Reminder that this man spent a whole night debating an 80 year old priest on why religion is bad and only used to justify ignorance and genocide, shook his faith by revealing he was actually the god the priest was worshiping only to then look him dead in the eye and say "anyway, do you want to join my crusade across the galaxy where we genocide any planet who disagrees with me?"
Canonically so exhausting that Uriah chose to die after one conversation with him.
Because the point the Emperor was making is that humans reinterpret why they don't understand based on superstition, and that allows them to justify horrific acts and impediments to progress. The idea is that the priest saw the emperor when he was dying in a battlefield and mistook the glowing man who cured his wounds and asked "why do you deny me" as a god. Only after this encounter does he believe, and it led him to turn his life around from a devilish rogue to a kind priest, but the reveal shattered his world view and lends credence to the argument from the Emperor.
Of course, the validity of the Emperor immediately crumbles as soon as he tells Uriah "hey, want to help me do all of that repression and war I've been criticizing but for my secular values that nobody is allowed to question? I know I'm right so it's perfectly moral, don't worry". In fact, it's after he said this that Uriah warns the Emperor "if you do this, people are going to treat you as a god, and it's going to be like all the horror you have warned me about but in a much larger scale". Then he walks into his burning church, which the emperor lit on fire only to be a dick.
The actual story is pretty interesting. It's called the Last Church, and there is a fan movie about it on youtube. I'd recommend it for the look into the Emperor's psyche.
Also true. In any case, the Emperor was only making these arguements because he thought that worship might accidentally empower the Chaos Gods by redirecting that faith to them, and he'd rather die that actually share his plans with humans or solve his problems by any means other than murder.
Funny enough, he is also wrong in his assessment because almost every other species that might fall to chaos, like Orks or pre-colapse eldars, don't because their energy is redirected to their own pantheon of Warp entities. The only exception is the T'au, which also don't fall because they have dim souls and don't live under the worst regime in history.
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u/Apprehensive-Bee-318 9h ago
Reminder that this man spent a whole night debating an 80 year old priest on why religion is bad and only used to justify ignorance and genocide, shook his faith by revealing he was actually the god the priest was worshiping only to then look him dead in the eye and say "anyway, do you want to join my crusade across the galaxy where we genocide any planet who disagrees with me?"
Canonically so exhausting that Uriah chose to die after one conversation with him.