Board Thread:Warhammer 40k General Discussion/@comment-6078851-20130130174042/@comment-4264245-20130312215236

I'd say we can call "god" any entity powerful enough. The thing is, I see a difference between the beings that are Gods and the beings that act like Gods: The Emperor (when physically alive) and the C'tan acted like Gods, the Chaos Gods, the Eldar Gods and the God-Emperor (as the combined psychical strength of all His believers) are Gods. I'll try to explain my point:


 * The C'tan have nothing to do with religious beliefs, at least not since they literally ate the souls of the Necrontyr that might have worshipped them. They have no presence in the Warp and thus they don't become stronger with people's belief unless they eat their minds' energy before it flows into the Immaterium. However, they come from the energies that spawned the universe, so they're able to alter material reality to the point of appearing god-like.


 * The Eldar Gods are weird and I admit I know little about them. They appear to have been created artificially to fight against the C'tan and Necrons in the War in Heaven, but grew stronger with Eldar's beliefs and got an independent identity. At the Fall, most of them were literally eaten by Slaanesh, except for Khaine (whose energy was dispersed and cast out of the Warp into the Avatars), Isha (who was imprisoned by Nurgle) and Cegorach (who somehow transferred his energies and mind to the Webway where he still lurks and directs the Harlequins). Right now they appear to be powerless, and Eldar rely mostly on their own warpcraft rather than on their Gods' might.


 * Chaos Gods were born during the War in Heaven (yeah, I know, other versions say it was in Middle Age, but surely the death of thousands of sentient races are more powerful than the petty wars of a 100.000 million-strong race, don't you think?) and are divinities in the fullest sense. They exist thanks to the strong feelings of pain, fear and hate released by the souls of those who died in that war and the following ones, and demand worship to get more of those feelings. Their power is so big that can breach the veil between Materium and Immaterium, and also spawn lesser consciences called Daemons to act in their name in smaller games.


 * Now, with the Emperor... Personally I make a difference between the Living Emperor and the God Emperor. When he was walking amongst Mankind, he simply was the most powerful of human (or maybe even Eldar) psykers. He mastered all psychic disciplines and could get to know everything about anything, so he was ageless and all-knowing to the point of never understanding religion (like you guys have pointed out). But when he had to be connected to the Golden Throne...his powers were mostly gone from the fight with Horus, and had to be focused on controlling the broken Webway portal to Terra, the Astronomican beam, and the Soul Binding rituals for Astropaths. His divine galactic power now depends mostly on Mankind's faith, which works mostly like the worship to Chaos Gods, but to a very smaller scale; the Emperor can't create "angels" to oppose Daemons, and his injections of warp righteous energy into his faithful warriors and priests can as easily help them as kill them - sometimes it can resurrect them too, but that's about it.