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[Akura]

And what's wrong with Ratlings?

After all, they're just thieving little bastards who eat everything and are constantly trying to have disgusting 4-foot tall orgies.

That's why. They do make pretty decent snipers, though. Including the badass who scored the Imperium's first ever kill against a Tau Ethereal via Boom, Headshot!.

[Grim Portent]

And what's wrong with Ratlings? After all, they're just thieving little bastards who eat everything and are constantly trying to have disgusting 4-foot tall orgies.

They deviate from the perfect form of Man as determined by the Emperor. The Imperial Cult (which was ultimately founded by Lorgar, the traitor primarch) in setting teaches that the Emperor was always a god, created humanity and then incarnated himself as a man to guide them when they were at the brink of destruction. He's basically the Christian God/Jesus analogue to the Imperium. According to Imperial doctrine Abhumans are corrupted and base versions of the form of Man, which is perfect because it was made in the Emperor's likeness, but are tolerated as they received his sanction despite their degeneracy. All abhumans are equally wretched in the eyes of the Eccelesiarchy, and by extension the faithful, even when there's no practical reason to view them as such.

Also Ratlings are bloody cowards. 

[Loud Whispers]

Nah, Ollanious Pious is Jesus, the Emperor is like the Rightly-Guided Caliphs and Josef Stalin distilled into one, same way Marvel's Thor is actually King Arthur dressed in Norse imagery
The Emperor is not a self-sacrificing pacifist, he bwomps all over the galaxy because the xenos were dickheads to humans in the age of strife, eradicates all creeds and replaces them with the Imperial Truth, and with great intentions sets up the Imperium for its Nazi Roman Inquisition Grimderp

[Kot]

Also gotta wonder if Emps had all of the supplementary organs his kids do.

He was capable of changing his body all the time to whatever he wanted, shrinking, getting bigger, proably getting fucking additional hands and heads and whatnot and I'm pretty sure he mentioned being a woman for some time during various points in history, so yeah, he didin't need them and even if he did, he could just think them into existence because he's the Big E.

[Grim Portent]

Nah, Ollanious Pious is Jesus, the Emperor is like the Rightly-Guided Caliphs and Josef Stalin distilled into one, same way Marvel's Thor is actually King Arthur dressed in Norse imagery
The Emperor is not a self-sacrificing pacifist, he bwomps all over the galaxy because the xenos were dickheads to humans in the age of strife, eradicates all creeds and replaces them with the Imperial Truth, and with great intentions sets up the Imperium for its Nazi Roman Inquisition Grimderp

I meant according to the in-universe faith, not the out of universe references and inspirations or the actual in setting history. According to the Imperium's church the Emperor is, was and always will be an omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent deity, the golden armoured giant was just his manifestation into the world. The Mechanicus has the same belief, with the Omnissiah (Emperor) being the manifestation of Deus Mechanicus, the machine god. According to this belief the Emperor serves a Jesus role in that he's the physical semi-mortal manifestation of the greater deity.

Basically the Imperial Cult/Machine Cult has a Duality (Emperor/Omnissiah - God/Machine God, who are all of one will) rather than a Trinity (Christ - God - Holy Spirit) like the Christian faith it was largely based off by the writers.

For some reason this stuff doesn't get mentioned much in the novels or rulebooks. Last time I saw it mentioned in current fluff was a short mention in one of the HH books from a techpriest as I recall. Very few books bother to think about the actual meaning of the Emperor being worshiped according to a nearly wholly inaccurate document, which I think is a shame.

[Loud Whispers]

Oh yeah, but you also have conflicting Imperial cults and interpretations, so is the Emperor a God, Chaos God, or the Man Emperor of Mankind e.t.c.?

[Grim Portent]

Oh yeah, but you also have conflicting Imperial cults and interpretations, so is the Emperor a God, Chaos God, or the Man Emperor of Mankind e.t.c.?

Most such discussion comes from fans rather than from the setting though.

Pretty sure no canon Imperial Cult thinks of the Emperor as anything but the one true god, comparing him to the Chaos Gods would be unthinkable Heresy and only a rare few people doubt him having been a god all along outside the Inquisition and the Astartes. Hell, I expect more people doubt he even exists than doubt his divinity considering how few pilgrims even go to Terra and how small the portion that return home is.

[Teneb]

The Mechanicus has the same belief, with the Omnissiah (Emperor) being the manifestation of Deus Mechanicus, the machine god. According to this belief the Emperor serves a Jesus role in that he's the physical semi-mortal manifestation of the greater deity.

I thought that was just sort of an excuse to prevent the Ecclesiarchy from having a fit. Isn't the Omnissiah the C'tan trapped under Mars? Or is it the Machine God and I'm just getting confused?

[Grim Portent]

The Mechanicus has the same belief, with the Omnissiah (Emperor) being the manifestation of Deus Mechanicus, the machine god. According to this belief the Emperor serves a Jesus role in that he's the physical semi-mortal manifestation of the greater deity.

I thought that was just sort of an excuse to prevent the Ecclesiarchy from having a fit. Isn't the Omnissiah the C'tan trapped under Mars? Or is it the Machine God and I'm just getting confused?

A small fraction of the leaders of the Mechanicus believe the Emperor is not the Omnissiah, most do. None actually know for certain what the Machine God really is but some of the doubters suspect the Emperor hid something on Mars and tricked them.

In the Crusade he arrived on Mars, fulfilled a prophecy and was accepted by the Fabricator General, and the bulk of the populace, of the time as the Omnissiah. Despite this some Tech Priests were very skeptical of him. Some did not believe in gods at all, others simply thought he was not the real one. The latter group sided with Horus in the Heresy and became the first Dark Mechanicus. Despite being beaten and destroyed their suspicions live on among the leaders of the Mechanicus that have access to their ancient records.

The Void Dragon is sealed on Mars, and might be the Machine God, but it's presence is known only to two people at a time. It's warden and their guardian (unless somethings has happened I'm not aware of.) The same book that confirms this also reveals that all technical knowledge can be found in the Warp, so the Machine God could actually be a warp entity or not even exist. 

EDIT: Just to clarify, the Omnissiah is supposed to be the incarnation of the Machine God, hence the word being derived from messiah, since it's another Jesus/God reference by the original designers. It may or may not be the Emperor, the Void Dragon or fake.

[Loud Whispers]

If we're going by 3rdcron fluff, the Void Dragon is very real and is the Omnissiah

[TempAcc]

Considering how the warp works, just believing the emperor is the omnissiah would eventualy make him the omnissiah, but the GWthe warp is a finnicky mistress that often goes for the most boring explanations.

[Andres]

Considering how the warp works, just believing the emperor is the omnissiah would eventualy make him the omnissiah

You're thinking of orks, not the Warp. The Emperor is not a god and having a few quintillion people worshipping him won't make him one. This is because the Emperor is a being of the Materium and the thoughts and prayers of the Imperium only affect the Immaterium. Since the populace's belief lies in an actual being rather than an imaginary character, however, this does not create a Chaos God, much like how believing in a blood god called Khorne doesn't create a new Khorne separate from the one we know. If there was no Emperor (divine or otherwise) and the Imperium simply believed there was, a Chaos God would be born.

[Cheesecake]

The Emperor is more or less a daemon prince in a sense (heresy I know). He's insanely psychic, can alter his appearance at will, and lives forever. If he's like the shamans that created him, he could reincarnate and come back from the Warp. He's a being of the Immaterium, rooted and tethered to the Material world.

Plus the thousands of psykers daily for ten thousand years part.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   

[Rolepgeek]

There's a difference between a mutant and an abhuman. Abhumans are a stable breeding sub-species of humanity. A mutant is a creature with a genetic mutation that makes it differ noticeably from the majority of the species.
One is a difference of sub-species and the other is a difference within sub-species. If the former were heretical, then that would mean Homo Neanderthalis is also heretical and thus everyone would be descended from heretics, so it gets a kind of pass. The latter, however, is unnatural, irregular, and unclean, therefore heretical.

You dare suggest that there is such a thing as people who aren't heretical?

Innocence is meaningless, scum.

[sprinkled chariot]

So emperor could punch a whole metallic dragon god to half death and lock him down on Mars?