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Originally Posted by alatar
Initially, your post sparked thoughts of wavelengths, radiation and dark matter, but thankfully I've moved back from physics to literature and philosophy. It's been always hard for me to accept an omniscient creator god that somehow is not responsible for even the 'bad,' as others have argued here. At least in Tolkien's word, we (or at least I) see that the bad was to be part of the piece from the first note. That, to me, is different that the Christian Genesis account (and other books that refer to the Fall), where it seems that all wasn't to go sour but did. |
Even though I can only really accept a God that's all fluffy niceness - I see that this stems from a Protestant upbringing, where God is good and The Devil or Humans (in a world where the Devil does not exist, which is the plane I exist on) are the sinners and do the bad things. However in a more Catholic mindset, and maybe in other faiths that I don't know about, God works in far more mysterious ways and can do some truly scary things to seeming innocents. In many ways, that is in fact not scary, but comforting, as if something bad does happen to you and you're left wondering "What the ....?" you can shrug and say "God is mysterious". That's what they get in Middle-earth too - and that's why Numenor and the deaths of innocents are explainable within the context of Eru's world.
And going into what davem is saying, an example of why imperfection must exist alongside perfection can be found in the Cybermen! They of course want to 'upgrade' humanity and take away all the imperfections, make everyone utterly equal - in one of the episodes of Doctor Who (The Age of Steel??? Hookbill will know!) the Cybermen tell the humans how great this upgrade will be, how it will bring an end to strife and bring them peace because everyone will be perfect. But the thought of everyone being 'perfect' is horrific - humans will have their freedom of choice taken from them and will have No Option but to be perfect.
Without choices we become machines, Cybermen. We may then have an easy life, with no challenges to face, but without challenges how could we learn and grow?
I really, really like what Tolkien says about Darkness and Light, as it's quite comforting to think that even though there is Darkness, it only serves to make that Light so much brighter. You could draw all kinds of metaphors - from the sublime: seeing stars on a black night, the rising of the sun in the morning, the waxing of the moon, the bright light people see after death, to the ordinary: improving after an illness, fighting off an enemy, finding a tenner when you're skint, finishing work and getting out into the fresh air at long last, etc, all of them depend on both Darkness and Light to make them much sharper and more valuable. If life was all Roses they might not smell quite so sweet.
