[Legate of Amon Lanc]

On first sight, there is no problem with taking Tolkien's world like any other mythology. It is just a Secondary world, as Tolkien himself calls it (for more, read his essay On Fairy-Stories, I am not going to elaborate here) - and through the "Secondary faith" we can see it as true. Like any other tale. That has nothing to do with the Primary world or the Primary faith. I guess the source of the topic's question is: what if part of the demands of the Secondary faith is that I include this, our, real world's past and natural laws and other things in it in order for the Secondary world to become true for me?

Well, fortunately, personally I don't have this problem. Now speaking only for myself: when I read a sentence like "It is plain indeed that in spite of later estrangement Hobbits are relatives of ours: far nearer to us than Elves, or even than Dwarves," I can accept it without bothering myself whether archaeologists ever found a Hobbit or a Dwarven skeleton. For me, M-E, despite the fact that it sometimes tries to look as a part of our world, is secluded and it's a Secondary World which is connected only to a "Secondary Primary world", i.e. an unreal Primary world, not the world I really live in. For me, believing that Moon is a vessel by the Secondary faith does not contradict in my mind with that Neil Armstrong walked on the Moon, believing that Elves exist by the Secondary Faith does not interfere with my knowledge about the world population and believing in Ilúvatar by the Secondary Faith does not contradict the First Commandment. And vice versa. When we here, at the forum, really choose to scientifically analyse some problem, like whether the Dragons could contain fire in their belly, and we see it contradicting this world's physics, and we don't want to simply give up, I say: why not, let's continue. But the Secondary World first. If we come to the conclusion that either dragons could not have spit flames at all or either our physics is wrong, then we must step inside this Secondary primary world and say: yes, our physics are wrong (while this, of course, does not mean that we are going to preach about that on universities).