[Bêthberry]

Hello Helen,

My comments were directed solely to the rhetorical nature of the passage I quoted. My point was to suggest that, as the statement stood, it was faulty, in that throughout much of human history religious belief per se has not stopped believers from engaging in immoral behaviour.

You raise the quite valid point that people have often committed acts contrary to the precepts of their faith. The passage I was addressing did not make this distinction. It merely argued that any kind of religious belief is the one thing needed.

I also objected to the idea of coercion being essential to moral behaviour.

Other than that, I don't think it is fruitful for this thread to engage in an argument over the greater virtue of faith or atheism or to speculate on Tolkien's private, personal thought, to which we are not the ones who have (or had) access.

Bêthberry