Fantasy Morality

[tumhalad2]

Originally Posted by alatar

Very interesting discussion. My three cents:

- Eru isn't the Christian God, as there is no Christ in ME. I think that that's significant, not me just being silly.

Okay, but does he possess the attributes of the traditional Christian god or not? Is he omnipresent, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent? If you say no, then how can we understand Eru? What kind of god is he, really?

Originally Posted by alatar

- People use the word 'god' like they know what they are talking about. Think about that we can see, via the Hubble telescope - galaxies smashing together! The universe is at least 13 billion light years across. Any god worth its salt is bigger than these. And yet we speak of omni---. Methink that our conceptions of god are merely 'human to some exponential power,' which is not even a jot or tittle compared to a real god.

I have no idea what "god" may or may not be. Personally, I see no reason to believe in any supernatural claims. What I'm interested in is how Tolkien depicted Eru, given that he was a Catholic writer, and whether his depiction of Eru takes from the Xtian god as traditionally understood.