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As the French philosopher and materialist of the XVIII century Paul Golbach thought: "The saints - very useful to the peoples heroes, who for the fact that they prayed diligently, indulged in fasting and self-beating and shouting, the faithful surrounded the halo of immortality and placed in the saints. To become a saint one must be useless and inconvenient enough for oneself and for others. Saints are not only in Christianity, but also in Islam and Judaism. All these religions are considered to be monotheistic, unlike the ancient religions in which many gods were revered. However, to call them monotheistic is hardly fair. Along with the main gods they have hundreds of secondary deities. The saints are the secondary deities. They work miracles even after death. At their burial places, miraculous healings are supposed to happen. By the way, when the question of attributing a person to the saints was solved, the indispensable condition was the "evidence" in his postmortem miracles. It is quite understandable that there were as many such "testimonies" if the church needed them.
About the author
Andrey Tikhomirov, in 1986 afgestudeerd aan het Orenburgse Staatspedagogisch Instituut met een diploma in geschiedenis, sociale wetenschappen, staat en recht, werkte als leraar op middelbare scholen en universiteiten, en redigeerde kranten.
