[QUOTE=HerenIstarion]Verily it has been written:
Has your faith grown in meaning to you because of Tolkien? is also of interest.
As a sort of a person I am, I will gladly stick to Aiwendil's definition:
"I'm probably what most people would call an "atheist", or perhaps a "secular humanist". If I had to pick a term to describe myself, it would either be "rationalist" or simply "non-religious". I favour the formation of opinions based only on reason and empirical evidence. Inasmuch as "atheist" really means "a-theist", "not a theist", it adequately describes me. In fact, one might go so far as to say that I'm an "antitheist" - I am not only not religious; I am opposed to religion as an institution (though of course I'm tolerant of those who practice religion, just as I'm (I hope) tolerant of all those who have different opinions)."
What has Tolkien, then, given me in terms of religion, worldview, or philosophy of life? First thing that I can recall dates a long way back to my childhood. As a 10-year old, I was quite impressed to hear, that Tolkien had used a lot of scandinavian and even finnish mythology to build his stories & languages. If that kind of writer thought these stories worthy enough to be mentioned and even applied as buildingblocks on his magnificient world, then they must be worthy stories as such! So the stories of my forefathers had a place in the world of mythology, they were equals with the others (by that time I propably knew only the stories of the jews, greeks, some of the romans + arthurian legends).
So confidence and some pride of my own modest backgrounds at that age.
Later I have found an intresting point of view, by looking at the stories from the virtue-ethics perspective. Even though one cannot deny the aspect of the morals of duty (deontological ethics) in the moral focus of Tolkien, his conservatism leads, in many instances, to ideals like valor, bravery, justice, but also to friendship, loyalty, generosity, kindness & forgivennes (quite christian these two last ones as opposed to the classical pagan virtues listed here otherwise, I admit), to be brought in the forefront as ideals to be followed. That has left me wondering, how one could be virtuous in a culture where virtues are no longer shared or ackonwledged?
PS. I totally agree with Anguirel, that Lewis was not a fanatic. Sorry about my bad choice of words (even though, I just said that he was
more fanatic than Tolkien, which in this case is not to have said a lot...
). You are propably also quite right about Tolkiens' condemnation about Lewis' work, the aesthetics were at least as important to Tolkiens dislike of preaching. Maybe the worst thing in them was their kind of postmodernism: just taking bits and pieces of "soundbites" from here and there to make a melange (Father Christmas in Narnia!!!) of sorts, not justified with a poetic truth of a grand idea.