Can atheists appreciate/understand Lord of the Ring?

[jallanite]

Note that nothing I have posted in this thread was intended to prove or disprove any scientific theory.

What I did try to show is the results of a search on the web for oppositions to Tolkien where supposedly Tolkien’s teaching in his fictional work was against what according to some thought Tolkien ought to have believed.

I found only three such articles, very view indeed, none of which, in my opinion, actually pointed out anywhere where Tolkien really disagreed with Roman Catholic doctrine. Tolkien can be accused of inventing much, if one wishes. But Tolkien has proclaimed in many places that he was writing or intending to write fairy stories.

Tolkien was writing imaginative fiction, for the enjoyment of readers, not works of Roman Catholic doctine—though part of his intent was that his tales should not specifically contradict Roman Catholic doctrine, as he understood it. Tolkien, for this purposes, was quite justified in setting his tale before 6,000 BCE, introducing angelic beings in a role somewhat corresponding to pagan deities, and introducing Elves, Dwarves, Hobbits, Ents, Orcs, and Trolls into his story. He was quite justified in producing pterodactyl-like creatures from an older geological age, regardless of whether some Biblical literalists would also wish to deny that any such era existed in reality. Roman Catholic teaching did not deny an age of dinosaurs long before Mankind existed.

What seems to have bothered Tolkien more was his story of the creation of the Sun and Moon and that the Earth was at one time physically flat, and that seems to have bothered him more from a scientific point of view than theologically. In The Lord of the Rings itself Tolkien did not mention anything of this late creation of the Sun and Moon. In the last three books in the HoME series Tolkien restricts this account to a supposed Silmarillion proper, but otherwise imagines his early Elves as living under the Sun, the Silmarillion proper being purportedly partially derived from inaccurate Mannish legend.

Tolkien appears to have drawn his beliefs from Pope Pius XII who held the papacy from 1939 to 1958, as to what is allowed, though Tolkien began writing his Silmarillion fantasies much earlier.

If indeed Tolkien did stumble on occasion I note how few readers seem to care.