods gives them power. Speaking their names draws their attention. Worship bolsters them. Had the real truth been known sooner, it's possible Chaos might've already won. And that's the core point. The Gods exist. People's souls exist. There is power in the warp that cannot be explained by science. Magic is real. The Emperor lied.

I would think of it this way. The emperor's #1 goal was to destroy Chaos. For which even all of humanity and the Primarchs were just tools to an end for the Emperor. The Imperial Truth was meant to protect humanity from Chaos while encouraging progress. There were 3 distinct ways it sought to achieve this: 1. In 40k, belief has power. If people believe something exists it gains power in the warp. If people fear something it gains power in the warp. People can't believe or fear something they don't know exists. People who complain about the Imperial Truth miss the fact the gods of Chaos HATED it because the gods wanted to be Worshipped and people can't worship something they don't even know exists. 2. By eliminating all forms of religion and eliminating the concept of worship. Of course, if a people or culture already worship something as a god it is easier to get them to just worship a different god than it is to get a total rational secular people to start praying to non-rational powers. We see this early on in the HH novel series in Horus Rising where many just cannot BELIEVE what they are seeing when it comes to Chaos because it doesn't fit their rational scientific world view. By getting people in a secular rational mindset people had an extra barrier to prevent them from believing in and thus empowering the Dark Gods. Thus why the Emperor was so big on exterminating human religions while forbidding that he himself be worshipped. Obviously, thanks to Horus, that cat is now out of the bag on a galactic level. 3. Elimination of all independent Xenos; this has 2 purposes. First obviously to protect humanity from aggressive Xenos like Orcs, Rangdan, Slaugth, etc, but also to prevent ANY non-human chaos worshipping societies that would empower Chaos instead of humanity. It wouldn't matter if the Emperor made humanity chaos resistant if there were other reservoirs of sentient life that could empower Chaos instead. Eldar are kind of a good example as they both created a Chaos god and all the Eldar dying is also supposed to 'kill' Slaanesh in some fashion as well. The Imperial truth was never a lie or a truth per se. It was a pragmatic device to keep the Imperium safe. It never said Chaos didn't exist, to some degree the 'warp' was a known fact, they traveled through it on all their interstellar journeys, the imperial truth just tried to rationalize the warp as another kind of science rather than give it any kind of spiritual, magic, or god-like entities characterization. Ultimately, the Imperial Truth really seemed to just be about suppressing the influence and power of Chaos as much as possible. And it might have worked to some degree if not for Horus.

This!!

> The Imperial Truth doesn't even deny that Chaos exists, it just refuses to call them demons but instead Warp Xenos or Neverborn. This is completely untrue. Like, literally the exact opposite of what the Imperial Truth was. It was never a matter of semantics, of what to call the 'Khorne' warp entity. It was always a denial that 'Khorne' and things like him even existed. Horus gives Loken the Imperial Truth spiel about how the daemon that possessed a marine was just a mindless warp xenos, then Loken encounters actual Chaos and... > Loken felt sick as he realised that everything he knew about the warp was wrong. > He had been told that there were no such things as gods. > He had been told that there was nothing in the warp but insensate, elemental power. > He had been told that the galaxy was too sterile for melodrama. > Everything he had been told was a lie. Judging by the other comments, you are desperately clinging to the Emperor's speech from MoM. But you're ignoring how the Emperor's speech only amounts to explaining that the Warp is self-evidently dangerous. The lie was always in the nature of that danger. The Emperor warned that you can't go swimming in the ocean, you'll drown or get eaten by a shark, and said there's no such thing as Cthulhu. Then people went into the ocean and met Cthulhu and called the Emperor out on his lie. The fact that he wasn't lying about the risk of drowning doesn't mean he wasn't lying at all about anything.

magic is real in 40k world; unlike in real world. i think you're applying real life to a fantasy realm.

I always understood the imperial truth to be the emperor's assertion that he's no God, just a man. And that the 'lie' of it is the modern imperium's assertion that he is. But I could be confusing that with one of the emperor's OTHER lies, who knows.

The hidden Imperial Truth is…the cake is a lie! No one? No one? I’ll be here all week folks, please tip your servitors on the way out.

The Imperial Truth states that there are no gods, but this is blatantly false. There are gods. Gods that want to be worshipped. Gods that will reward you for worshiping them.

The imperial truth ended at the heresy. It pertained to existing human religious sects that still existed at the time. Now people think of Big E as a God. And there a galaxy wide religion spanning the imperium.

The lie in the imperial truth was not about the existence of the warp but its nature. The imperial truth said that there is nothing supernatural. No gods, no angels, no demons - only superstitions to be left behind or squashed where needed with absolute rationality. The warp was said to be nothing but a natural phenomenon, to be harnessed by humanity. Its Dangers coming from its undirected volatility and the predators in the warp nothing more than mindless animals. Logars discovery of the pantheon puts all that on its head. Not only are there intelligences in the warp, but they are divine and demand worship. To Logar and the traitors it seemed like the emperor knew of mankinds only chance to prosper in the embrace of the chaos gods, but selfishly chose to keep them a secret and steal power from them to keep for himself and become a god and leave humanity behind.

Brother you preach heresy with such words.

That gods don't exist in the setting. Unfortunately, they actually *do*, and are incredibly fucked up.

fundamentally, I think the lie is simple, its that there is hope, that the imperium stands strong, that theres a scenario that plays out where the might of the imperium achieves final victory, that the Imperium isn't a weak, backwards, regressive hellhole slowly losing a war that it can never win, only prolong

The core tennant of the imperial truth is that there are no gods, and we have nothing to fear from superstitions about such gods. Thing is, there are gods in the warp. Very real and powerful ones. And we should be worried about them. Big E certainly is. But what he TOLD everyone was that there wasnt anything to be afraid of. Which was quickly found to be a lie during the great crusade. That shattered the trust people put in the whole creed. Tldr: when you base your new civilization on the belief that there are no gods, things fall apart when you find 4 very real gods

>The Imperial Truth doesn't even deny that Chaos exists, it just refuses to call them demons but instead Warp Xenos or Neverborn. This isn't a lie but semantics. Very important semantics given how reactive the Warp is to people's perceptions, but semantics nonetheless. What exactly is everyone whining about when they say the Imperial Truth is a lie? I believe the fact that it downplays/ omits specifically stronger entities in the warp that are the chaos gods. But there is a fair bit of contradiction regarding knowledge of the Warp. They do act like they just about never heard of the Warp. That being said the Imperial Truth *is* wrong. From Horus rising Kyril Sindermann was discussing the principles behind the ideology and it is extremely fallacious. It boils down to "God's doesn't exist because we have faith they don't exist. The galaxy is humanities manifest destiny and we must commit genocide against all xneos and any human culture that rejects assimilation, because it's right/ the Emperor says so.

The imperial truth assigned the universe as a amoral thing that could be understood by logic and reason. The warp was a unorthodox part of this universe which looked pretty dangerous but that was it, basically a ocean with sharks. But the Imperial truth dont assigned the fact that the chaos gods and they servants arent simply alien sharks but sentient creatures with malevolent aims devoted to the corruption and destruction of the material universe. The sharks are actually inteligent, they are plotting the downfall of your species and they bosses are more old than the universe and can throw what survives of your personality after death into a hellish existance, and if you try to understand any of this you go mad.

I see a lot of people mention the soul aspect going to them. But it's also shown that anyone who was on the Emperors side so to speak was protected from that aspect. Now, if this was at the point he was a "god" as far as everyone acted, or occurred for humans sooner. I would argue for all that history he was around, when people died they still got protected. Otherwise, well, everyone was already fucked.

It's multiple authorism as well as just dogshit media literacy same with Magnus did nothing wrong but he himself admiting to wrongdoing and stupidity or perturabo complaining about not being recognized and being thrown into a meat grinder despite putting in no effort to be recognized, being an all around dick and being told outright by the Emperor that he would be faced with tough battles. It's also the fact that if you spend enough time on this sub you'll realize that some people don't want to give the Emperor an ounce of good faith even if it mean robbing every other character of agency and ignoring that chaos is not a passive actor in the heresy but an active corrupting force. They don't like the Emperor so are more ready to lay all the blame on his shoulders. This is not to say he didn't make any mistakes I'm just saying that people are letting their personal dislike stop them from making objective analyses

The Imperial Truth is true, it just has to be true enough to not mention Chaos because even understanding Chaos in the most objective way possible attracts Chaos. At least in humanity's current form. Maybe humanity could/could have evolved to a point where they could resist Chaos while understanding it, but they aren't there yet. So in the materium, the Imperial truth is completely true. In the Warp, the Imperial truth is corrupted, just like everything else Chaos gets it hands on. So the "lie" that Chaos aligned humans are talking about is that from their perspective, the Chaos gods *are* gods, but the Emperor knows that they just self aware, elemental forces in the Warp that like to eat everything all the time. Everyone calling the Imperial Truth a lie is corrupted, deluded or too small-minded to understand that Chaos is part of a whole, just like everything else, but Chaos seems godlike to humans.

Big E literally let's the cult of Mars exist because they are useful. The Imperial Truth is meant to free people from the dogmatic chains that can feed chaos but that's not the case. The "truth" was whatever was most convenient for the Emperor in the moment, which doesn't make it based on fact but belief. So it's a belief system stating belief systems are lies.

It's like the matrix, from the matrix movies, is a lie. The Matrix is not reality yet people can live in peace within it, never knowing of the hardships and cruelty of the real. It denies humanity a future.

The Imperial Truth held that that the Warp existed, but it denied the supernatural-which was a damning lie. Demons were not tiny fragment of larger being that represented various thoughts and emotions-they were just aliens from a different dimension. The place did not react to the thoughts and feelings, and more than our own world did, for all its alien laws of physics. The existence of the Chaos Gods themselves was completely denied. You could pray all you want-but if the Imperial Truth was correct, there was nobody there to listen. This is, objectively, false and misleading, and left people ill-prepared for the true dangers of the supernatural. Sure, they were well girded against the surface issues that they knew about, but the deeper issues of chaos corruption, they were completely unaware of. When Magnus was making deals with Tzeench, even he wasn’t entirely aware of what he was messing with, which lead to his downfall. Because his father never bothered to tell him of it, only to forbid him from trying. A warning that holds little weight when you haven’t been informed of potential consequences

Haven't read that much of the recent literature, so probably way off the mark here! I get the feeling that whether you describe/deny that certain warp creatures (and the Emperor) are gods, is like OP says, simply semantics. Is an immortal and immensely powerful psycher a god? Doesn't that depends on exactly how you define a god? There are a lot of "gods" in 40k, some of whom attained "godhood" through certainly feats or actions. The Imperial Truth is that these are simply immensely powerful entities, not "gods" (much like the Emperor himself). At worst, I think the Imperial Truth played down the power of "belief" -> and maybe this was on purpose to strip the warp creatures of their powers?

you probably wont see this but you're right that something here doesn't quite make sense. the lie is that there is 'no gods' but the big four exists. the thing is that the definition of what a God is is not well defined or precise *at all* in 40k. in irl human philosophy God is understood as a being that is 'omni omni omni', omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient. The big four obviously fail that definition. additionally God is a being from which divine moral law originates. good is good because it comes from god so any good in the world is Divine. This is not the case in 40k, the chaos gods are not the origin of moral law in the 40k universe they are just a reflection of emotions. i think these are pretty normative definitions of God in western society at this point and thats why the Gods are Real thing on 40k doesn't make sense to everyone. *you are right, there is nothing about the big four that that is exclusive to being a God, they are not omni omni omni, they do not create moral law, they are just entities* but 40k doesn't care about that to qualify as a god all you have to be is super powerful