The Rev. Dr. Thanos Q. "Elohim" Endrizzi, Ph.D., is the pen name / pseudonym of, and a fictional character played by, Metaversalism's Founder in various online environments.  (In real life, the Founder is indeed an ordained minister, and holds a Ph.D.)

Origin of the Name

In the fictitious universe of the Marvel comic books, Thanos was one of the most powerful and nefarious of all super-villains.  He worshipped Mistress Death, and tried many times to take over the universe, with the goal of exterminating all life within it.  However, in one or two stories, he has a change of heart, and tries to save the universe instead, and consequently loses his power or is killed.

This backstory leads us into a theme found in Metaversalism, which is that all souls continue growing and evolving forever, even (or especially) after their death within their universe of origin.  As immortal souls continually develop and increase in knowledge and power throughout eternity, gradually becoming godlike beings (elohim) themselves, they inevitably approach and converge towards a fixed point, which is to comprehend the body of all possible knowledge about everything conceivable, which constitutes the Metaverse itself (an entity which we may identify with the Supreme Being).  As a result, souls have a tendency to increase in wisdom, and so they will eventually come to see the foolishness of their past behavior, and will seek to make amends for what they have done, even the most evil of their past deeds. 

The (admittedly fictitious) legend of the origin of Dr. Thanos is that his soul is a continuation of that of the Thanos character from the Marvel universe, with the following transitional story (not endorsed by Marvel, of course), narrated in autobiographical fashion by himself.  This was first posted in Dr. Thanos' profile on wis.dm:

"... After I died, and Mistress Death and I left the Marvel Universe together, we spawned a child, but then she cruelly betrayed and abandoned me, and took the child away with her to her Nether Kingdom, where I was not welcome. Devastated and heartbroken, I abdicated my Throne of Bone and left Death's Ebon Palace, and I re-manifested myself on Earth (this Earth, not the Marvel Universe's Earth-616) to start over, where I met and fell in love with a warm-hearted, newly single Earth woman. We are raising our children together, as I try to figure out what's next for me. Perhaps, instead of trying to conquer and destroy this universe (which would be my usual gig), for the sake of my love for this Earth woman I will reform myself, and apply my vast intellect and scientific knowledge to help save this Universe from what would otherwise be its eventual demise due to a wasteful, inefficient exhaustion of its energy supplies. I think I will begin my quest by replacing these Earthlings' primitive religions with my own rational, science-based meta-religious belief system, which I call Metaversalism."

This legend is of course largely tongue-in-cheek, since of course the actual Founder never really wished to destroy his universe in the first place, and Marvel's Thanos character would probably not have been able to reform himself so completely as this in such a short time. But, the Founder always found the Thanos character to be rather intriguing, and this tale simply makes for an entertaining back-story.   The actual real-life origins of the ideas of Metaversalism are  related elsewhere.  However, Metaversalism does draw at least a little bit of the inspiration for its Metaverse ideas from Marvel's "Multiverse," the structure of which the Thanos character would have been familiar with.

Additional elements of the back-story are that the resurrected, reformed Thanos obtained a doctorate in philosophy, and became an ordained minister, and started promoting Metaversalism on the wis.dm site (these elements are essentially true).

The nickname or last name "Elohim" is often used by our Thanos character because of the idea in Metaversalism that all souls are destined to grow and develop into godlike beings with unlimited computational capabilities.  Furthermore, the ancestral tree of any universe (its tree of embeddings within other universes, and those within others, etc.) can always be traced back eventually to the actions of godlike beings, if we go back far enough along a randomly chosen path.  Thus, we are all creations of the gods, and we are all in the process of becoming gods ourselves.

The ancient Hebrew word for gods, considered in general, was "elohim," and so, if we are all of the gods, Elohim could be an appropriate last name for any one of us.  Dr. Thanos uses it sometimes to emphasize the ideas of Metaversalism.

Avatar on Wis.Dm

Here is the original Dr. Thanos avatar image that was used on the website wis.dm for most of 2007-2009:

Apart from the hair and glasses, the character's image is blatantly plagiarized (without permission) from some copyrighted image of the Thanos character owned by Marvel comics, which we ripped off from some random webpage found by Google Image Search.  We expect that we will likely have to take it down at some point if/when Marvel complains and threatens legal action.  However, we plan to keep using the name "Thanos," which cannot by itself be trademarked, since it is a fairly common given name in Greece.

The wild white hair represents an Einstein wig, and the hair and glasses together are intended to make Thanos look more scholarly.

Personal Symbolic Signature Logo

Here is Dr. Thanos' personal signature logo:

The text in the circle says Thanos Elohim (or Elohim Thanos) in Greek and Hebrew.  The black/white coloring evokes the ideas of yin/yang, and the "Circle of Life" (life following death following life).  

Below the circle are Kanji characters which can be read as "the Destroyer Becomes the Savior," in reference to Thanos' story, or alternatively as "by Questioning, Achieve Salvation," in reference to arriving at Metaversalism and other enlightened ideas which may help to preserve life in the universe and to redeem our souls, via the exercise of our own curiosity and rational thought, rather than by unquestioningly accepting what we may have been taught.

Second Life avatar

Here is Dr. Thanos's avatar (Thanos Endrizzi) in Second Life, a online virtual world or "Metaverse" (in the older sense of the word):

The appearance is loosely based on Marvel's Thanos character, but perhaps is a little more humanlike, representing Dr. Thanos' sense of compassion.  The hair is an exaggerated version of an Einstein wig, representing Thanos' ever-expanding halo of knowledge and wisdom, or his mane of enlightenment.

Dr. Thanos, meditating on top of the Oracle Tree, Chilbo, 2nd life.

None of the above should be taken too seriously, except for the parts relating to the basic concepts of Metaversalism.