Only sort-of workaround to worshipping one of your starting colonists as a living god, is to pick Embodied Theist and name one of your colonists as one of the living gods. It's a bit crude solution, in particular because you must choose a minimum of 2 gods when you only want one.
I think apotheosis needs to be added as a base ideological structure so we might pick one of our starting colonists as our living god deity. Since the religion is built around this colonist, I think this colonist also needs to be either essential, or destroying the religion giving its believers a massive mood penalty if they die.
You can - currently - TECHNICALLY roleplay Apotheosis by choosing embodied theist and name colonists after the God/s. But the game won't actually recognize this in any meaningful manner. Shouldn't be too hard to add this to the game. It would take minimal work and change just adding apotheosis, choosing a colonist (or several) as gods, and add some effects.
Hoping something can be done about this. Maybe even deify one of your pets, so you can tame and worship a squirrel if that isn't too silly.
Thoughts?