Board Thread:Warhammer 40k General Discussion/@comment-8881468-20131229020408/@comment-6078851-20140108005303

the entire language of the imperium is riddled with words that are based in prehistory (40k relative) religiousness. it doesn't matter if emps was creating a secular empire, because such an empire came from a civilisation that was steeped in religion (that's us), and so 'religously loaded' words are common throughout the language and they don't nessacarily have to mean anything about religion.

the emperor launched his 'great crusade': crusade was/is war perpetrated to convert one religion to another, pretty sure emps wasn't using crusade in that context. plus, before the heresy, any human worlds/empire's that didn't accept the imperium were considered heretics.

emps would have lived eternally: as in longer than anyone alive could envisage, so the descriptive term 'eternally' would be a good one use. in a secular empire founded at the hands of warriors destined to die in honourable battle the term 'damn' would simply mean to be remembered with dishonour in the eyes of emps. so jonson's quote would simply have meant shame in the eyes of his father, until the end of time.

space marines refer to each other as brethren, even before the heresy: the origin of brethren was brotherhood, in a religious context. 'brotherhood' itself is a word from a religous context. with very few exceptions astartes do not use such terms in a religous context, but use them they most certainly do, and did.