No Sun or Moon

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Originally Posted by alatar

what really annoys me is when persons want to pick and chose the science they want to believe

Seconded,

I guess that's what makes a religious fundamentionalist: people not being able to acknowledge, to themselves or others, that they choose some parts of science or holy books to believe in and other parts to ignore.

Reminds me of the creationist-nuts in the US who've sexed up the old genesis-story trying to make it appear like serious science. I used to know a guy who ranted on about evolution being impossible due to the law of entropy, among other ludicrous pieces of "evidence". He was also convinced the moonlanding never happened, and that no airplanes hit the twin towers at 9/11.

I've got the impression that Tolkien wanted to revise his mythology to make it more plausable as a real but ancient part of our history. Guess he figured his modern readers would find the idea of a flat earth and life without the sun quite primitive and far fetched. He himself certainly wasn't happy about it.