Has the (secular) Imperial Truth survived anywhere in the 41st Millennium besides a few Space Marine chapters?

The Imperial Truth wasn't secular. It was militant atheism. They weren't letting people practice religion privately, or in any fashion.

Anything from 30k is necessarily corrupted and disfigured by 40k into a funhouse mirror grotesque, often to the point of contradicting its original intentions. That's the point.

>Catholicism with the Emperor damned to his golden throne being a stand-in for Jesus on th cross
But Sanguinius is Jesus..

Well since the writers later on are nothing but chaos fags whichever makes people hate the Imperium more.

Both these factions didn't actually "care" about the Imperial Truth. They are both so distant to baseline humanity that the Emperor is their leader, their warlord, but they don't revere him per se. Especially the sister of silence. They don't get to spend their life close to the Emperor, they can't get privy to his great plans like Custodes were. They're just his agents.

They might still be aware of his vision, but can they be arsed enough to try and make other people comply with it? Hell no, that ain't their job.

>The period justice being that the emperor was a fedora-tier "everything bad is Christianity's fault" atheist

To be fair to the big E, Terra was plagued by religious wars for basically the entirety of the Age of Strife. That's bound to give anyone a low opinion of religion.
>I can't make up my mind as to whether the message is anti-christian or a take-that to atheism. I don't know if the writers could either.

I doubt it's either, it's just a tragic story about a flawed (super)man trying to save humanity from itself, but just making the problems worse.

Neither, really. The original writers were not sympathetic to religion, but they were really condemning human nature in their depiction of the Imperium. It represents everything in our nature that hamstrings us and prevents us from achieving greatness. Superstition, xenophobia, cognitive dissonance, ignorance, self-deception, etc.

The Imperium was never intended to be sympathetic. Humanity is sympathetic, and it suffers under the Imperium.

Of course, Chaos is worse, but half the point of the Imperium is that it's so shitty it actually makes Chaos stronger.

>The Imperium was never intended to be sympathetic. Humanity is sympathetic, and it suffers under the Imperium.

Agreed. There aren't actually a lot of races in 40k that are inherently awful, but they tend to be in regimes that are taking advantage of them hideously or have had such a shit hand that they have nothing left except being assholes.

The astronomicon guys and the psyker training facility probably have an odd mix of religion and the Imperial Truth.

It's not really secular user, more like state enforced atheism (like Stalinism).

I *think* this is what the Temple Tendency in DH is supposed to be, but FFG is shit at writing fluff so it was never entirely clear.

Isn't Stalinism basically badwrongfun taken to its' illogical conclusion?

No, the Temple Tendency wasn't a reversion to the Imperial Truth. It was a reversion to Pre-Imperial religion.

Yes.

But the same can be said of basically every oppressively stringent doctrine that resulted in mass killings.

IIRC, it was pre-Emperor, Imperial Truth (science and atheism), Temple of the Saviour Emperor (Temple Tendency, Emperor is a god), Imperial Cult (Emperor is a god)

I was never sure what the difference between the Temple Tendency and the Imperial Cult was actually supposed to be in terms of belief. Supposedly the Imperial Cult kicked out the Temple Tendency because they were corrupt, but there never seemed to be a reason for a vast heretical group to scheme against the Imperial Cult, because all they want to do is worship the Emperor as a god, which the Imperial Cult already does...

Personally I ignore most of FFG's stupid fluff, along with 30K, so just use what you like.

I figured it was mostly the limitations of power. They want to have private armies and solid gold statues made of themselves

I'd argue that militant atheism would be justified, because in this universe if you practice religion you are pretty much asking a demon to manifest into the real world through your asshole.

Even so, I think secularism is a better definition of the imperial truth. Google defines secularism as "the principle of separation of the state from religious institutions." Which is pretty much what he did every time he landed on a planet. Atheism would imply the chaos gods are not real and this is the reason not to believe in them, which is clearly not the case.

Thing is, the only way to prevent a religion from rising is with another religion. Banning religion altogether doesn't stop people from wanting to believe in something.

No, not even in any SM chapter. Only with the Sisters of Silence, as they're the only organization to remain the same in 10,000 years. Space Marines have Chapter Cults that while don't usually worship the Emperor or their Primarch as gods and usually just venerate them as extremely powerful men, they are very spiritual/religious about it and other things unique to their Chapter Cult, but even then, Space Marines acknowledge the existance of the Chaos Gods in order to identify and fight their servants, iirc.

The original fluff is make the emperor the god we need
Unfortunately the fluff is ruled by fedora tippers with daddy issues (McNeil and adb respectively) so there's a clash of atheism vs the miracles that are there in the books (which Abnett has promoted and of course he slacked off under Herr Goulding who is also a massive fedora)

Temple tendency is pope benedict catholic- the religion is for the priests and the nobles and the poor give all their money for gold chalices etc like that twat in the first calpurnia novel
This is as opposed to the missinoria galactica pope Francis style exemplified by confessors and drill abbots etc
Imperial cult is a general term for the religion regardless of regional variants

That bullshit though since you can achieve the same through any extreme emotion
No religion at all wouldn't kill the chaos gods because people would still hate/fuck/despair/plot

People can exist without religion, i.e. you have atheists in real life. The "something" that you believe in to drive your life doesn't necessarily have to be a god or anything supernatural; Your desire to see your species flourish or even the love for your family are enough to live a meaningful life. I'm an Atheist, I only say this as a form of disclaimer in case my argument seems biased.

The Emperor could very well consider the chaos gods the sum of some laws of the universe, just like Gravity. It's a thing that happens, and its powers are as mundane and non-supernatural as an elephant to a bunch of ants, even if they look so big and powerful to us, "Any sufficiently ETI is indistinguishable from God" and all that.

So maybe the Emperor wanted 1 of two outcomes:
1)Very pragmatic and rational citizens that have just "enough" feelings to not be comparable to necrons.
2)For humans to believe their own hype and refuse to ask for help or guidance from warp-tainted forces, i.e. anything spiritual.

If I recall correctly, the Temple Tendency is specifically a revivalist movement of the Imperium's state religion pre-Sebastian Thor's reforms. It exemplifies idolatry, ritualism and luxury at its worse.

If you think the modern Imperium's expression of faith is a bit exorbitant and decadent, we can only imagine how bad the TT are.

The imperial truth literally preached gods were not real and killed people who worshipped. That's not secular. There was no room for letting the locals have their gods in compliance, there is no division of pubic and private spheres. Its not secular. The definition you gave doesn't even agree with what you're trying to say.

My definition of secularism might not be correct, sorry for that, but my point is ascribing atheism to it, because that means NOT believing in gods. So we're kind of stuck unless you know:

1) wether big E. Considered the chaos gods as actual gods
2)wether you think using atheism is stubborn people not "wanting" to believe in god but he exists

If the people who were living the imperial truth didn't believe in gods, they were atheists. They can be wrong, but that doesn't make them secretly believe in gods. They were just mistaken. If you're drinking 30koolaid the emperor knew, he just lied to try and stave them out while he sorted out the webway. It was a bad plan. But 40k is mostly about bad plans.

Gotcha, makes sense then. Communication would have solved so many problems, but then again 1 evil asshole for every 10,000 citizens becomes a worrysome statistic when you have trillions of people. I'm not sure I would have done it any other way.

Most of those atheists however do believe in things without sufficient evidence, which would give the door for the supernatural to exist.

The emperor was foolish in attempting to deny a part of human being. Chaos will exist as long as people have emotions, the only solution is making a strong belief such as an avatar of the mankind or a powerful philosophy such as the greater good.

Funnily, the emperor became this avatar after his fall and is now the only thing protecting mankind from being ravaged by the powers of the warp.

>Wow, that's awesome. Can this be the next era visited after 30k?
Hell yes. Just as long as Black Library aren't allowed to have anything to do with it. They've screwed up the lore quite enough, thanks.

>The Pale Wasting (Unknown Date.M34) - A stele mounted within the Imperial Palace on Terra recognises the services of the Novamarines for their action against the Pale Wasting that occurred in the 34th Millennium. This artefact praises the Chapter and credits their work for having "unmade that which cannot die." This campaign was where the Novamarines earned some of their earliest recorded battle honours.
So much room for awesomeness.

The whole "Religion causes division, violence, and war and I WILL KILL ANYONE WHO DISAGREES" shtick makes me think it has to be anti-fedora on some level. No writer alive can be that tone-deaf.

I hope that GW mentioning Nova Terra on the new 40k site means they're going to do something with it.

Even if there are writings and they are archived, there is no guarantee they aren't lost amid tons of other archived material.

Assuming that the whole 'strong belief in the Emperor' actually has any effect, and he's not just a mostly-dead psychic battery that powers the Throne so the various Psychics can still get things done.

>I can't make up my mind as to whether the message is anti-christian or a take-that to atheism. I don't know if the writers could either.

Well considering that the Imperium was essentially the closest humanity had ever come to reaching utopia status during the Great Crusade, and the Emperor's work was explicitly usurped and destroyed by people worshiping Gods and doing Gods' work, there is no level on which the parable of the Imperium can be considered an attack on atheism. Not believing in Gods isn't what destroyed the Emperor's Imperium, men with weak character are.

>People can exist without religion
Civilizations can't. Unconstricting a society collective reasoning is a good way to destroy all that it has built. Basically they lose all social cohesion, fractures, fragments with the addition of the outsiders ready to feast on the carcass all would collapse. A social group needs a stout moral and mental guide to bring them a sort of uniformity so they wouldn't see their fellows as outsiders.

Is there some reason the story has to be pro-religion or anti-religion? Can't it just be a story?

To an ideologue, everything becomes a proof of either that their beliefs are correct, or that a nefarious group or being are plotting against them.

This, there is no middle ground on the internet

There is. And once you're there you call everyone faggets.