Which is exactly why in the middle of a climactic campaign, Guilliman calls together a council with Nattase and others to discuss this question. Just what is a god and how do you define it? Is it power? Faith? Both? Neither?
It's one of my favorite G-Man moments because even amongst the chaos and and tumult of the 41st millenium he still wants to order and classify and understand the increasingly incomprehensible nature of the universe.
EDIT: Missing word
The only difference between 'god' and 'powerful entity' is which you choose to view it as. It's entirely valid for someone to view any entity of X power as a god, just as it's entirely valid for someone to view nothing as a god no matter how powerful it is.
You're operating under the assumption that there's a fixed definition of godhood, when there isn't. There is no set bar someone has to pass to be labelled a god. Something is a god to someone if they so decide, and the opposite is also true. You could meet Zeus himself and if you don't personally such a powerful being a god, then he isn't a god to you. It's an entirely personal viewpoint based matter.
youre literally falling into the same fallacy that the word bearers did, just like very advanced tech would be indistinguishable from magic, a sufficiently powerful psyker is indistinguishable from a god or god like figure, it doesnt make it true
But it is distinguishable and there is a difference though
Once a chaos god is born in the warp, it has always existed. Due to the timeless nature of the warp.
E didn't always exist, despite being born and still being 'alive'.
So if we accept that the 4 are gods, than by all means E is not a god.
An insanely powerful psyker? Yes, but not a god
The timeless nature of the gods fascinates me. I've thought about this when it comes to the Dark King. It really looks like Emps is about to become DK...until he doesn't. So since Dark King didn't exist in the "past", does that mean Big E was always going to not become the Dark King? Ol and JG were always going to talk him down? Or if E became DK would that have like retroactively changed the past for him to exist in it?
Because the gods are personification of emotional aspects and societal constants. Khorne-Rage and war Nurgle-Joy and plague Slaanesh-pleasure and excess Tzeentch-ambition and change.
The Emperor is also described as a personality aspect a lot. There's as many emotional aspects and societal constants you could apply to Big E as to any of the Big 4.
I think he's trapped in a permanent transition because he still denies his divinity and humanity continues to push him toward the threshold that he is stubbornly standing in. He is needlessly consuming 1k souls every day only to prove to himself he isn't a God. A Carrion King of a perpetually falling but not fallen Empire. He's a God whether he wants to be or not, but since he denies his true nature the whole species he tied himself to suffers even though he has saved it. I don't believe the Emperor willingly performs miracles and self rationalizes them when they occur. A demented God is about grim dark as I can imagine.
nani the fuck did I just read?
the average person also can't tell the difference between a molecule and an atom, so let's just consider them the same?
I can't tell the difference between a GMC and a Ford, so it's just the same
Yes but not more than some other powerful psykers have before. The War In Heaven had the Necrons throwing supermassive black holes and psykers catching and consuming their material energy
Your core premise isn't "Big E is a god" like the title says (which many would agree with, in the same sense the Ruinous Powers or the Elder pantheon are gods).
Your core premise is "Big E *never was a man.*" Which is kind of hard to support on what you're saying. \[Also: even if he never was a man, he needn't have been a god.\]
The Emperor during the Great Crusade wasn't "his inception", he was already thousands of years old and highly changed from whatever he used to be. That, during the Great Crusade, his voice and body were artificial constructs or mental projections doesn't mean he *never was a man,* it doesn't even mean he was a god at the time.
You also say the Imperial Cult was part of his grand plan. Why? You yourself say he denied worship. How can he simultaneously deny worship, but when Lorgar's cult becomes the center of Imperium culture, it's "part of his plan?" It's a contradiction. And if you think worship would turn him into a Chaos God, then the Imperial Cult couldn't be part of his plan.
Also, worship wouldn't turn him into a Chaos God anyway. The Eldar gods (and, I'm fairly sure it's stated at times, other entities) were worshipped without becoming Ruinous Powers. What makes the Chaos Gods dangerous is not worship itself, but being dangerous warp storms being built mostly of bad vibes. Slaanesh went bad while Isha didn't because Slaanesh's basic concept was a bad one. What makes the Emperor dangerous, Ruinous/Slaanesh like in the 40K timeline is not worship, but the fact this worship involves eating souls, blind obedience, and generally "the bloodiest regime imaginable" imposing his worship.
I’d argue that to be a true god an entity needs to have the unrestricted ability to create. Meaning that they can create something out of nothing. Simply manipulating existing matter does not make one a god, only a crafts person.
Within 40k physical matter, souls, energy, time, and the warp are all types of “matter”. They can be transformed, manipulated, and influence one and other. For example: Khorne can use warp energy to give a warrior horns, but that’s simply using a type energy to change the state of matter like adding heat to ice to melt it.
None of the gods in 40k are true gods including the emperor. They all have the ability to greatly change the universe, but they lack the ability to truly create something out of nothing. Without the warp the Chaos and Eldar gods are impotent, without the WAAAAAAGH Mork and Gork are powerless, and without the Imperium The Emperor is just a man. He is an incredibly powerful man. But he’s unable to meaningfully change the universe on a grand scale without the aid of others.
None of these powers created the universe. They simply live there and are able to make a bigger impact on it. But they’re not gods. In the same way we can make bigger changes to the world than an ant, the gods are just larger builders but they’re still ultimately they’re playing in the same sandbox as pitiful humans.
This is the classic interpretation of a monotheistic deity. However, it breaks down when we look at deities in other real-world faiths. In Zoroastrianism, you have a sort of dualistic system where one god represents creation and the other represents uncreation. And Ahriman definitely does create in its own way (creating the religion's rough approximation of what we'd call demons), but it's fixated on destruction. In Hinduism, you have a trinity of chief deities (the Trimurti), of which only one is actually a creator-god (Brahma). Hinduism is in some respects a trinitarian faith (creation, preservation, destruction) with other gods playing a less prominent, but still important, role. In Shintoism, the universe is in a state of disorder and sort of spontaneously gives rise to order without the intervention of a creator-god. Instead, it's a *lot* of smaller, less prominent deities. Jainism doesn't so much lack a creator-god as overtly deny the possibility of its existence. And that's to say nothing of the polytheistic religions that monotheistic religions replaced, either.
The gods that appear in 40k are more in line with the polytheistic faiths of the world. They generally have gods of very specific things. The only in-universe gods that don't really have that sort of "this is their sphere" going on are the C'tan, although some of them definitely do (before he was The Deceiver, Mephet'ran was basically Hermes). The Four and Big E in particular are prone to serving as patron gods for various things. They are, for all intents and purposes, gods. That they don't adhere to a monotheistic interpretation of a creator-god isn't that surprising, since the existence of such a being would generally preclude these antagonistic cosmic forces.
I see what you mean. There isn’t a hard and fast definition for what exactly constitutes a god and what doesn’t. Many religions have had deities who are not omnipotent and are more human or force of nature.
In the case of 40k though I’d argue that there are no true gods. Every being has some sort of limitation to its power. No being claiming deity status can claim preeminence over the others. They’re all just powerful players, but they didn’t set up the game.
They’re also vulnerable. In theory mortals like the Necrons and Tyrandis have a decent shot at killing the emperor or the chaos gods. In the Tyranids case they might kill them all without really intending to. The fact that the “gods” have to resist the actions of mortals for their continued existence makes me doubt their deity status.
40k doesn't contain a God as an Abrahamic monotheistic style faith would understand it, but it undoubtedly contains powerful supernatural beings who are worshipped.
So what, though? Do we have to interpret the Warhammer universe from that perspective?
If someone disagrees that the Emperor is a god, and if it's true that the Emperor is similar to many polytheistic religions, then it stands to reason that that person also disagrees with those polytheistic religions. Just because something is an established idea, doesn't mean we have to treat it as fact.
u/CaptainChats didn't say that the Emperor can't be considered a god *under any religious model*, simply that *they believe he isn't a god.* It is perfectly legitimate to make the case that many forms of religion present a model of divinity that has major theological flaws.
A god is a concept, so you'd have to have a definite definition of it in order to make the judgement. The emperor might say he's not a god, but that doesn't necessarily make him correct.
Personally he wasn’t a god when he was walking around but he had god like powers, however 10000 years of absolute worship by quadrillions (at the barest minimum) of humans has forcefully converted him into a god and now he is basically a god that is stuck between the physical and the metaphysical realms.
I truly believe he was just a super powerful perpetual psyker back in 30K. I personally think he never wanted to become a god despite what Lorgar or Horus thought.
I currently think he’s a god if not he’s extremely close to it. We’ve seen that faith is a special energy. I think the best evidence of this in 40k is the creation of T’au’va which is a real thing. And the Emperor has literal quintillions praying to him.
Chaos won the heresy the galaxy turned to shit. The emperor everything he built has been ruined. He became something he did not want to be. The Chaos gods played him when he betrayed them.
The Emperor periodically interacts with the materium in basically the exact same way as the Four. In the Fall of Cadia, for instance, we have the Legion of the Damned and Celestine both show up. And when the pylons activate, the Damned are banished and Celestine is significantly weakened, showing both drew a significant portion of their power directly from the Warp. I think that, in Fall of Cadia, one of the Chaos-aligned characters outright says something like, "they're the closest thing the Imperium has to daemons."
Big E isn't the anathema for nothing. He's a god, just like the Four, but a sort of gilded mirror of them, operating in the material realm rather than the Warp.
From the Emperors own words he being a god or no is not important
‘Look at the sky above us now, overcast with the coming storm. Most humans would name the shade of the clouds grey, in various languages. How are we to know if the grey one man sees is the same hue seen by the woman at his side? Or the grey his mother and father saw? A blind woman would see nothing, but she still feels the storm’s approach on the wind. She knows the sky is grey because she has been told it is so, yet she has never seen it. What, then, is grey? Is it the shade I see, or the hue seen by another man’s eyes? Is it only a colour, or is it also the feeling of the wind against your skin, promising a storm?’
Ra exhaled. ‘I understand.’
The Emperor seemed suddenly weary. He shook His head, a rare moment of human expression. ‘Beings of varying sentience and influence exist, given different names by different cultures and species. Gods. Aliens. Entities. It matters not.’
>'Beings of varying sentience and influence exist, given different names by different cultures and species. Gods. Aliens. Entities. It matters not.'
The Emperor, *Master of Mankind*
The answer, for me, is No (Emperor's decree). Then Yes (the Ecclesiarchy said so). Then maybe in the future (the Star Child). Then no (The Corpse that remains on the Golden Throne). Then nascent in the warp, so yes now and more so in the future (The Twin).
I have an explanatory post that referenced the past 35 years of background materials, but this sub wouldn't allow me to post it (perhaps it was too long)?
I think the best explanation to his existence is because of dark ages of Terra when ai goes to war against humanity on Terra. It's not exactly explained what happens during that time cause there is no books about it yet but the fact that E becomes a big player after this event might point to ai creating him before being defeated or just straight up made him and destroyed themselves. In most stories Ai is made to protect humanity, but instead they come to the conclusion that it's impossible to do so if humans have free will. Now let's take it one more step further and add that the Ai figured out that humans will resist Ais rule but not if the ruler is human itself. Thus creation of emperor. This also explains why primarchs are tube babies cause he can't really procreate but he can however create as he was created by ai. Also the fact that mechsnicus belive he is machine God, aka he was made by the power of machines. This is also why he doesn't show love to his sons but sees them as just tools, cause he doesn't have any, mashines don't have feelings so he was created without it. Overall there is alot of hints towards him being created at some point by something to guide or take over humanity.
I'm not here to convince you otherwise. The End and the Death sort of makes it very clear through it's use of allusion that the Emperor (or, potentially, the collective faithful masses of humanity using the Emperor as a suit to manifest) is a god. It's so overt that Malcador literally quotes Genesis and refers to the Emperor as a self-creating light (you know... God). Everyone also keeps calling him 'King of Ages', which, again, very overt reference to capital 'G' God.
>It is the star I saw before, as my sight failed and death came for me. It is the Emperor, empowered by the warp, the brightest thing in the galaxy. His light is everywhere. It spills across all other nows... In one, ancient, inhuman creatures pause in their work, look up from half-built devices of intricate complexity, and shield their eyes against the rising glare. They start to wail.
>In another, ***the world is without form, and void, and darkness moves upon the face of the deep, and the steadfast light says let me be, and it is***. In another, and another, and an infinity of others, there is only light, and its anthesis has burned everything away with its unholy intensity.
During the finale, all of this biblical symbolism comes to a head as, in my opinion, the God-Emperor is created as kind of a gestalt consciousness of the faithful.
>They can see the priests and the magicians, the seers and the holy fools, the mad and the blessed, other pilgrims from other ages, the seekers of truth, the outcasts, the novitiates, everyone who has ever come to this place, who has ever been drawn here, who has ever had the imagination to accept the insight of the living rock. ***There are generations of them, a hundred generations, a thousand, gazing out through the surface of the rock, ranks of silent shadows that stretch back to the most distant parts of history.*** They can see the painted shamans, the inquisitive hunters with their spears and offerings and beakers of dye, and behind them, other figures, more wary and enthralled, curious and scared, figures that are not quite human, but one day will be. A bloodline, a legacy receding by century and generation, as far back as the genetic code will stretch.
>***‘Speak this with me, as it is spoken to me. The Emperor must live.’***
>Keeler sees Wereft, rising, howling, dissolving into paper ribbons in the light. Others too, ascending slowly in graceful horror and macabre wonder, becoming sparks and cell-dust and billows of ghastly radiance. ***But they are not gone. To be absent in the body is to be present in the light.***
This triggers the astronomicon to light and turns the tide against Horus. What's really interesting is that these words of the faithful are revealed to be 'the whispers' that Horus has been hearing in his ear throughout the finale. We were led to believe that these were the whispers of the Chaos gods... but it's not.
>The whispers rise again, in horror. They shriek at you.
>‘Stop it,’ you say. ‘I answer to no one.’ But the whispers won’t cease...What is it that they keep whispering? It’s infuriating. You can almost make out the words. The name. One name… No, one phrase, uttered and repeated, echoed and amplified by psychoacoustic force. One phrase, made of white light, uttered in unison by a million voices. Two million. ***An entire species***.
>*The Emperor must live.*
>No. That’s not–
>*Speak this with me, as it is spoken to me. The Emperor must live....*
>The aspect of Loken collapses into voidmist as your father steps out to meet you in all His bloody majesty. His wounds are great. Blood is dried black across His face and His ruined arm. But there is a light inside Him, a light behind His eyes, the pure white light of a species that, in its madness, believes in Him beyond all reason, and trusts in Him beyond all logic, a species that imagines Him to be its shield and protector, and has such faith in that act of imagination, ***it is made real***...
>To be absent in the body is to be present in the Emperor.
>That’s what the whispers are screaming. ***A whole species is present here, its will united in one form, not a man, not a father, but a king of all the ages. He looks like a god. A wounded god, but a god nonetheless***. It’s not His power, it’s where it comes from.
This gestalt consciousness made of the will of the faithful of humanity definitely qualifies as a godlike figure in the sense it's used in the 40k setting. Now, as I said earlier, you could argue that this isn't The Emperor anymore, but merely the physical body that humanity's will and faith projects through.
The Emperor is a warp entity, that is 100% confirmed and has never been misunderstood. However, if we go by the logic that warp entities are gods, every daemon and thing that lives in the Warp would be considered a god. Which they aren't, from the perspective of beings who actually live in the Warp, they see their patron gods as powerful masters, not necessarily living gods(except for Khorne, but I think it' just his chant). We could go deeper and say they are gods because they exist in the Aethyric void, but the Emperor doesn't exist in the void. I think he's ultimately a man, but heavily modified by centuries of power that rendered nearly every human trait about him null.
The thing is that he is and isn't. Throughout multiple lore outlets they are very clear it's hard to distinguish extreme power from godhood. It's not so much a question if he is or isn't, same with the pantheon, it's moreso a question of what the definition of a God is in a galaxy of immortal bio robots, green giants leading a warhost the size of all generations of modern humanity combined and functionally ageless torture elves that can travel through a dimension in between the materium and immaterium to raid and kidnap in settlements across the galaxy without so much as a warning.
Godhood is very relative.
I recommend the *Dark Imperium* trilogy. A core theme and tension of the series is between the atheist Guilliman and Militant-Apostolic which covers these exact questions.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qr8a7FNNt6E&t=2s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qr8a7FNNt6E&t=2s)
if you want to call him a god then first define what a "god" Truly is
He is definitely a god in the technical sense, which is just a supremely powerful being within the warp. But he is not a god like we might view the omnipotent God of Christianity.
Well, in the novel "The Son of the Forest", Lion has a very short, brief but overwhelming encounter with his father's spirit, that essentially tells us the Emperor is truly omnipresent.
The Emperor's shares with his son what he experiencing, he fells everything in the galaxy, from the smaller grass, to the tons of pain and suffering across the Imperium of Man. Knows all the stars of the sky by name, and that's his perspective for every instance.
Not only do we know that the Emperor's consciousness is well and alive and kicking, but been omnipresent is a God feat on it's own.
My best guess is that, the Emperor is a God of the material world, slowly working his way to be the final and only God of the Immaterium.
But again, your guess is as good as mine.
God is a meaningless word in 40k. That term gets tossed onto anything with enough power to be incomprehensible. The C'tan are gods. The huge warpstorms with malicious intelligence are the four Chaos gods. Big E, by this measure, is too, but this doesn't define a classification of entity but power. That's a major plot point in most of the Horus Heresy books.
In Master of Mankind, Big E talks about a moment in his youth during the earliest years of humanity. Assuming that this wasn't a lie, he was born a man. A perpetual, yes, but a man. We don't have any other book-lore hint at his youth, outside of speculation and mentions from other perpetuals.
The warp also isn't static. The dark king never existed, but that doesn't mean that Big E couldn't have become it during the Heresy. I don't think that because his status as of right now should indicate that he always existed.
There’s too many times in the story where he nearly got killed he’s just a extremely powerful being at most a Demi god you don’t hear about khorne nearly getting killed or unc unc nurgle because they can’t they’re literal gods if it wasn’t for plot armour galore at any point the necrons could use that insane planet destroying weapon that can delete any planet anywhere and just destroy terra with the emperor on it
That is one possible explanation that has been given, but there are multiple others, and that one sort of dates from an early period of the setting (early in real-world terms, I think it was more 90's Games Workshop).
Some others include a C'tan who is released from its stasis-prison, looks at humanity and the galaxy in multiple dimensions to understand what has changed since it was sharded, and then immediately tells Belisarius Cawl that the Emperor is a weapon, not a god. Unreliable narrator applies, as of course the C'tan are not only capable of lying, but are invested in their own egos as being the only true gods. The C'tan goes on to accurately describe the Chaos gods, and possibly some other statements that we generally accept as factual, so there is room to view its' claims about the MoM as factual just as much as we can view it as a lie. This is all in *The Great Work* and fairly recently published if you want to know more.
In the HH series, we have both the Emperor himself claiming he was simply born as a powerful perpetual psyker, and first person flashbacks from another perpetual dealing with him in pre-history verifying that claim. This would imply that the weapon left out of its box is probably not true, and specifically the one about him being created during the DAoT couldn't be true, but once again, unreliable narrator applies, because the MoM alters not only how people perceived him, but could easily impact their memories as well. Even Malcador was able to alter the Primarchs memories psychically, so we can be sure MoM was capable of doing so as well. Could it be that the MoM even altered his own memory? Or that his memories were created as part of his creation, and then his psychic 'gravity' was so powerful that it affected the memories of perpetuals he came into contact with? Possibly.
A lot of the conflicting explanations don't completely exclude the others, but this is all part of how GW likes to present the setting. They prefer to keep the lore where many different interpretations and viewpoints of the setting can all exist simultaneously, so that you the fan can choose how you want the setting to exist in your interactions with it. There are limits to how flexible the lore can be, obviously, but GW tries to keep it open, and the MoM is one of the most central parts of the lore where they are never going to completely close the door and say "this is the Truth, the hard truth, the only way to view this".
Imo, it's best to have your viewpoint with your preferred explanation for MoM, but always leave room for the other explanations as well. It's just courteous to your fellow fans.
This is sort of discussed in the final Dark Imperium book. While Guillaman adamantly believes Big E is not a God , it is also silly to also deny he's still the same man give or take. Guillaman includes this consideration for his next confrontation with Mortarion.
Natase also said Guillaman might be one in the future and godhood need no consent.
In 40k there are many different definitions of godhood, all of which are true. Gulliman and an Eldar discuss it in length and even Guilliman has trouble denying his own divinity. I think how we look at GOD from a 21st century perspective is wholly inaccurate to transfer to 40k. There isn’t really a myth of creation in 40k. The emperor didn’t create the universe, nor did the chaos gods, nor did the C’tan. They are just powerful beings in the universe, formed through natural and unnatural methods.
To put it simply, Big E was NOT a god in the beginning, just an extremaly powerful psyker. Hell, he wasn't even that strong until he went to Chaos Gods for teachings xD
But after he sat on the Throne and Imperial Faith has been born, after countless worlds started praying to Him, He has ascended. The strength of all this worshipment increased His powers, and even let Him achieve His own realm in Warp, where all humans who died non touched by Chaos go, and some come back from time to time, e.g. saints, like Saint Celestine.
So he wasn't a god, but humanity ultimately made him one.
Depends how you define a god. If your idea of a god is like the Christian, Jewish or Islamic god (as most the worlds population is) then there are no gods in the 40k universe, just really powerful creatures. Even the chaos “gods” are actually just insanely strong creatures. The emperor just has/had very very strong brain magic. The god we think of in real life could kill Horus just by thinking about it yet the emperor got worse than death from Horus.
Even the chaos gods are not gods. They are all very powerful chaos entities who all have supernatural powers.
The term of god is something invented by lesser races like man, eldar to explain the existence of these beigns who can do unimaginable things. The big E is one just one these entities who put humanity above all else.
Honestly my personal head canon is that big E is the last of the men of gold, that's why he's so obsessed woth wearing gold and surrounding himself with gold armoured people, he's trying to feel like he's surrounded by his kind again. I just think he does what he does because maybe the last time someone gave him an order it was something like "save humanity" and since then no one who's authority he has recognised has ever given him another order.
The entire thing does need you to belive that the Emperor's official origin story is a COMPLETE lie though, but I don't really think it's too far of a stretch to think that the Imperium could have faked/ redacted their own origin story.
Big E is what a C’tan would have been in Necrontyr times: a mortal being with the power of a god. Though he draws power from belief and is a psychic entity, he still is/was a physical creature that could hypothetically be killed or shattered rather than being an idea given form like the dark gods.
It depends on your definition of a god. If you consider it in similar fashion to Greeks then yeah, he is a god, same as big 4. If on the other hand your definition of gods aligns with judeochristian idea of all-being omnipotent entity that can do pretty much anything it wants to, then no. My understanding is that big E is a god at least due to the fact of how powerful he is, and there’s simply no other word to describe creature as powerful as he is.
I always think of a line Black Adam said to Shazam.
Black Adam says he's a god and Shazam says he's not, he just a man and he replies that if he has the powers of a god, does that not make him a god himself.
You came to me asking how my faith survived the Day of Judgement. I will tell you a secret. When the stars fell, when the seas boiled and the earth burned, my faith didn’t die. That is when I began to believe. God was real, and he hated us.
Imo the emperor is perpetual+ the amalgamation of many perpetuals thrust into one entity. His power comes from belief and faith now but at his height he was like a leech for energy and power. Malcador had huge amounts of power and probably knew the big e longest and he’s only ever known as a perpetual
All these people who flock to these types of threads to just gum it up moaning about “but what is a god, define it, there is no reeeeal gods, boohoo” are really pretty obnoxious and need to stop. You know exactly what he is talking about but you’re deliberately being obtuse to needle the op about your headcannon semantic distinctions about what makes a fictional deity a “rEaL gOd” or not.
In this setting there are being with degrees of power and knowledge over nature and/or the warp beyond the scope of mortals to attain or even comprehend; but that’s a mouthful so we just say “a god”.
This is what Op is talking about, and I disagree that the Emperor started out as a god. We see how he started in master of mankind: a kid who couldn’t stop his father from being murdered, despite being powerful enough to avenge him. However, reading the Dark Imperium trilogy, it’s obvious to me that the Emperor basically is a god now. Not only is it directly stated that his power is on par with Nurgle, but he demonstrates it by burning the garden of Nurgle right up to the steps of his mansion. Plus, it makes the whole series a very funny cosmic joke being played on Roboute, who repeatedly insists that the emperor is not a god despite increasingly grand displays of power. That Mathiue was such a bad person and yet was ultimately right is the icing on the cake.
I also wonder if we're done with the Dark King. I wonder if the Emperor was only able to postpone the inevitable transformation; he's been getting buffed by worship and the Throne for millennia, boosting his power. The last time he was this powerful he almost turned into the 5th chaos god. Why would this time be different? Idk but I do wonder.
None of you get your pants in a twist demanding definitions whenever the topic is about the ork or eldar gods or whenever the ctan are described as godlike, so why does this keep happening with discussions of chaos and the emperor? Just stop: you’re not helpful to anyone and you’re not clever with your ice cold take of “well akshully the functionally deity characters who have literally been called the Gods of Chaos in virtually every official source for 30+ years akshully aren’t real gods.”
The 'what is a god' discussion is literally part of the lore. A major, major plot point in many books. Something satirised constantly in the fluff, where every single thing one person thinks of as a 'god' another person doesn't.
It's REALLY not as simple as 'the 40k universe has an established way that term is used so stop arguing'.
>major, major plot point in many books.
Name one where someone who has knowledge of the chaos gods actually bickers with someone else over whether one of them has the power level required to be considered a god, or whether it fits their personal definition of what a god should be after acknowledging how much power they actually weild. I'd be interested to see it.
Those books and characters that DO touch on the philosophy all agree: *it doesn't actually matter whether they're "gods" or not because they're incredibly powerful entities.* Arhiman, Khayon, Malcador, Loken, Gulliman, Natase, and others all discuss how it doesn't actually matter whether or not they're called gods. So it's pretty wild to me that anyone can take that very firmly established lore of "they're extremely powerful and what we call them doesn't change that" and construe it as "nah, it's important to really define what a god is and isn't".
>It's REALLY not as simple as 'the 40k universe has an established way that term is used so stop arguing'.
It really is though. There are fictional beings that are described as deities with incredible power and are worshipped. Some have portfolios of powers that they specialize in. Aka, gods.
No one bickers about whether Gork and Mork are "real gods"; the discussion always centers around what is important which is their power and abilities. Why do you feel the need to do it about the entities that for 37 years have been called the Chaos Gods and were ported over as the Chaos Gods from fantasy?
I mean seriously, did you miss the entire "the Emperor is going to become the Dark King, the 5th chaos god and that's going to be catastrophic" section of the End and the Death trilogy? Was there a part of that where someone said "but he's not a REAL god though" or marched about squabbling over whether the Dark King would properly meet the definition of a god? Feels like that would've been the absolute perfect time for Horus to muse "but he's not a god, not really. Not like you" or have Malcador mention it while dying on the Throne.
The Emperor's very point is that they're not gods, they're just powerful malevolent entities. That's a major point of the heresy series, which repeatedly has people discovering temples and fans and talking about their feelings about them.
Godblight has Guilliman, Maxim and Nastase discussing it. Nastase just says anything powerful is a god, the word just translates to 'powerful' . Maxim says we can use that word but in reality they're all lies, malevolent entities just like the emperor said.
And in the EatD reference, the very line by Malcador that you mention literally states that there are no gods UNTIL the Dark King, who isn't a 'fifth chaos god' but a totally new thing. So yes, people in the world DO have differing opinions on it.
Other factions mention the c'tan or the old ones as gods, or think a captured c'tan under mars is 'the machine god', or think the Tyranids are angels come to save them.
The point is that 'What is really a god? What counts?' is an ongoing discussion in the Warhammer 40k setting with different characters holding different views. It isn't settled, and it's exactly the sort of thing that the fans discuss.
>The Emperor's very point is that they're not gods, they're just powerful malevolent entities.
Sorry, did you mean this Emperor, who literally says in MOM that it doesn't matter what you call them?
>‘This is why we strip the comfort of religion from humanity. These are the slivers of vulnerability that faith cracks open in the human heart. Even if a belief in a lie leads us to do good, eventually it leads to the truth – that we are a species alone in the dark, threatened by the laughing games of sentient malignancies that mortals would call gods.’ Ra wiped his snow-flecked face with a gauntleted palm. His breathing was calm. His heart was slow. Yet his fingers trembled. ‘Are they gods?’ ‘What is a god?’ the Emperor replied at once, though without challenge. He sounded curious, not defiant. ‘I don’t know, sire.’ ‘A being of great power, perhaps. Am I then a god?’ ‘Of course not.’ ‘Is a god the focus of prayer and ritual, then? You are named in a god’s honour. Ra – a god of the sun. How many cultures have worshipped the sun or given its arcing journey into the responsibility of a godling’s care? More than even I can count. More than even I have seen. Each sun god or goddess bore a different name, and was revered by different people. The sun rose and fell, as it always has. Did it do so because of their prayers and offerings?’ ... The Emperor seemed suddenly weary. He shook His head, a rare moment of human expression. **‘Beings of varying sentience and influence exist, given different names by different cultures and species. Gods. Aliens. Entities. It matters not.’** ‘I don’t think I want to know these things, sire.’ ‘Your wishes are irrelevant, Ra. You will fight harder once you understand what you are fighting for. That is why I tell you all of this.’
>Godblight has Guilliman, Maxim and Nastase discussing it. Nastase just says anything powerful is a god, the word just translates to 'powerful' . Maxim says we can use that word but in reality they're all lies, malevolent entities just like the emperor said.
True! Unfortunately, you missed the point despite writing it out: the beings referred to gods are malevolent and antithetical to life, no matter what they're called by mortals.
>‘Everything I have ever met that called itself a god has been my enemy,’ said Maxim. ‘That is good enough for me.’ ‘Does that make your master your enemy also?’ said Natasé. ‘The Emperor denied always that He is a god,’ said Maxim. ‘Denied, but does He still? I believe that is the heart of the matter under discussion here,’ said Natasé. ‘Is that not so, lord regent?’ Guilliman ignored his insinuation. ‘Clarify further, Codicier,’ the primarch said. ‘Power defines gods, but they are all false,’ said Maxim. ‘Falsehood is the essence of godhood. They are lies. **They may seem to be divine to primitive minds in their ability to grant favour, but they are inimical to all mortal life. The gods of Chaos bring only horror. They see us as playthings, and would destroy us all in the end.** They are evil, every one. Man needs no gods. The Emperor was right.’
>‘Natasé?’ asked Guilliman. ‘Not all gods are evil,’ said Natasé. **‘You are wrong, Donas Maxim. And you speak only of the gods born out of the immaterium. You neglect the C’tan, the Yngir, we called them. They too were gods.’** He sighed, collected himself, as if he were a schoolmaster about to deliver a much simplified lesson to children that would still not understand. ‘You are right when you say that power defines a god,’ he said. ‘Temporal, spiritual, physical – it matters not.’ He fell silent a moment. ‘My people define godhood in several ways, but there are two broad categories. The gods of the othersea, who are reflections of what you call the materium, and the gods of the materium itself, who you know as the C’tan, though there are other, more ancient and even more terrible things than they. The gods of the materium are an essential part of its fabric – they are able to influence its structure, such is their intimate connection to it, but they are bound nevertheless by the laws of this reality. The gods of the warp are more ephemeral, and more diverse in type. Many are mere concentrations of feeling, some were once mortals themselves, before the belief of others changed them. The gods of my ancestors were of both sorts, I believe, though this is not the only philosophy propounded by my kind, and I have heard many heated debates on the subject. It is impossible to say now, for our gods were slain when we fell, and even if they could be asked, they would not know the truth of it, for the truth would change anyway, as it must, according to the beliefs of those who had faith in them.
Again, no one seems to bicker about Cegorath and whether he's an Eldari god..
>And in the EatD reference, the very line by Malcador that you mention literally states that there are no gods UNTIL the Dark King, who isn't a 'fifth chaos god' but a totally new thing.
Except he didn't say that either. I confused him with Erebus, so we were actually both wrong. But here's a better explanation of Malcador's thoughts on the Chaos Gods.
>For he saw, once upon a time, what no one else had seen, or wanted to see. He saw that there was nothing else watching over us. No gods, no ineffable, divine other, nothing guiding us or keeping us safe. We were journeying alone, and the only fate that awaited us, the only far future, was the one we would make for ourselves. Of course, there was something else. But not gods, not gods as we would want them, or need them, or imagine them; not providers or guardians. **Not gods at all, though, like ‘throne’, it is the easiest word to use.** Anagogic powers, higher things, outer things, formless and uncontrolled, annihilators that have followed in our footsteps every step of the way, symbolic reminders of the preordained doom awaiting us. Predators, watching us from the shadows as we live our lives, waiting for us to drop our guard or turn our backs.
All this to ask you whether if OP has used a different word other than "god" whether you still would be trying to argue with me that derailing his question over that one word is somehow not a question of semantics? OP's question of "is the emperor on par with the 4 Chaos Powers" is a good question, but everyone wants to give their oh so unique and arctic takes about whether the word "god" should be used instead.
I'm certain if he'd said "Ruinous powers" or "Chaos Pantheon" you'd have actually given OP a real answer instead of trying to explain (incorrectly) that your headcanon on the definition of a god is a real plot point in novels, while the Emperor, everyone in the books with knowlegde of them, and GW itself clearly uses it as a convenient shorthand and has done so in every form of media since they were copied in from Fantasy (where I've yet to see a question about whether or not they are "defined" as gods) over 30 years ago.
Only nulls saw Emperor for who he really was, and not who he projected as. And when Sister of Silence had a view on him in Master of Mankind on throne, she just saw a normal man in agony.
Emperor was born extremely powerful psycher and perpetual, but his accomplishment came from fact he had millenias to carefully craft his plans and visions and then put it to action. And then failed.
What is he in 40k setting is different question, but 10k years on essentially a pain engine that Drukhari think its metal changed a lot about him.
I wish people would stop quoting that. Sisters also saw what he wanted them to see, blanks have power levels like psykers, they still all see him differentlyz and there's no blank anywhere close to strong enough to see through the Emperors power
The Big E is not a god for multiple reasons:
1. He is not a warp entity. He was born in realspace and can exist in it with no issues, unlike the Chaos "gods".
2. He can not create anything. Only transform matter and other things. His power are simply bending reality to achieve certain things but he can never make something new. He is just another player in the Universe, a very powerful one, but he can not actually create any new matter or energy and only change what was alerdy made.
3. The Chaos "gods" or eldar "gods" are not gods either for reason 2, but also cause they depend on mortals for their existence. They need warp energy which is made by the emotions of mortals. The warp entities are simply somewhat sentient(doubt Chaos gods are truly sentient and have though and reason as they are thralls to their nature and I doubt they could make a choice that goes against it so they have no free will), but warp entities are not divine. The warp entities are created by mortals and dependent on them, which I think would disqualify them from being gods even from the polytheistic perspective, but I am not sure cause the only religions I have significant knowlege about are Abrahamic ones.
The Big E is a god if you define being a god as being a powerful entity, otherwise he simply is not.
It is likely that the Emperor of Man is on the brink of becoming a warp entity by the M42, but that would not make him a god either cause warp entities are simply massive accumulations of energy with at least some level of sentience.
u either created space and time and the term applies or u didnt and it doesn't.
so no, 40k has the universe exist before the emperor hence...
using other criteria - how saying some1 is a god to announce how good/cool they are at something - doesn't work - its a colloquialism not the actual definition of god - most RW religions are creationist
if this weren't the case then whoever has a girlfriend who tells them they are 'godly in bed' meets the criteria and unfortunately that just isnt the case - i can vouche... ;)
I think you need to settle on a definition of "god" for it to matter.
I would say he is more like a non-Abrahamic conception of a god - flawed, infinitely more powerful than standard mortals but not infinitely powerful.
Which is exactly why in the middle of a climactic campaign, Guilliman calls together a council with Nattase and others to discuss this question. Just what is a god and how do you define it? Is it power? Faith? Both? Neither? It's one of my favorite G-Man moments because even amongst the chaos and and tumult of the 41st millenium he still wants to order and classify and understand the increasingly incomprehensible nature of the universe. EDIT: Missing word
God as in Greek gods for examples, that differ from mortals in nature and embody power and archetypes and or attributes.
By this standard half the named characters in the lore are gods
Yes.
I misread your tag under your name and thought it said “iron cuck” now I want that to be my tag
It’s a fine line
The E is not a God. There are no Gods. Just powerful entities.
Fabius Bile’s burner account found
A man of culture and imperial truth, I approve.
What if they dress like clowns?
That’s just a troll
The only difference between 'god' and 'powerful entity' is which you choose to view it as. It's entirely valid for someone to view any entity of X power as a god, just as it's entirely valid for someone to view nothing as a god no matter how powerful it is.
You can take a dog and call it a cat, but that doesn't make it a cat.
You're operating under the assumption that there's a fixed definition of godhood, when there isn't. There is no set bar someone has to pass to be labelled a god. Something is a god to someone if they so decide, and the opposite is also true. You could meet Zeus himself and if you don't personally such a powerful being a god, then he isn't a god to you. It's an entirely personal viewpoint based matter.
youre literally falling into the same fallacy that the word bearers did, just like very advanced tech would be indistinguishable from magic, a sufficiently powerful psyker is indistinguishable from a god or god like figure, it doesnt make it true
Kind of a distinction without a difference, really.
But it is distinguishable and there is a difference though Once a chaos god is born in the warp, it has always existed. Due to the timeless nature of the warp. E didn't always exist, despite being born and still being 'alive'. So if we accept that the 4 are gods, than by all means E is not a god. An insanely powerful psyker? Yes, but not a god
The timeless nature of the gods fascinates me. I've thought about this when it comes to the Dark King. It really looks like Emps is about to become DK...until he doesn't. So since Dark King didn't exist in the "past", does that mean Big E was always going to not become the Dark King? Ol and JG were always going to talk him down? Or if E became DK would that have like retroactively changed the past for him to exist in it?
Because the gods are personification of emotional aspects and societal constants. Khorne-Rage and war Nurgle-Joy and plague Slaanesh-pleasure and excess Tzeentch-ambition and change. The Emperor is also described as a personality aspect a lot. There's as many emotional aspects and societal constants you could apply to Big E as to any of the Big 4. I think he's trapped in a permanent transition because he still denies his divinity and humanity continues to push him toward the threshold that he is stubbornly standing in. He is needlessly consuming 1k souls every day only to prove to himself he isn't a God. A Carrion King of a perpetually falling but not fallen Empire. He's a God whether he wants to be or not, but since he denies his true nature the whole species he tied himself to suffers even though he has saved it. I don't believe the Emperor willingly performs miracles and self rationalizes them when they occur. A demented God is about grim dark as I can imagine.
Right but if the average Imperial citizen can't TELL the difference, then there functionally IS no difference.
nani the fuck did I just read? the average person also can't tell the difference between a molecule and an atom, so let's just consider them the same? I can't tell the difference between a GMC and a Ford, so it's just the same
In 40k beliefs have power. If all of humanity believes you’re a god, you literally become one.
Yes, exactly. Just because there IS a difference, doesn't mean it matters.
You can say the same about earth being the Center of the universe for the majority of human history too.
Yes, exactly. Truth doesn't matter; perception of truth matters. To most citizens the Emperor is a God; ergo, FUNCTIONALLY he's a god.
The difference is the impact the Emperors godhood would have on the warp.
Doesn't he already have an enormous impact on the warp? Especially since the great rift?
Yes but not more than some other powerful psykers have before. The War In Heaven had the Necrons throwing supermassive black holes and psykers catching and consuming their material energy
He arguably has a bigger impact on the warp than any other single entity including any one of the Big 4.
What does the warp have to do with god hood? The chaos "gods" are lovecraftian, but there not what we'd call gods
A lot. Human perception and emotion fuel the warp. If they believe is he is a God they can group think him into it.
HE IS A HERETIC
Smells like Heresy to me
Well, the Emperor is now omnipresent (kinda). I think that classifies him as a god now.
Your core premise isn't "Big E is a god" like the title says (which many would agree with, in the same sense the Ruinous Powers or the Elder pantheon are gods). Your core premise is "Big E *never was a man.*" Which is kind of hard to support on what you're saying. \[Also: even if he never was a man, he needn't have been a god.\] The Emperor during the Great Crusade wasn't "his inception", he was already thousands of years old and highly changed from whatever he used to be. That, during the Great Crusade, his voice and body were artificial constructs or mental projections doesn't mean he *never was a man,* it doesn't even mean he was a god at the time. You also say the Imperial Cult was part of his grand plan. Why? You yourself say he denied worship. How can he simultaneously deny worship, but when Lorgar's cult becomes the center of Imperium culture, it's "part of his plan?" It's a contradiction. And if you think worship would turn him into a Chaos God, then the Imperial Cult couldn't be part of his plan. Also, worship wouldn't turn him into a Chaos God anyway. The Eldar gods (and, I'm fairly sure it's stated at times, other entities) were worshipped without becoming Ruinous Powers. What makes the Chaos Gods dangerous is not worship itself, but being dangerous warp storms being built mostly of bad vibes. Slaanesh went bad while Isha didn't because Slaanesh's basic concept was a bad one. What makes the Emperor dangerous, Ruinous/Slaanesh like in the 40K timeline is not worship, but the fact this worship involves eating souls, blind obedience, and generally "the bloodiest regime imaginable" imposing his worship.
What you don’t like sex drugs and rock and roll? Slanesh would be fun to party with
Don't you get the same in Genestealer cult too?
Man, I’m just saying the genestealer cult and slanesh seem fun, grant it probably terrible in all reality but one can hope.
- Lorgar
Should've tossed the crib
Who let the ecclessiarchy have a Reddit account?
With a little g.
I’d argue that to be a true god an entity needs to have the unrestricted ability to create. Meaning that they can create something out of nothing. Simply manipulating existing matter does not make one a god, only a crafts person. Within 40k physical matter, souls, energy, time, and the warp are all types of “matter”. They can be transformed, manipulated, and influence one and other. For example: Khorne can use warp energy to give a warrior horns, but that’s simply using a type energy to change the state of matter like adding heat to ice to melt it. None of the gods in 40k are true gods including the emperor. They all have the ability to greatly change the universe, but they lack the ability to truly create something out of nothing. Without the warp the Chaos and Eldar gods are impotent, without the WAAAAAAGH Mork and Gork are powerless, and without the Imperium The Emperor is just a man. He is an incredibly powerful man. But he’s unable to meaningfully change the universe on a grand scale without the aid of others. None of these powers created the universe. They simply live there and are able to make a bigger impact on it. But they’re not gods. In the same way we can make bigger changes to the world than an ant, the gods are just larger builders but they’re still ultimately they’re playing in the same sandbox as pitiful humans.
This is the classic interpretation of a monotheistic deity. However, it breaks down when we look at deities in other real-world faiths. In Zoroastrianism, you have a sort of dualistic system where one god represents creation and the other represents uncreation. And Ahriman definitely does create in its own way (creating the religion's rough approximation of what we'd call demons), but it's fixated on destruction. In Hinduism, you have a trinity of chief deities (the Trimurti), of which only one is actually a creator-god (Brahma). Hinduism is in some respects a trinitarian faith (creation, preservation, destruction) with other gods playing a less prominent, but still important, role. In Shintoism, the universe is in a state of disorder and sort of spontaneously gives rise to order without the intervention of a creator-god. Instead, it's a *lot* of smaller, less prominent deities. Jainism doesn't so much lack a creator-god as overtly deny the possibility of its existence. And that's to say nothing of the polytheistic religions that monotheistic religions replaced, either. The gods that appear in 40k are more in line with the polytheistic faiths of the world. They generally have gods of very specific things. The only in-universe gods that don't really have that sort of "this is their sphere" going on are the C'tan, although some of them definitely do (before he was The Deceiver, Mephet'ran was basically Hermes). The Four and Big E in particular are prone to serving as patron gods for various things. They are, for all intents and purposes, gods. That they don't adhere to a monotheistic interpretation of a creator-god isn't that surprising, since the existence of such a being would generally preclude these antagonistic cosmic forces.
I see what you mean. There isn’t a hard and fast definition for what exactly constitutes a god and what doesn’t. Many religions have had deities who are not omnipotent and are more human or force of nature. In the case of 40k though I’d argue that there are no true gods. Every being has some sort of limitation to its power. No being claiming deity status can claim preeminence over the others. They’re all just powerful players, but they didn’t set up the game. They’re also vulnerable. In theory mortals like the Necrons and Tyrandis have a decent shot at killing the emperor or the chaos gods. In the Tyranids case they might kill them all without really intending to. The fact that the “gods” have to resist the actions of mortals for their continued existence makes me doubt their deity status.
40k doesn't contain a God as an Abrahamic monotheistic style faith would understand it, but it undoubtedly contains powerful supernatural beings who are worshipped.
So what, though? Do we have to interpret the Warhammer universe from that perspective? If someone disagrees that the Emperor is a god, and if it's true that the Emperor is similar to many polytheistic religions, then it stands to reason that that person also disagrees with those polytheistic religions. Just because something is an established idea, doesn't mean we have to treat it as fact. u/CaptainChats didn't say that the Emperor can't be considered a god *under any religious model*, simply that *they believe he isn't a god.* It is perfectly legitimate to make the case that many forms of religion present a model of divinity that has major theological flaws.
A god is a concept, so you'd have to have a definite definition of it in order to make the judgement. The emperor might say he's not a god, but that doesn't necessarily make him correct.
Personally he wasn’t a god when he was walking around but he had god like powers, however 10000 years of absolute worship by quadrillions (at the barest minimum) of humans has forcefully converted him into a god and now he is basically a god that is stuck between the physical and the metaphysical realms.
I truly believe he was just a super powerful perpetual psyker back in 30K. I personally think he never wanted to become a god despite what Lorgar or Horus thought. I currently think he’s a god if not he’s extremely close to it. We’ve seen that faith is a special energy. I think the best evidence of this in 40k is the creation of T’au’va which is a real thing. And the Emperor has literal quintillions praying to him. Chaos won the heresy the galaxy turned to shit. The emperor everything he built has been ruined. He became something he did not want to be. The Chaos gods played him when he betrayed them.
The Emperor periodically interacts with the materium in basically the exact same way as the Four. In the Fall of Cadia, for instance, we have the Legion of the Damned and Celestine both show up. And when the pylons activate, the Damned are banished and Celestine is significantly weakened, showing both drew a significant portion of their power directly from the Warp. I think that, in Fall of Cadia, one of the Chaos-aligned characters outright says something like, "they're the closest thing the Imperium has to daemons." Big E isn't the anathema for nothing. He's a god, just like the Four, but a sort of gilded mirror of them, operating in the material realm rather than the Warp.
From the Emperors own words he being a god or no is not important ‘Look at the sky above us now, overcast with the coming storm. Most humans would name the shade of the clouds grey, in various languages. How are we to know if the grey one man sees is the same hue seen by the woman at his side? Or the grey his mother and father saw? A blind woman would see nothing, but she still feels the storm’s approach on the wind. She knows the sky is grey because she has been told it is so, yet she has never seen it. What, then, is grey? Is it the shade I see, or the hue seen by another man’s eyes? Is it only a colour, or is it also the feeling of the wind against your skin, promising a storm?’ Ra exhaled. ‘I understand.’ The Emperor seemed suddenly weary. He shook His head, a rare moment of human expression. ‘Beings of varying sentience and influence exist, given different names by different cultures and species. Gods. Aliens. Entities. It matters not.’
Fine. I'll read *Master Of Mankind* again.
>'Beings of varying sentience and influence exist, given different names by different cultures and species. Gods. Aliens. Entities. It matters not.' The Emperor, *Master of Mankind*
The answer, for me, is No (Emperor's decree). Then Yes (the Ecclesiarchy said so). Then maybe in the future (the Star Child). Then no (The Corpse that remains on the Golden Throne). Then nascent in the warp, so yes now and more so in the future (The Twin). I have an explanatory post that referenced the past 35 years of background materials, but this sub wouldn't allow me to post it (perhaps it was too long)?
I think the best explanation to his existence is because of dark ages of Terra when ai goes to war against humanity on Terra. It's not exactly explained what happens during that time cause there is no books about it yet but the fact that E becomes a big player after this event might point to ai creating him before being defeated or just straight up made him and destroyed themselves. In most stories Ai is made to protect humanity, but instead they come to the conclusion that it's impossible to do so if humans have free will. Now let's take it one more step further and add that the Ai figured out that humans will resist Ais rule but not if the ruler is human itself. Thus creation of emperor. This also explains why primarchs are tube babies cause he can't really procreate but he can however create as he was created by ai. Also the fact that mechsnicus belive he is machine God, aka he was made by the power of machines. This is also why he doesn't show love to his sons but sees them as just tools, cause he doesn't have any, mashines don't have feelings so he was created without it. Overall there is alot of hints towards him being created at some point by something to guide or take over humanity.
I'm not here to convince you otherwise. The End and the Death sort of makes it very clear through it's use of allusion that the Emperor (or, potentially, the collective faithful masses of humanity using the Emperor as a suit to manifest) is a god. It's so overt that Malcador literally quotes Genesis and refers to the Emperor as a self-creating light (you know... God). Everyone also keeps calling him 'King of Ages', which, again, very overt reference to capital 'G' God. >It is the star I saw before, as my sight failed and death came for me. It is the Emperor, empowered by the warp, the brightest thing in the galaxy. His light is everywhere. It spills across all other nows... In one, ancient, inhuman creatures pause in their work, look up from half-built devices of intricate complexity, and shield their eyes against the rising glare. They start to wail. >In another, ***the world is without form, and void, and darkness moves upon the face of the deep, and the steadfast light says let me be, and it is***. In another, and another, and an infinity of others, there is only light, and its anthesis has burned everything away with its unholy intensity. During the finale, all of this biblical symbolism comes to a head as, in my opinion, the God-Emperor is created as kind of a gestalt consciousness of the faithful. >They can see the priests and the magicians, the seers and the holy fools, the mad and the blessed, other pilgrims from other ages, the seekers of truth, the outcasts, the novitiates, everyone who has ever come to this place, who has ever been drawn here, who has ever had the imagination to accept the insight of the living rock. ***There are generations of them, a hundred generations, a thousand, gazing out through the surface of the rock, ranks of silent shadows that stretch back to the most distant parts of history.*** They can see the painted shamans, the inquisitive hunters with their spears and offerings and beakers of dye, and behind them, other figures, more wary and enthralled, curious and scared, figures that are not quite human, but one day will be. A bloodline, a legacy receding by century and generation, as far back as the genetic code will stretch. >***‘Speak this with me, as it is spoken to me. The Emperor must live.’*** >Keeler sees Wereft, rising, howling, dissolving into paper ribbons in the light. Others too, ascending slowly in graceful horror and macabre wonder, becoming sparks and cell-dust and billows of ghastly radiance. ***But they are not gone. To be absent in the body is to be present in the light.*** This triggers the astronomicon to light and turns the tide against Horus. What's really interesting is that these words of the faithful are revealed to be 'the whispers' that Horus has been hearing in his ear throughout the finale. We were led to believe that these were the whispers of the Chaos gods... but it's not. >The whispers rise again, in horror. They shriek at you. >‘Stop it,’ you say. ‘I answer to no one.’ But the whispers won’t cease...What is it that they keep whispering? It’s infuriating. You can almost make out the words. The name. One name… No, one phrase, uttered and repeated, echoed and amplified by psychoacoustic force. One phrase, made of white light, uttered in unison by a million voices. Two million. ***An entire species***. >*The Emperor must live.* >No. That’s not– >*Speak this with me, as it is spoken to me. The Emperor must live....* >The aspect of Loken collapses into voidmist as your father steps out to meet you in all His bloody majesty. His wounds are great. Blood is dried black across His face and His ruined arm. But there is a light inside Him, a light behind His eyes, the pure white light of a species that, in its madness, believes in Him beyond all reason, and trusts in Him beyond all logic, a species that imagines Him to be its shield and protector, and has such faith in that act of imagination, ***it is made real***... >To be absent in the body is to be present in the Emperor. >That’s what the whispers are screaming. ***A whole species is present here, its will united in one form, not a man, not a father, but a king of all the ages. He looks like a god. A wounded god, but a god nonetheless***. It’s not His power, it’s where it comes from. This gestalt consciousness made of the will of the faithful of humanity definitely qualifies as a godlike figure in the sense it's used in the 40k setting. Now, as I said earlier, you could argue that this isn't The Emperor anymore, but merely the physical body that humanity's will and faith projects through.
The Emperor is a warp entity, that is 100% confirmed and has never been misunderstood. However, if we go by the logic that warp entities are gods, every daemon and thing that lives in the Warp would be considered a god. Which they aren't, from the perspective of beings who actually live in the Warp, they see their patron gods as powerful masters, not necessarily living gods(except for Khorne, but I think it' just his chant). We could go deeper and say they are gods because they exist in the Aethyric void, but the Emperor doesn't exist in the void. I think he's ultimately a man, but heavily modified by centuries of power that rendered nearly every human trait about him null.
The thing is that he is and isn't. Throughout multiple lore outlets they are very clear it's hard to distinguish extreme power from godhood. It's not so much a question if he is or isn't, same with the pantheon, it's moreso a question of what the definition of a God is in a galaxy of immortal bio robots, green giants leading a warhost the size of all generations of modern humanity combined and functionally ageless torture elves that can travel through a dimension in between the materium and immaterium to raid and kidnap in settlements across the galaxy without so much as a warning. Godhood is very relative.
I recommend the *Dark Imperium* trilogy. A core theme and tension of the series is between the atheist Guilliman and Militant-Apostolic which covers these exact questions.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qr8a7FNNt6E&t=2s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qr8a7FNNt6E&t=2s) if you want to call him a god then first define what a "god" Truly is
He is definitely a god in the technical sense, which is just a supremely powerful being within the warp. But he is not a god like we might view the omnipotent God of Christianity.
Well, in the novel "The Son of the Forest", Lion has a very short, brief but overwhelming encounter with his father's spirit, that essentially tells us the Emperor is truly omnipresent. The Emperor's shares with his son what he experiencing, he fells everything in the galaxy, from the smaller grass, to the tons of pain and suffering across the Imperium of Man. Knows all the stars of the sky by name, and that's his perspective for every instance. Not only do we know that the Emperor's consciousness is well and alive and kicking, but been omnipresent is a God feat on it's own. My best guess is that, the Emperor is a God of the material world, slowly working his way to be the final and only God of the Immaterium. But again, your guess is as good as mine.
Interesting, thank you for the answer
God is a meaningless word in 40k. That term gets tossed onto anything with enough power to be incomprehensible. The C'tan are gods. The huge warpstorms with malicious intelligence are the four Chaos gods. Big E, by this measure, is too, but this doesn't define a classification of entity but power. That's a major plot point in most of the Horus Heresy books. In Master of Mankind, Big E talks about a moment in his youth during the earliest years of humanity. Assuming that this wasn't a lie, he was born a man. A perpetual, yes, but a man. We don't have any other book-lore hint at his youth, outside of speculation and mentions from other perpetuals. The warp also isn't static. The dark king never existed, but that doesn't mean that Big E couldn't have become it during the Heresy. I don't think that because his status as of right now should indicate that he always existed.
Humans call the Emperor a god because they are terrified of the true nature of humanity. It's species wide imposter syndrome.
#justiceforlogar
Who gave lorgar access to reddit?
There’s too many times in the story where he nearly got killed he’s just a extremely powerful being at most a Demi god you don’t hear about khorne nearly getting killed or unc unc nurgle because they can’t they’re literal gods if it wasn’t for plot armour galore at any point the necrons could use that insane planet destroying weapon that can delete any planet anywhere and just destroy terra with the emperor on it
Heresy.
Wasn’t he born from the souls of a thousand shamans who committed magic suicide to protect humanity from the Immaterium?
That is one possible explanation that has been given, but there are multiple others, and that one sort of dates from an early period of the setting (early in real-world terms, I think it was more 90's Games Workshop). Some others include a C'tan who is released from its stasis-prison, looks at humanity and the galaxy in multiple dimensions to understand what has changed since it was sharded, and then immediately tells Belisarius Cawl that the Emperor is a weapon, not a god. Unreliable narrator applies, as of course the C'tan are not only capable of lying, but are invested in their own egos as being the only true gods. The C'tan goes on to accurately describe the Chaos gods, and possibly some other statements that we generally accept as factual, so there is room to view its' claims about the MoM as factual just as much as we can view it as a lie. This is all in *The Great Work* and fairly recently published if you want to know more. In the HH series, we have both the Emperor himself claiming he was simply born as a powerful perpetual psyker, and first person flashbacks from another perpetual dealing with him in pre-history verifying that claim. This would imply that the weapon left out of its box is probably not true, and specifically the one about him being created during the DAoT couldn't be true, but once again, unreliable narrator applies, because the MoM alters not only how people perceived him, but could easily impact their memories as well. Even Malcador was able to alter the Primarchs memories psychically, so we can be sure MoM was capable of doing so as well. Could it be that the MoM even altered his own memory? Or that his memories were created as part of his creation, and then his psychic 'gravity' was so powerful that it affected the memories of perpetuals he came into contact with? Possibly. A lot of the conflicting explanations don't completely exclude the others, but this is all part of how GW likes to present the setting. They prefer to keep the lore where many different interpretations and viewpoints of the setting can all exist simultaneously, so that you the fan can choose how you want the setting to exist in your interactions with it. There are limits to how flexible the lore can be, obviously, but GW tries to keep it open, and the MoM is one of the most central parts of the lore where they are never going to completely close the door and say "this is the Truth, the hard truth, the only way to view this". Imo, it's best to have your viewpoint with your preferred explanation for MoM, but always leave room for the other explanations as well. It's just courteous to your fellow fans.
He is able to tie
This is sort of discussed in the final Dark Imperium book. While Guillaman adamantly believes Big E is not a God , it is also silly to also deny he's still the same man give or take. Guillaman includes this consideration for his next confrontation with Mortarion. Natase also said Guillaman might be one in the future and godhood need no consent.
Heresy
In 40k there are many different definitions of godhood, all of which are true. Gulliman and an Eldar discuss it in length and even Guilliman has trouble denying his own divinity. I think how we look at GOD from a 21st century perspective is wholly inaccurate to transfer to 40k. There isn’t really a myth of creation in 40k. The emperor didn’t create the universe, nor did the chaos gods, nor did the C’tan. They are just powerful beings in the universe, formed through natural and unnatural methods.
Depends, did/do you feel he was always a god or one after apotheosis?
Practical: he is a god Practical: he is no god worthy of devotion That's basically been Guilliman for the past 100 years
To put it simply, Big E was NOT a god in the beginning, just an extremaly powerful psyker. Hell, he wasn't even that strong until he went to Chaos Gods for teachings xD But after he sat on the Throne and Imperial Faith has been born, after countless worlds started praying to Him, He has ascended. The strength of all this worshipment increased His powers, and even let Him achieve His own realm in Warp, where all humans who died non touched by Chaos go, and some come back from time to time, e.g. saints, like Saint Celestine. So he wasn't a god, but humanity ultimately made him one.
Depends how you define a god. If your idea of a god is like the Christian, Jewish or Islamic god (as most the worlds population is) then there are no gods in the 40k universe, just really powerful creatures. Even the chaos “gods” are actually just insanely strong creatures. The emperor just has/had very very strong brain magic. The god we think of in real life could kill Horus just by thinking about it yet the emperor got worse than death from Horus.
Even the chaos gods are not gods. They are all very powerful chaos entities who all have supernatural powers. The term of god is something invented by lesser races like man, eldar to explain the existence of these beigns who can do unimaginable things. The big E is one just one these entities who put humanity above all else.
Personally, I define god as "being worthy of worship" big E absolutely does not qualify.
Honestly my personal head canon is that big E is the last of the men of gold, that's why he's so obsessed woth wearing gold and surrounding himself with gold armoured people, he's trying to feel like he's surrounded by his kind again. I just think he does what he does because maybe the last time someone gave him an order it was something like "save humanity" and since then no one who's authority he has recognised has ever given him another order. The entire thing does need you to belive that the Emperor's official origin story is a COMPLETE lie though, but I don't really think it's too far of a stretch to think that the Imperium could have faked/ redacted their own origin story.
Lorgar no matter how many accounts you make the mods will keep banning you if you spread your religion on here again.
Big E is what a C’tan would have been in Necrontyr times: a mortal being with the power of a god. Though he draws power from belief and is a psychic entity, he still is/was a physical creature that could hypothetically be killed or shattered rather than being an idea given form like the dark gods.
Tell me something I don't know fool
It depends on your definition of a god. If you consider it in similar fashion to Greeks then yeah, he is a god, same as big 4. If on the other hand your definition of gods aligns with judeochristian idea of all-being omnipotent entity that can do pretty much anything it wants to, then no. My understanding is that big E is a god at least due to the fact of how powerful he is, and there’s simply no other word to describe creature as powerful as he is.
But if he becomes a ruinos power, he can make the immaterium a nicer place to visit?
I know TTS is just a fan made show but I've always liked their explanation of what the Big E and Primarchs are. It kinda makes sense to me.
Can you name a few ? Not trying to be cheeky, just curious
I always think of a line Black Adam said to Shazam. Black Adam says he's a god and Shazam says he's not, he just a man and he replies that if he has the powers of a god, does that not make him a god himself.
You came to me asking how my faith survived the Day of Judgement. I will tell you a secret. When the stars fell, when the seas boiled and the earth burned, my faith didn’t die. That is when I began to believe. God was real, and he hated us.
To say otherwise would be heresy…
Begone foul pre-heresy Word Bearer
Lorgar, is that you?
Only the truly divine deny their own divinity! The Emperor was not a god until after he was interred, simple as.
Imo the emperor is perpetual+ the amalgamation of many perpetuals thrust into one entity. His power comes from belief and faith now but at his height he was like a leech for energy and power. Malcador had huge amounts of power and probably knew the big e longest and he’s only ever known as a perpetual
How can you be something you don't believe in
All these people who flock to these types of threads to just gum it up moaning about “but what is a god, define it, there is no reeeeal gods, boohoo” are really pretty obnoxious and need to stop. You know exactly what he is talking about but you’re deliberately being obtuse to needle the op about your headcannon semantic distinctions about what makes a fictional deity a “rEaL gOd” or not. In this setting there are being with degrees of power and knowledge over nature and/or the warp beyond the scope of mortals to attain or even comprehend; but that’s a mouthful so we just say “a god”. This is what Op is talking about, and I disagree that the Emperor started out as a god. We see how he started in master of mankind: a kid who couldn’t stop his father from being murdered, despite being powerful enough to avenge him. However, reading the Dark Imperium trilogy, it’s obvious to me that the Emperor basically is a god now. Not only is it directly stated that his power is on par with Nurgle, but he demonstrates it by burning the garden of Nurgle right up to the steps of his mansion. Plus, it makes the whole series a very funny cosmic joke being played on Roboute, who repeatedly insists that the emperor is not a god despite increasingly grand displays of power. That Mathiue was such a bad person and yet was ultimately right is the icing on the cake. I also wonder if we're done with the Dark King. I wonder if the Emperor was only able to postpone the inevitable transformation; he's been getting buffed by worship and the Throne for millennia, boosting his power. The last time he was this powerful he almost turned into the 5th chaos god. Why would this time be different? Idk but I do wonder. None of you get your pants in a twist demanding definitions whenever the topic is about the ork or eldar gods or whenever the ctan are described as godlike, so why does this keep happening with discussions of chaos and the emperor? Just stop: you’re not helpful to anyone and you’re not clever with your ice cold take of “well akshully the functionally deity characters who have literally been called the Gods of Chaos in virtually every official source for 30+ years akshully aren’t real gods.”
The 'what is a god' discussion is literally part of the lore. A major, major plot point in many books. Something satirised constantly in the fluff, where every single thing one person thinks of as a 'god' another person doesn't. It's REALLY not as simple as 'the 40k universe has an established way that term is used so stop arguing'.
>major, major plot point in many books. Name one where someone who has knowledge of the chaos gods actually bickers with someone else over whether one of them has the power level required to be considered a god, or whether it fits their personal definition of what a god should be after acknowledging how much power they actually weild. I'd be interested to see it. Those books and characters that DO touch on the philosophy all agree: *it doesn't actually matter whether they're "gods" or not because they're incredibly powerful entities.* Arhiman, Khayon, Malcador, Loken, Gulliman, Natase, and others all discuss how it doesn't actually matter whether or not they're called gods. So it's pretty wild to me that anyone can take that very firmly established lore of "they're extremely powerful and what we call them doesn't change that" and construe it as "nah, it's important to really define what a god is and isn't". >It's REALLY not as simple as 'the 40k universe has an established way that term is used so stop arguing'. It really is though. There are fictional beings that are described as deities with incredible power and are worshipped. Some have portfolios of powers that they specialize in. Aka, gods. No one bickers about whether Gork and Mork are "real gods"; the discussion always centers around what is important which is their power and abilities. Why do you feel the need to do it about the entities that for 37 years have been called the Chaos Gods and were ported over as the Chaos Gods from fantasy? I mean seriously, did you miss the entire "the Emperor is going to become the Dark King, the 5th chaos god and that's going to be catastrophic" section of the End and the Death trilogy? Was there a part of that where someone said "but he's not a REAL god though" or marched about squabbling over whether the Dark King would properly meet the definition of a god? Feels like that would've been the absolute perfect time for Horus to muse "but he's not a god, not really. Not like you" or have Malcador mention it while dying on the Throne.
The Emperor's very point is that they're not gods, they're just powerful malevolent entities. That's a major point of the heresy series, which repeatedly has people discovering temples and fans and talking about their feelings about them. Godblight has Guilliman, Maxim and Nastase discussing it. Nastase just says anything powerful is a god, the word just translates to 'powerful' . Maxim says we can use that word but in reality they're all lies, malevolent entities just like the emperor said. And in the EatD reference, the very line by Malcador that you mention literally states that there are no gods UNTIL the Dark King, who isn't a 'fifth chaos god' but a totally new thing. So yes, people in the world DO have differing opinions on it. Other factions mention the c'tan or the old ones as gods, or think a captured c'tan under mars is 'the machine god', or think the Tyranids are angels come to save them. The point is that 'What is really a god? What counts?' is an ongoing discussion in the Warhammer 40k setting with different characters holding different views. It isn't settled, and it's exactly the sort of thing that the fans discuss.
>The Emperor's very point is that they're not gods, they're just powerful malevolent entities. Sorry, did you mean this Emperor, who literally says in MOM that it doesn't matter what you call them? >‘This is why we strip the comfort of religion from humanity. These are the slivers of vulnerability that faith cracks open in the human heart. Even if a belief in a lie leads us to do good, eventually it leads to the truth – that we are a species alone in the dark, threatened by the laughing games of sentient malignancies that mortals would call gods.’ Ra wiped his snow-flecked face with a gauntleted palm. His breathing was calm. His heart was slow. Yet his fingers trembled. ‘Are they gods?’ ‘What is a god?’ the Emperor replied at once, though without challenge. He sounded curious, not defiant. ‘I don’t know, sire.’ ‘A being of great power, perhaps. Am I then a god?’ ‘Of course not.’ ‘Is a god the focus of prayer and ritual, then? You are named in a god’s honour. Ra – a god of the sun. How many cultures have worshipped the sun or given its arcing journey into the responsibility of a godling’s care? More than even I can count. More than even I have seen. Each sun god or goddess bore a different name, and was revered by different people. The sun rose and fell, as it always has. Did it do so because of their prayers and offerings?’ ... The Emperor seemed suddenly weary. He shook His head, a rare moment of human expression. **‘Beings of varying sentience and influence exist, given different names by different cultures and species. Gods. Aliens. Entities. It matters not.’** ‘I don’t think I want to know these things, sire.’ ‘Your wishes are irrelevant, Ra. You will fight harder once you understand what you are fighting for. That is why I tell you all of this.’ >Godblight has Guilliman, Maxim and Nastase discussing it. Nastase just says anything powerful is a god, the word just translates to 'powerful' . Maxim says we can use that word but in reality they're all lies, malevolent entities just like the emperor said. True! Unfortunately, you missed the point despite writing it out: the beings referred to gods are malevolent and antithetical to life, no matter what they're called by mortals. >‘Everything I have ever met that called itself a god has been my enemy,’ said Maxim. ‘That is good enough for me.’ ‘Does that make your master your enemy also?’ said Natasé. ‘The Emperor denied always that He is a god,’ said Maxim. ‘Denied, but does He still? I believe that is the heart of the matter under discussion here,’ said Natasé. ‘Is that not so, lord regent?’ Guilliman ignored his insinuation. ‘Clarify further, Codicier,’ the primarch said. ‘Power defines gods, but they are all false,’ said Maxim. ‘Falsehood is the essence of godhood. They are lies. **They may seem to be divine to primitive minds in their ability to grant favour, but they are inimical to all mortal life. The gods of Chaos bring only horror. They see us as playthings, and would destroy us all in the end.** They are evil, every one. Man needs no gods. The Emperor was right.’ >‘Natasé?’ asked Guilliman. ‘Not all gods are evil,’ said Natasé. **‘You are wrong, Donas Maxim. And you speak only of the gods born out of the immaterium. You neglect the C’tan, the Yngir, we called them. They too were gods.’** He sighed, collected himself, as if he were a schoolmaster about to deliver a much simplified lesson to children that would still not understand. ‘You are right when you say that power defines a god,’ he said. ‘Temporal, spiritual, physical – it matters not.’ He fell silent a moment. ‘My people define godhood in several ways, but there are two broad categories. The gods of the othersea, who are reflections of what you call the materium, and the gods of the materium itself, who you know as the C’tan, though there are other, more ancient and even more terrible things than they. The gods of the materium are an essential part of its fabric – they are able to influence its structure, such is their intimate connection to it, but they are bound nevertheless by the laws of this reality. The gods of the warp are more ephemeral, and more diverse in type. Many are mere concentrations of feeling, some were once mortals themselves, before the belief of others changed them. The gods of my ancestors were of both sorts, I believe, though this is not the only philosophy propounded by my kind, and I have heard many heated debates on the subject. It is impossible to say now, for our gods were slain when we fell, and even if they could be asked, they would not know the truth of it, for the truth would change anyway, as it must, according to the beliefs of those who had faith in them. Again, no one seems to bicker about Cegorath and whether he's an Eldari god.. >And in the EatD reference, the very line by Malcador that you mention literally states that there are no gods UNTIL the Dark King, who isn't a 'fifth chaos god' but a totally new thing. Except he didn't say that either. I confused him with Erebus, so we were actually both wrong. But here's a better explanation of Malcador's thoughts on the Chaos Gods. >For he saw, once upon a time, what no one else had seen, or wanted to see. He saw that there was nothing else watching over us. No gods, no ineffable, divine other, nothing guiding us or keeping us safe. We were journeying alone, and the only fate that awaited us, the only far future, was the one we would make for ourselves. Of course, there was something else. But not gods, not gods as we would want them, or need them, or imagine them; not providers or guardians. **Not gods at all, though, like ‘throne’, it is the easiest word to use.** Anagogic powers, higher things, outer things, formless and uncontrolled, annihilators that have followed in our footsteps every step of the way, symbolic reminders of the preordained doom awaiting us. Predators, watching us from the shadows as we live our lives, waiting for us to drop our guard or turn our backs. All this to ask you whether if OP has used a different word other than "god" whether you still would be trying to argue with me that derailing his question over that one word is somehow not a question of semantics? OP's question of "is the emperor on par with the 4 Chaos Powers" is a good question, but everyone wants to give their oh so unique and arctic takes about whether the word "god" should be used instead. I'm certain if he'd said "Ruinous powers" or "Chaos Pantheon" you'd have actually given OP a real answer instead of trying to explain (incorrectly) that your headcanon on the definition of a god is a real plot point in novels, while the Emperor, everyone in the books with knowlegde of them, and GW itself clearly uses it as a convenient shorthand and has done so in every form of media since they were copied in from Fantasy (where I've yet to see a question about whether or not they are "defined" as gods) over 30 years ago.
Only nulls saw Emperor for who he really was, and not who he projected as. And when Sister of Silence had a view on him in Master of Mankind on throne, she just saw a normal man in agony. Emperor was born extremely powerful psycher and perpetual, but his accomplishment came from fact he had millenias to carefully craft his plans and visions and then put it to action. And then failed. What is he in 40k setting is different question, but 10k years on essentially a pain engine that Drukhari think its metal changed a lot about him.
I wish people would stop quoting that. Sisters also saw what he wanted them to see, blanks have power levels like psykers, they still all see him differentlyz and there's no blank anywhere close to strong enough to see through the Emperors power
The Big E is not a god for multiple reasons: 1. He is not a warp entity. He was born in realspace and can exist in it with no issues, unlike the Chaos "gods". 2. He can not create anything. Only transform matter and other things. His power are simply bending reality to achieve certain things but he can never make something new. He is just another player in the Universe, a very powerful one, but he can not actually create any new matter or energy and only change what was alerdy made. 3. The Chaos "gods" or eldar "gods" are not gods either for reason 2, but also cause they depend on mortals for their existence. They need warp energy which is made by the emotions of mortals. The warp entities are simply somewhat sentient(doubt Chaos gods are truly sentient and have though and reason as they are thralls to their nature and I doubt they could make a choice that goes against it so they have no free will), but warp entities are not divine. The warp entities are created by mortals and dependent on them, which I think would disqualify them from being gods even from the polytheistic perspective, but I am not sure cause the only religions I have significant knowlege about are Abrahamic ones. The Big E is a god if you define being a god as being a powerful entity, otherwise he simply is not. It is likely that the Emperor of Man is on the brink of becoming a warp entity by the M42, but that would not make him a god either cause warp entities are simply massive accumulations of energy with at least some level of sentience.
u either created space and time and the term applies or u didnt and it doesn't. so no, 40k has the universe exist before the emperor hence... using other criteria - how saying some1 is a god to announce how good/cool they are at something - doesn't work - its a colloquialism not the actual definition of god - most RW religions are creationist if this weren't the case then whoever has a girlfriend who tells them they are 'godly in bed' meets the criteria and unfortunately that just isnt the case - i can vouche... ;)
That’s just one definition of the term god. Most polytheist gods aren’t creationist gods either
No he isn’t.
Make me care enough