Aren't saints for all intents and purpose lesser gods?

>this sounds like some theological bullshit to me
You haven't given any reason why.
>both polytheists and catholics
Actually, it's be more like, "every non-reformed church"

Not really "lesser gods". They're more like Demigods.

Why are you even here?
How has it not,been solved? The right explanation has been given ITT more than once.

were the power comes from is just hairsplitting and doesn't change that both polytheists and catholics do the same

That's not right, either. They're more like saints.

Reminder that they also believe in angels and demons.

Yes, it's polytheism, but they are explicitly forbidden from calling it that, so there is little point asking them about it

>hairsplitting
It's actually just a matter of your not understanding what makes a god a god.
Pagans and Christians tend to agree that a god is something that exists under its own power while setting other things in motion and creating the conditions of their existence.

>were the power comes from is just hairsplitting
No, that's literally what differentiates mono from polytheism.
By that logic, judaism is polytheistic as well, since we have a lot of examples of angels doing stuff with their spiritual power, under Adonai's guidance.

Is Islam also a polytheism?

what about hercules?
he was born a human yet people prayed to him
Wasn't he exactly the same thing as a catholic saint?

do you pray to angels?

>Is Islam also a polytheism?

Yes.

Yahweh was originally just one god among many, and that is fairly evident if you actually read the old testament. It was "monotheism" in the sense that they only worshipped one god, not that only one existed.

>do you pray to angels?
Again, no one has defined a god as "something being prayed to".
People have prayed to totems.
Does that make totems divine beings?
Some say the Kim family thing would be worship by some of the brainwashed koreans.
Besides, angel veneration is a thing in non-reformed churches(and weirder interpretations of kabalah, islam, and new age).
Does that mean angels are gods?

And i don't think people prayed to Hercules, at least until his actual apotheosis in later hellenistic myths.

You really just don't get the difference between mono and polytheism. A Catholic saint isn't a demigod because there's no such thing as a demigod in Catholic theology. Saints are just humans who were noticeably favored by God and acted in accordance with His will in life, who have been canonized. Certainly not demigods.

>Again, no one has defined a god as "something being prayed to".
thats pretty much the definition of god

>Some say the Kim family thing would be worship by some of the brainwashed koreans.
yes, Kim is the closest thing to a god-emperor we have today

>And i don't think people prayed to Hercules
You think wrong

>what is tawhid
You just want to move goalposts.

how does it matter if they are demigods or not?
both hercules and catholic saints start out as mortals and become an object of worship and prayer after their death

>thats pretty much the definition of god
Are you serious?
>yes, Kim is the closest thing to a god-emperor we have today
What about the Japanese Emperor?
>You think wrong
Could you provide at least one source?

The power of saints and angels comes through God. They are agents of God, but not gods themselves. You could say that Christianity is dualist because of the existence of Satan and his demons, but neither Satan nor his demons are divine. They have powers in their right, but only because God appointed Satan his adversary. The divine font is God through and through.

The role of Satan confuses me. What if he willingly became God's adversary to test humanity? What if he agreed to became the fallen angel out of loyalty to God, and still secretly serves him? He would have willingly vilified himself to serve God. Now that is loyalty.

They worship Mary

>become an object of worship
That's just it, though, saints intercede with the object of worship on behalf of the believer. They aren't objects of worship.
If you wanted to make a better argument you could bring in East Asian ancestor worship. That still isn't the same because the ancestor is the object of worship there, whereas Catholics are still worshiping God when they pray to saints as intermediary beings between themselves and God.

>Are you serious?
Yes

>What about the Japanese Emperor?
I don't think japs still seriously worship him nowadays

>Could you provide at least one source?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hercules_in_ancient_Rome#Festivals_and_rituals

No, you dumbass.
I checked across multiple dictionaries.
A god is defined as something which is considered divine of itself by people.
Since saints are not divine, but are only touched and filled with divine energy by God(remove divine grace from a saint, and he's just a man), they are not gods, no matter how you look at it.

They are dead people, and cannot do a thing for you. They cannot hear you, answer your prayers, intercede for you. nothing

Praying to anyone other than God makes a mockery of the sacrifice of Jesus.

Anything, I repeat, Anything, that comes from Rome is not biblical

>Yes
You're just an idiot. Have you ever studied philosophy of religion or theology in a serious capacity?

>A deity (Listeni/ˈdiː.ᵻti/ or Listeni/ˈdeJ.ᵻti/)[1] is a concept conceived in diverse ways in various cultures, typically as a natural or supernatural being considered divine or sacred.[2]

That's a big redpill

no, I am a STEM major

So in other words saints become your object of worship?

That's a pretty superficial definition you've got there, almost presupposing the nonexistence of gods that view themselves as sacred.

>as a natural or supernatural being considered divine or sacred.
Considered divine. Saints are not.
Sacred is kinda vague, since a lot of stuff in Judaism is considered sacred as well.

That isn't an excuse for ignorance.
No, not at all. They're not worshipped. They're revered and prayed to, but the only thing worshipped is God.

divine or sacred.
Pretty sure saint are sacred

So is "the ground on which you step on", the Holy of Holies, priestly objects, and the Ark of the Covenant.

Just face it papist, you worship them and you're practicing Necromancy

Pretty sure the reason the Church is pro-life is because it holds human life to be a sacred thing.
Does that mean Catholics worship every human being, or does it mean they view them as having a special relationship with their Creator?
The answer is obviously the latter.

>Necromancy
Wat

They're dead and your black magic can't change it

by that logic, all christians are necromancers

no mary no jesus

know mary know jesus

n the New Testament, only Jesus (Rom 8:34) and the Holy Spirit (Rom. 8:26) are named as intercessors for us. No others

When Jesus died the veil of separation in the Temple was torn apart, signifying that the people would no longer need an intercessor on Earth. They could now approach God directly

We have to decide for ourselves, no one can do it for us,will (You) allow the Lord's death to pay for our sins or not.

but jesus was resurrected, right?
isnt that necromancy?

There's a meme in society of some kind of entrepreneurial post-capitalist industrial-scientific "productivity" thing, and they are expressing the meme because they are demi-conscious memebuoys floating on a slurry sea of currents you can only see if you zoom out
It's exhausting even trying to give an answer to this question. You need to like phenomenologically bracket every single word and write a book explaining that they aren't even people. They aren't even conscious. They aren't even having "opinions". STEM people are like robots with human skin stretched over them. To say "they are dismissive of the humanities" is implicitly to admit I think there's a "they". STEM people don't even fucking exist. They are a statistical gaseous nebula of random particles wafting across continents and periodically expressing junk they picked up along the way. Why would you even talk to them?
Talking to a STEMfag is literally like being some kind of Buddha, ascending reality, then coming back down and talking to bees who were dudes in past lives. I'm sure these bee niggas can be saved or whatever, but let's just wait until they're back in human form. Don't walk around going "BEES, STOP BUZZING, PUT DOWN THAT POLLEN, LISTEN TO ME ABOUT HOW EVERY CONCEPTUAL CATEGORY YOU HAVE FOR EVEN THINKING OF THINGS WAS SHAPED FOR YOU BY AN UNCONSCIOUS SLUDGE OF MEMETIC POLYALLOY THAT FLOWS IN PREDICTABLE CURRENTS FROM YEAR TO YEAR THROUGH THE HIVE IN WHICH YOU WERE CONCEIVED"

your church is based on satanic lies and deceit.

Total darkness.

I am a muslim and to me it seems like all christians are polytheists.
You worship the holy trinity, right?

God is one divine substance.
One.
This isn't hard to grasp.

so god jesus and holy spirit are different names for same entity?

What did he mean by this?

Catholics:
>I have an issue that isn't of the most paramount importance, so I will ask the representative at the store who deals specifically with that issue for assistance, since they were granted a small amount of authority in that subject by the one in charge

Protestants:
>REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE I WANT TO SPEAK TO THE MANAGER, EVERYONE ELSE GET OUT

Didn't mean to quote the other thread, but I guess it's still relevant.

>Stupid fucking pagans, praying to their patron god of mental illnesses
>Now excuse me as I ask for help from the patron saint of mental illnesses

Not him, but it's one ousia(essence) in 3 hypostatis(persons)
youtube.com/watch?v=KQLfgaUoQCw

Catholics
>Look baby jesus, so helpless needs his mum-the mother goddess to look after him,lets pray to her

They're three different persons, but they're ""made"", of the same, uncreated "substance".

>Babies don't need to be cared for
I don't even know how this is supposed to be an anti-Catholic argument.

>Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed are thou amongst women, and blessed are the fruits of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death, Amen.

Now find me the part where she is being worshipped.
>Hail
An old timey greeting, just like the use of the words "thou" and "thee"

so like you and me are different persons, but made of the same, cells and atoms and stuff?

Yahweh, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit are three separate existences that all share the same God essence. Three existences of one God.

Anyone who tells you the trinity "makes sense" or "is easy to understand" is full of shit. Even Thomas Aquinas' (possibly the greatest Catholic theologian of all time) basically said the trinity makes no goddamn sense rationally, but you just gotta take God's word for it.

The thing is, God isn't a material thing. Each person is eternal, uncreated, and infinite in this 'substance' which has always "existed". This 'substance' is God, I guess. It's like when you look at three cups of infinite "water' that have been there since the beginning of time. It is "water" in singular, but they're actually three distinct cups of it. Nonetheless, they're in unity due to their "water"-ness. There are not three "waters", there is one "water".

what about the greek gods?
werent they also made from the same immortal stuff?

The Olympians were the progeny of the Titans. They weren't exactly eternal, i.e., they came into being at some point.

isnt the same true for jesus
he didnt exist from the very beginning, did he?

wtf i hate catholicism now

>In the beginning was the Word

And?

>the Word was God

He did. He wasn't a human person until the incarnation of the Word.

so where was jesus when the whole adam and eve business went down?
was he to busy to come by and say hello?

>so where was jesus when the whole adam and eve business went down?
>and the Word was with God
>was he to busy to come by and say hello?
He was too busy being the engine of Creation.

oh i see
to me, it sounds much more like a retcon though

A new truth enlightens all old ones.

They pretty explicitly say that Allah is "The Unique", they don't even do a Trinity thing.

He hates smart people.

I think what happened is the the Early Church really wanted to push this new Jesus guy, but they also had to keep the One God concept. So they took whatever jewish mysticism texts that contained numerology about triple things, or different esoteric names of gods or angels, and retconned them to refer to their new Jesus mascot.

That's probably why at first there were so many differing conceptions of God but they kept being quashed as "heresies" and the next time a new version of the Bible was written they would gloss in some bonus Trinity thing.

Why are you using the word 'retcon?' This isn't Star Trek.

retcon doesn't just apply to Star Trek, but to every lore

Hindus think like that too you know?

But why use that word? It just makes it seem as if you're not taking this topic or discussion seriously.

It means to rewrite a canon.

The ONLY monotheistic religions are Judaism and Islam. Europeans were never meant to commit to one single god, it has always been a thing for eastern sandy peoples.

Pictured: A group of Catholics worshipping their mother goddess Mary

I am aware.

Quads of truth confirm. It is polytheism. Catholicism is just that peculiar. Catholics are forbidden to acknowledge that for a number of reasons. They're not the ones you should ask, you won't get a confession out of them (at least an official one). But the fact remains.

They got the idea of the trinity from Neoplatonism. See Proclus' platonic theology. Everything is organized in trinities. And the Neoplatonists themselves got it from the Chaldean Oracles, which they considered divinely inspired and in accordance with Plato and Pythagoras.

(Me)
Why trinity? Why not a quaternary with Mary or the archangel Michael? Or a duality with just Jesus and the father? In the Chaldean fragments there is a trinity of three "fathers". It all makes sense from a historical and philological perspective once you put the Chaldean oracles into the equation. No wonder it got "lost" and survives only in fragments.

>No sources
Read the sticky.

Triggered.

I know you are.

lately been thinking catholics got it wrong and protestants were on to something but this is hilarious.

+1 for catholics
which is also nice since I don't think I've seen too much effective shilling for catholics on here.

this is exactly OPs point, which I feel the majority of this thread totally missed

Why does God need a bureaucracy of Saints and Popes and Priests to divide the operation of his prayer / salvation service?

It's not for God, it's for Humanity.