I think you have your cause and effect mixed up - the Christian saints resemble pagan gods. Sometimes it isn’t even a resemblance - look at Brigid. And she wasn’t the only pagan god to be Christianized in this way.
I welcome your response and am not trying to put you on the spot - but how about Hindu gods? How about the trinity?
I don’t really know enough about Hinduism to be able to answer that.
But "Hinduism For Dummies says
So, as I understand it, not the same thing as the individual deities that make up a pantheon like the Norse or Greeks had.
Assuming you mean the Christian Trinity, Christian theology consistently insists that there is only one God, albeit in three “persons.” The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are not separate entities the way the Norse, Greek, etc. deities are; but they might be at least somewhat closer to how Hindus think of their deities—I don’t know.
I am no longer religious, and when I was, I was always so interested in history and other cultures that I loved reading about their gods, but it always made me vaguely uncomfortable (same with DND gods and such). I subconsciously (and sometimes consciously) avoided comparing their beliefs to mine because it made me uncomfortable.
Older family members of my religion on the other hand have what I’d consider to be a more typical perspective on this: those guys are complete and utterly morons for worshiping their false gods! How could they be so stupid? No trace if irony.
Right. I’m trying to compare the Norse and their worship of the Aesir to Christians and the worship of their saints, as it appears to me. The historical intersection of the saints and the pagan gods is interesting as well.
I can see the appeal of ‘lesser gods’ to people, it reminds me of a Catholic story where Jesus tells St. Peter he has to tighten up the requirements for getting into heaven because there are too many people there who don’t seem to belong. St. Peter says to Jesus “It’s not my fault, I turned those people away but they went around to the back door and your mother let them in.”
The historical intersection of saints and pagan gods (and santeria saints, which are often versions of African deities, as I understand it) is fascinating. Certainly Christian folk traditions have transformed some old minor deities into saints.
But Christians definitely don’t “worship” saints. Christians draw a very bright line between God and the saints, who are, after all, just souls that have been saved, just as we all hope to be. They are definitely human, and definitely not divine.
Some Protestant denominations don’t even acknowledge anything like a “saint.”
Catholics (and Orthodox Christians, and C of E, and perhaps some others) certainly have a pantheon of saints, but they (we) don’t “worship” them, even if we pray to them.
The line, as I said, is very real and un-crossable. I don’t think there’s much of a comparison between Norse worship of the Aesir (about which I know little) and Christian veneration of saints.
The basic idea is that Catholics are just asking other people to pray for them. Asking others to pray for you is something that, I think, is common to all (or nearly all) branches of Christianity. Catholics just don’t restrict ourselves to asking folks who are still alive on Earth.
The reason we do it, I think, is that a lot of folks find it hard to relate directly to an all-powerful God. But the saints were, in their lives, people like us, in all ways (including sometimes sinning). So they’re easier to relate to.
Now, I’m sure that there are plenty of actual Catholics who really do think of the saints as gods in their own right, granting prayers and performing miracles through their own power. And the veneration of saints is certainly at least inspired, in some cases (and in other cases, a lot more than just inspired), by veneration of pagan gods. But that’s not the official Church view: The official Church view is that they’re just passing on our requests to God Almighty, because we’re too shy to ask directly.
As for Hinduism, as I understand it, different Hindus have different views of the Many vs. the One, and there’s no “Pope of Hinduism” or other ruling body to say “this is the one official interpretation of God’s nature”. But there are certainly some Hindus who believe that there is one singular Creator, and I am comfortable saying that they worship the same entity that I do (again, with the possibility that we disagree about some of that Entity’s other attributes).
re: Chronos as well
I understand that technicality but there isn’t that bright of a line looking at it from the outside. Again, I’m speaking loosely, I know a lot of Catholics but no one who I think seriously worships Norse gods outside of comic books, but I think burying a statue of St. Joseph in your yard to help sell your house seems a lot like ‘worship’ to me in it’s broader sense, not just the Catholic definition. This comparison allows me to understand how the worship of a pantheon of gods could work as opposed to the simpler one true god system.
Thanks for the response.
As a firm atheist, I am often more understanding of “vague” belief is nome supernatural. Such as a “god of the gaps”. I find it especially curious when folk express belief in specific unknowables, and opine that their beliefs are better than someone else’s.
To me, it is always weird that Christians perceive distinctions - such as between catholicism and protestentism - or even other “one god” religions such as muslim/judaism. From the perspective of this nonbeliever, what they have in common vastly outweighs any doctrinal differences.
But don’t mean to debate. Again, thanks for the response.
Re: Catholics and Saints
I understand the distinction you are making. Some denominations WOULD consider asking a dead devout follower of your religion to intercede on your behalf to be idolatry, though.
Well that’s kind of akin to saying it’s strange that, say, all political parties on the left perceive distinctions because what they have in common vastly outweighs any political differences 
.
From the inside differences are far more apparent. That doesn’t mean one can work together with other denominations (heck, as a Progressive Lutheran I find far more in common with Liberal Catholics than I do with Conservative Lutherans)
Most Catholics would call that superstition, not worship, and not even prayer. But let’s give those who do it the benefit of the doubt and call it a form of prayer.
That said, here’s the line:
When a Catholic prays to a saint to, for example, deliver a loved one from illness, that Catholic knows (or should know) that St. Peregrine has no power whatsoever to grant that prayer.
But St. Peregrine may pray (“intercede”) to God on said loved one’s behalf.
Very different thing. And very different from Norse gods, who are prayed to or sacrificed to or however it worked to grant prayers themselves. Someone praying to Thor isn’t asking Thor to put in a good word with Odin. Well, I suppose they might be, but Thor could act on his own, being a deity, not a human being. St. Peregrine is just a human being, albeit a human in Heaven.
From the Jewish perspective, that would be considered idolatry. But Judaism is very touchy about that sort of things, compared to other religions.
I think that most people who bury a statue of St. Joseph when they’re selling a house are doing it, more or less, as a joke. Heck, there are probably non-Christians and even atheists who do it. But yeah, there are some people who do seriously believe that it’ll have some magical effect.
I am sure you are right. I can’t weigh in about other religions, but I know that in Judaism there’s a doctrine that essentially says, even if what you are doing is fine, if people who see you do it may think it is sinful, you shouldn’t do it. So for example, a rabbi who believes this would not eat an Impossible Burger with cheese, because someone might assume he is breaking kosher law and eating a cheeseburger.
By that principle, Judaism is pretty critical of anything approaching idolatry; for example, there are some groups that criticize other groups for placing too much prominence on specific rabbis and hanging their portraits, claiming that this is a form of idolatry directed at said rabbis.
Yeah - but from an epistemological perspective, y’all choose to believe in something that can’t be proven. That is the big one. Everything else is window dressing!
Re: politics, I readily admit I have more in common w/ most folk on the left than I do w/ folk on the far right. Tho I suspect I’d also find a lot of common ground w/ many moderates in both parties. And both left and right working within a system - such as respecting the results of a free and fair election - share something that they don’t share w/ someone wishing to tear that system down.
Right, which is exactly what many religious people feel, re: other denominations or other faiths. Sure you have the people who won’t vote for the Democratic nominee because they don’t believe in Medicare for All, but most people on the left realize they have far more in common with the moderate left than they have differences.
I have heard of rabbis that disapprove of non-dairy creamers. I don’t think that represents the mainstream of Orthodox Judaism though, most are strict constructionists, some utilizing lengths that seem absurd to outsiders like an eruv.
All of this stuff is very interesting, but I was looking at something much simpler. Let’s say adoration instead of worship to keep it simple. There’s a difference between belief in a single all powerful god and a pantheon of gods. The One True God model is simple and very efficient. As an agnatheist I only have to consider whether or not I do not believe in one god. But multiple gods would be tough for someone as neurotic as I am, I’d have to decide individually which gods I did or did not believe in before I could pray to any of them. Looking at Christian saints gives me a better perspective on such things. And I think the big take away is a preference to pray to or worship or whatever something less than an almighty god. I don’t know a lot about the Norse, Roman, and Greek gods, but the well known stories about them portray them as very human personalities, much more relatable than a god who knows all and sees all and doesn’t even have other gods to deal with.
No, the disapproval of rabbinical portraits isn’t mainstream; something like the impossible burger or dairy free creamer is, in my experience (for Orthodox).
There is a bit of a dichotomy. On the one hand you have the concept of “putting a fence around the Torah”. So the commandment says, “don’t do X”. Y is not technically X, but it is close enough to X that you’re not supposed to do it, just so you don’t accidentally do X while doing Y.
At the same time, you have loopholes that many secular Jews find ridiculous and many Orthodox Jews argue over - like a “Shabbat Goy”, a nonJewish person who totally works for the synagogue but isn’t officially employed by it, and who you wouldn’t tell “go turn on the air conditioning” because that would break Shabbat, but you WOULD tell “oh, it’s very hot in here, isn’t it? Wink wink”.
Obviously not a universal practice, and pretty controversial. But I think you’ll find that sort of thing anywhere.