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[Radio Controlled]

Maybe it shows that, for a being as powerful and above his peers as he was, it was difficult to have a lot of empathy for other people's feelings or viewpoints some of the time. Makes him very... Human, in a way.

[Neonivek]

Tyranids an odd combination of Lovecraft and the Zergs.

Though the lovecraft aspect might as well be forgotten since they aren't part of the main army.

[nenjin]

There's also the theory that the Emperor had it all planned; right down to the flaws in the primarchs and the messed up way he dealt with some of them. That the Crusade collapsing and going on the Golden Throne, that being betrayed by Horus was a necessary part of creating the Imperium as its known today. For what purpose? Simply to buy humanity as much time as possible, regardless of how unpleasant that time under the Imperium might be.

[Radio Controlled]

To be entirely fair though, there's a reason "Just as planned." has been elevated to meme status. Just about every other entity in 40k seems to be gambitting xanatossi with the galaxy.

[Xantalos]

Additionally, given how much better an Imperium that didn't lack all understanding of it's tech, was a fractured hellhole held together only by faith and hellfire, and has no massive weak spot in the form of the Golden Throne would have done, I choose to believe he just fucked up.

[Neonivek]

To be entirely fair though, there's a reason "Just as planned." has been elevated to meme status. Just about every other entity in 40k seems to be gambitting xanatossi with the galaxy.

It is kind of the point. Every single faction essentially is going to win

The game is at its worst when it picks sides.

[nenjin]

Additionally, given how much better an Imperium that didn't lack all understanding of it's tech, was a fractured hellhole held together only by faith and hellfire, and has no massive weak spot in the form of the Golden Throne would have done, I choose to believe he just fucked up.

40k takes the most cynical view of humanity possible. Freedom and knowledge lead to Chaos. It's as simple as that. Give a man a gun, and he will kill for you. Teach a man who to make that gun himself, and he'll turn it on you eventually. Technological dependence on the Mechanicus makes Imperial worlds dependent on the Imperium. The "massive weakspot" in a kinder, gentler Imperium is the freedom to invite Chaos on a galactic scale. That's what the Imperium's mechanisms of thought control and orthodoxy are there to prevent. There's still heresy, and Chaos, but on a much smaller scale than if humanity was invited to think about and explore the universe it inhabits without restrictions or punishments.

There's already tangible examples of what a different system looks like: the Dark Age of Technology, which lead to Old Night. Humanity knows what can happen when everyone is captaining their own ship of moral values. (They end up willingly enslaved to Xenos, dominated by psykers or they just straight up devolve for the glory of the Dark Gods.)

I'm not saying it's a perfect justification, but anything the Emperor did rarely sat well with everyone.

Anyways, the Emperor is pretty much every father, ever. "Do as I say, not as I do."

[Jopax]

Or he could've just let folks worship him, not that they lacked any reasons to do so. He could've held it all together much better than it's being held together now tbh, mostly because it wouldn't have to deal with the damage that the HH caused.

[Radio Controlled]

It is interesting to see almost every conventionally sapient race succumb to their hubris at some point. The eldar had their fall due to unchecked debauchery and hedonism, they held the universe in their hand but were slaves to their nature and bodies. The necrontyr, as well, let the state of their short harsh lives goad them into war with the old ones, then were tricked by ancient star gods and lost their souls. And the imperium, of course, we all know what happened to them. The only ones impervious seem to be ork and nids, and they just embraced their nature and live it to the fullest (violence and hunger, respectively). Hmm. I wonder what would befall the tau, should they ever survive to become a major player.

[LordBaal]

Thing is that even believing in him creates ripples and agitation on the warp, or that's how I see it. He wanted a perfect atheist mankind and nothing else alive in the galaxy to destroy the chaos threat completely.

[Dutchling]

So what you're saying is he's the 40k version of Richard Dawkins?

[Xantalos]

So what you're saying is he's the 40k version of Richard Dawkins?

Going by canon Richard Dawkins was him in disguise.

It is interesting to see almost every conventionally sapient race succumb to their hubris at some point. The eldar had their fall due to unchecked debauchery and hedonism, they held the universe in their hand but were slaves to their nature and bodies. The necrontyr, as well, let the state of their short harsh lives goad them into war with the old ones, then were tricked by ancient star gods and lost their souls. And the imperium, of course, we all know what happened to them. The only ones impervious seem to be ork and nids, and they just embraced their nature and live it to the fullest (violence and hunger, respectively). Hmm. I wonder what would befall the tau, should they ever survive to become a major player.

You forgot to mention the Old Ones, but I suppose you could argue that most of them got killed by the Enslaver plague which wouldn't have existed without their created races (mostly the Eldar, the Kr/Ork keep their warp emissions amongst themselves fucking around with it.

[TempAcc]

There's also the theory that the Emperor had it all planned; right down to the flaws in the primarchs and the messed up way he dealt with some of them. That the Crusade collapsing and going on the Golden Throne, that being betrayed by Horus was a necessary part of creating the Imperium as its known today. For what purpose? Simply to buy humanity as much time as possible, regardless of how unpleasant that time under the Imperium might be.

Supposedly the emperor had absurd precognition powers, and was able to tell events 10k years into the future. He's also mentioned as being able to warp time in a few novels, so he may possibly have predicted all of the horus heresy, from magnus being tricked to the creation of the inquisition. This kind of makes sense actualy since, while the inquisition representes everything the Emperor DIDN'T want for humanity, its probably the only way to keep humanity from being eaten by chaos in the span of a few hundred years.

Maybe the big E actualy planned to get smashed into half life so he could stay in the warp and accumulate even more absurd powers from the faith everyone now puts in him and the millions of psykers sacrificed to him every day, all the while pretending he's actualy really frail and about to go poof, so the gods of chaos would waste time around with primarchs and individual worlds rather then just bum rushing Terra.
Maybe big E eventualy changed his mind about the whole LETS STARVE OUT CHAOS BEING ATHEISTS, since there were Xenos sucesptible to the warp and a completely faithless humanity wouldn't be enough to weaken chaos, and just decided to deal with chaos by becoming a much scarier god.

And yes, big E despised religion, mostly because of the warp. Religion is kind of a scary thing in an universe in which believing on stuff can actualy make it exist, with enough effort. It kind of makes sense in context, and its why he destroyed every church on Terra. There's even a rather famous account on big E trying to convince the last priest from the last church on Terra to abandon his religion and join him, and he almost succeeded.

Also, the eslaver plague killed what old ones were left after the war in heaven, but most of them got nommed on by the C'tan, I think, before the many C'tan got eaten by the deceiver, the void dragon, the outsider and maybe a few other more powerful C'tan. Thats the only reason the necron were able to effectively rebel against the c'tan, me thinks, since they were weakned by infighting + the krorks and eldar wraithbone thingies smacking them silly. Also the krorks may have taken part in the whole LETS EXTERMINATE THE SURVIVING OLD ONES thing, according to some sources.

[nenjin]

Well, there's still the pending question of what the Emperor is actually doing on the Golden Throne.

1. He's doing nothing, because he's dead. Sacrificing psykers to him is just a smoke screen for fueling the Astronomicon.
2. He's doing nothing, because he's dying. Sacrificing psykers to him is literally just propping up the figurehead of the Imperium, because the High Lords don't really want to fake his existence should he really die. The Emperor dying would basically remove the reason the Imperium hasn't socially collapsed over the last 10,000 years.
3. He's projecting the Astronomicon, so his role in the Imperium is basically making sure the light house fires stay lit.
4. He's "preventing Chaos from winning." This is canonically the most widely used interpretation. It's also completely unprovable, and posits the Emperor is so awesome, he has the power to prevent Chaos from doing....stuff.
5. He's sending out mental projections of himself to influence Imperial history and players at key points, according to a design only he understands.
6. He's hoarding the power of dead psykers and building himself up to real godhood. It's about as plausible as any other explanation, except his detractors have been accusing him of doing this since before the Horus Heresy started. So if he's shooting for godhood, he's taking his sweet ass time about it.

Construction on the Golden Throne began before the Horus Heresy started, IIRC my dates. So it begs the question: what is the purpose of the Golden Throne? Did the Emperor know he was going to need a life-sustaining engine? Did he know the Imperium would need a powerful astronomic beacon powered by his own will? It clearly wasn't required prior to the Heresy, but the Warp was probably more stable then. Does the Golden Throne do something no one has even really guessed at?

[Xantalos]

The Golden Throne was the initial gate in the Imperial Webway project where the Emperor was basically building his way into the Webway so that humans wouldn't have to rely on shitty warp travel.
Or it was going to be before Magnus fucked it up and caused a demonic incursion that the Custodes have been fighting for the past 10,000 years.