[Kuruharan]

"God looked at everything he had made, and he found it very good." Gen 1:31.

Well, as you say, that was before the Fall. My statement was regarding circumstances afterwards.

The notion that all things are created good and are part of an economy of salvation, a linear path of history, did much to usher in the scientific and technological age.

I would agree that all things were created good (or at least originally created). However, I believe that the misuse or corruption of things can led to all sorts of stuff (very technical term) that is inherently bad or evil. This is not to say that good cannot be made to come out of the bad. However, it is to say that this "stuff" (think wars, greed, and all manner of suffering, that kind of "stuff") has no inherently good qualities, in and of themselves.

Catholicism has always stubbornly held onto this notion, putting her at odds with the "sinners in the hands of an angry god" crowd.

Ah, well, that is probably one of the places where Catholicism and I split ways, although I do not belong to strongly in the "sinners in the hands of an angry God" crowd.

man remains fundamentally good and on a path toward divination.

I’m not sure that Tolkien believed this at all. Overall the tone of much of his writing about people tends (to my ear at least) to be rather pessimistic, at least so far as human beings themselves are concerned.

I must apologize at this point, I don’t happen to be in possession of Letters at the moment, so I can’t cite particulars. I will try to get it back again as soon as I can.

Nevertheless, there is a reference from that book that comes to mind. (At least I think that it was from Letters.)

When he is writing on the subject of the benefits and ills of the chivalric view of women he makes a comment something along the lines of "the chivalric view tends to elevate women too much, to the point that it is forgotten that they too are human and their souls are in peril." That sort of remark tends to make me believe that Tolkien did not think that people were fundamentally good. It sounds like he thought that they were in trouble and in need of redemption.

However, I’m open to other interpretations and passages on his viewpoint. My knowledge of his views is by no means exhaustive. I tend to only read those things that deal directly with Middle Earth and ignore other "stuff."

Such optimism is the corner stone of Lord of the Rings…

Please allow me to disagree (again). I don’t believe that such optimism that is in Lord of the Rings derives from inherent qualities inside the "human beings" (remembering that Tolkien said that the Elves had not "Fallen" in the same sense that man had).

Take, for example, the Destruction of the Ring. While Frodo’s pity was an important ingredient, it only opened the door for an event that was nothing less than divine intervention. That was where the true triumph in the story came in, from outside ourselves.

I’m sure I can come up with just as many 20th century people who have had a positive influence.

But I doubt that they had so great an influence as any of the others that I named. Those nuts killed millions and still shape our world today even after they are gone.

However, even pessimists attest to the optimistic view that all things are fundamentally good.

Not necessarily. It could just be that things are so obviously wrong of themselves.

If everything was basically base, rude, evil, and irreparably corrupted, why identifying the ills in the first place?

As an outlet of frustration. However, this does not mean that things are fundamentally good and just in need of a little fixing. It could just be a search of making the bad things better, but tinker all you will and they will still remain bad (another source of frustration).