From: prembone@excitebitespam.com (Prembone) Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.tolkien Subject: Elvish birth control (was: New Elves) Date: Sun, 22 Aug 1999 13:06:11 GMT X-ELN-Insert-Date: Sun Aug 22 06:15:04 1999 References: <7ov115$ncu@wapping.ecs.soton.ac.uk> <37b4248d.14625901@news.bigpond.com> <37bb9f7a.22019043@nntpserver.swip.net> <37B63F28.EFB6C835@mediaone.net> X-Newsreader: Forte Free Agent 1.11/32.235 Organization: The Rescue Frodo SWAT Team X-Posted-Path-Was: not-for-mail Lines: 28 NNTP-Posting-Host: sdn-ar-007mnminnp303.dialsprint.net X-ELN-Date: 22 Aug 1999 13:10:24 GMT Message-ID: <37bff4bd.75636555@news.earthlink.net> Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!newsfeed-zh.ip-plus.net!news.ip-plus.net!News.Amsterdam.UnisourceCS!skynet.be!remarQ-easT!supernews.com!remarQ.com!feeder.qis.net!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!newsfeed1.earthlink.net!nntp.earthlink.net!posted-from-earthlink!not-for-mail On Sun, 15 Aug 1999 00:16:40 -0400, Cian wrote: >Tolkien says that the Eldar have few >children as a norm, 'seldom more than four in any house' and that number >grew less as ages past. OK. So this naturally raises the question: How did they live all those countless millenia and have only a few children? Was Elvish libido incredibly low (since the biological imperative to reproduce would be more of a *non* imperative in their case, I suppose that would make sense biolgically) or was contraception among the Elvish herb-lore? Just wondering about the mundane but important details that male writers tend to forget to consider....but then, JRRT did express the opinion that women only want sex in order to have babies, so I suppose the idea of a woman wanting sex without producing a baby didn't cross his mind.... "I've better things to do with my eternity than further your prurient interests." -- Frodo's Ghost ~~~Woo-hoo!!!~~~ Beyond Bored http://nettrash.com/users/tolktrash ###### Message-ID: <37C0017E.8D375DB0@wizard.net> From: "James Russell Kuyper Jr." Organization: Not Enough X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.61 [en] (WinNT; I) X-Accept-Language: en,de,es,ru MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.tolkien Subject: Re: Elvish birth control (was: New Elves) References: <7ov115$ncu@wapping.ecs.soton.ac.uk> <37b4248d.14625901@news.bigpond.com> <37bb9f7a.22019043@nntpserver.swip.net> <37B63F28.EFB6C835@mediaone.net> <37bff4bd.75636555@news.earthlink.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 13 NNTP-Posting-Host: 206.161.15.32 X-Trace: typ12.nn.bcandid.com 935329845 206.161.15.32 (Sun, 22 Aug 1999 09:50:45 EDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 22 Aug 1999 09:50:45 EDT Date: Sun, 22 Aug 1999 09:56:14 -0400 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news-fra1.dfn.de!news0.de.colt.net!colt.net!newsfeed.icl.net!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!gw12.nn.bcandid.com!gate.bCandid.com!hub1.ispnews.com!typ12.nn.bcandid.com.POSTED!not-for-mail Prembone wrote: ... > those countless millenia and have only a few children? Was Elvish > libido incredibly low (since the biological imperative to reproduce > would be more of a *non* imperative in their case, I suppose that > would make sense biolgically) or was contraception among the Elvish > herb-lore? Tolkien's Catholic background would argue against the contraceptive option. However, this is one area where official church doctrine has tended to differ significantly from the beliefs of many individual catholics; I've no idea what Tolkien's personal opinion on the matter was. ###### From: "Conrad Dunkerson" Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.tolkien Subject: Re: Elvish birth control (was: New Elves) Date: Sun, 22 Aug 1999 13:39:06 -0400 Organization: AT&T WorldNet Services Lines: 18 Message-ID: <7ppd1n$810$1@bgtnsc02.worldnet.att.net> References: <7ov115$ncu@wapping.ecs.soton.ac.uk> <37b4248d.14625901@news.bigpond.com> <37bb9f7a.22019043@nntpserver.swip.net> <37B63F28.EFB6C835@mediaone.net> <37bff4bd.75636555@news.earthlink.net> <37C0017E.8D375DB0@wizard.net> <37c00cf5.81837110@news.earthlink.net> Reply-To: "Conrad Dunkerson" NNTP-Posting-Host: 12.79.28.123 X-Trace: bgtnsc02.worldnet.att.net 935343991 8224 12.79.28.123 (22 Aug 1999 17:46:31 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@worldnet.att.net NNTP-Posting-Date: 22 Aug 1999 17:46:31 GMT X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.00.2314.1300 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2314.1300 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news1.sunrise.ch!news.imp.ch!nntp-out.monmouth.com!newspeer.monmouth.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!wn4feed!worldnet.att.net!wnslave1!wnmaster2!not-for-mail Prembone wrote in message news:37c00cf5.81837110@news.earthlink.net... > How did they live all those millenia and produce so few > children? My understanding was that they were less likely to conceive than humans and that this difference increased over time. Also, there are references to the 'energy' needed to produce children being depleted with time and the birth of earlier offspring. Feanor's mother stated that the life energy within her which could have nourished many children had all gone into Feanor... and Feanor himself was renowned for siring seven children. So, it seems to me that as time wore on the Elves would have fewer and fewer children and eventually no new offspring at all. ###### From: prembone@excitebitespam.com (Prembone) Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.tolkien Subject: Re: Elvish birth control (was: New Elves) Date: Sun, 22 Aug 1999 14:53:38 GMT X-ELN-Insert-Date: Sun Aug 22 08:05:05 1999 References: <7ov115$ncu@wapping.ecs.soton.ac.uk> <37b4248d.14625901@news.bigpond.com> <37bb9f7a.22019043@nntpserver.swip.net> <37B63F28.EFB6C835@mediaone.net> <37bff4bd.75636555@news.earthlink.net> <37C0017E.8D375DB0@wizard.net> X-Newsreader: Forte Free Agent 1.11/32.235 Organization: The Rescue Frodo SWAT Team X-Posted-Path-Was: not-for-mail Lines: 35 NNTP-Posting-Host: sdn-ar-007mnminnp303.dialsprint.net X-ELN-Date: 22 Aug 1999 14:57:54 GMT Message-ID: <37c00cf5.81837110@news.earthlink.net> Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!newsfeed-zh.ip-plus.net!news.ip-plus.net!News.Amsterdam.UnisourceCS!uunet!ams.uu.net!tank.news.pipex.net!pipex!news.maxwell.syr.edu!feeder.qis.net!newsfeed1.earthlink.net!nntp.earthlink.net!posted-from-earthlink!not-for-mail On Sun, 22 Aug 1999 09:56:14 -0400, "James Russell Kuyper Jr." wrote: >Prembone wrote: >... >> those countless millenia and have only a few children? Was Elvish >> libido incredibly low (since the biological imperative to reproduce >> would be more of a *non* imperative in their case, I suppose that >> would make sense biolgically) or was contraception among the Elvish >> herb-lore? > >Tolkien's Catholic background would argue against the contraceptive >option. Understood. ;-) But the pragmatic issue remains: How did they live all those millenia and produce so few children? It's possible they had a low degree of fertility -- but then TAT makes it sound like they had fewer children by choice, not by default. Envisioning millenia of abstinence...oh, let's not go there. Still, if (as I suggested as one option) Elves had a very low degree of sexual desire, then I suppose it would have been bearable -- for them. Or it may be that Elves, being patient and wise, practiced the "natural" contraception of non-procreative sexual activity, reserving the procreative "act" for when they were willing to conceive. Hm. All Homage To The Elton!!! The Elton John Worship Page - NEW URL http://eltonworship.virtualave.net ###### Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.tolkien From: sbjensen@midway.uchicago.edu (Steuard Jensen) Subject: Re: Elvish birth control (was: New Elves) X-Nntp-Posting-Host: harper.uchicago.edu Message-ID: Sender: news@midway.uchicago.edu (News Administrator) Organization: The University of Chicago X-Newsreader: trn 4.0-test70 (17 January 1999) References: <7ov115$ncu@wapping.ecs.soton.ac.uk> <37bb9f7a.22019043@nntpserver.swip.net> <37B63F28.EFB6C835@mediaone.net> <37bff4bd.75636555@news.earthlink.net> Date: Sun, 22 Aug 1999 15:23:53 GMT Lines: 30 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed.cwix.com!128.174.5.49!vixen.cso.uiuc.edu!uchinews!not-for-mail Quoth prembone@excitebitespam.com (Prembone): [snip comments on birth control] > Just wondering about the mundane but important details that male > writers tend to forget to consider... I won't debate you on this, as I haven't really considered the question before, but I know that most of the males of my acquaintance see this as a joint responsibility. (Neither I nor, apparently, Tolkien really see the Elves as "one night stand" types, so presumably that sense of shared responsibility would be there.) > but then, JRRT did express the opinion that women only want sex in > order to have babies, so I suppose the idea of a woman wanting sex > without producing a baby didn't cross his mind.... But, of course, even if true this wouldn't stop the _men_ from wanting sex for other reasons, and unless Elvish women had turned the "headache" trick into a fine art, there would still be sex going on. Considering Tolkien's Catholic faith, perhaps Elves conceived their children during the first few hundred years of marriage, while they were still trying to get the hang of the "rhythm method" (I'm told that it does generally take this long). Once they got it down, no more kids. :) Maybe Elves only ovulated once every year rather than once every month (or something like that). That might actually make the rhythm method practicable. The above is about 50% tongue in cheek. Steuard Jensen ###### Message-ID: <37C056AC.F811E30A@mediaone.net> From: Cian X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.61 [en]C-MOENE (Win95; I) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.tolkien Subject: Re: Elvish birth control (was: New Elves) References: <7ov115$ncu@wapping.ecs.soton.ac.uk> <37b4248d.14625901@news.bigpond.com> <37bb9f7a.22019043@nntpserver.swip.net> <37B63F28.EFB6C835@mediaone.net> <37bff4bd.75636555@news.earthlink.net> <37C0BC53.61E8@frodo.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 36 Date: Sun, 22 Aug 1999 15:59:40 -0400 NNTP-Posting-Host: 24.128.99.214 X-Complaints-To: abuse@mediaone.net X-Trace: ndnws01.ne.mediaone.net 935352058 24.128.99.214 (Sun, 22 Aug 1999 16:00:58 EDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 22 Aug 1999 16:00:58 EDT Organization: Road Runner Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news1.sunrise.ch!news.imp.ch!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!netnews.com!chnws02.mediaone.net!24.128.1.101!chnws05.ne.mediaone.net!24.128.60.9!ndnws01.ne.mediaone.net.POSTED!not-for-mail Jereeza wrote: > Prembone wrote: > > > > On Sun, 15 Aug 1999 00:16:40 -0400, Cian > > wrote: > > > > >Tolkien says that the Eldar have few > > >children as a norm, 'seldom more than four in any house' and that number > > >grew less as ages past. > > > > OK. So this naturally raises the question: How did they live all > > those countless millenia and have only a few children? > > Isn't that to be expected? Longevity and number of children should be in reverse > proprtion, or whatever the math term is :) - it's all about balance in nature - > imagine them living all that time and breeding like the short-lived - the world would > have more Elves than ants! Also, Tolkien writes that with Elves -- a 'greater share and strength of their being, in mind and body, goes forth than in the making of mortal children. And -- ' that their time of generation was in their youth or earlier life, unless strange and hard fates befell them.' And too -- 'but with the exercise of the power [of generation] the desire soon ceases, and the mind turns to other things.' It seems that the Elves usually had children in a short time after marriage -- short as the Eldar reckoned time anyway. :) Cheers, Cian ###### From: mcresq@aol.com (McREsq) Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.tolkien Subject: Re: Elvish birth control (was: New Elves) Lines: 30 NNTP-Posting-Host: ladder05.news.aol.com X-Admin: news@aol.com Date: 22 Aug 1999 18:02:53 GMT References: <37bff4bd.75636555@news.earthlink.net> Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com X-Newsreader: AOL Offline Reader Message-ID: <19990822140253.05945.00001764@ngol03.aol.com> Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news1.sunrise.ch!news.imp.ch!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!howland.erols.net!portc02.blue.aol.com!audrey01.news.aol.com!not-for-mail In article <37bff4bd.75636555@news.earthlink.net>, prembone@excitebitespam.com (Prembone) writes: >On Sun, 15 Aug 1999 00:16:40 -0400, Cian >wrote: > >>Tolkien says that the Eldar have few >>children as a norm, 'seldom more than four in any house' and that number >>grew less as ages past. > >OK. So this naturally raises the question: How did they live all >those countless millenia and have only a few children? Was Elvish >libido incredibly low (since the biological imperative to reproduce >would be more of a *non* imperative in their case, I suppose that >would make sense biolgically) or was contraception among the Elvish >herb-lore? > >Just wondering about the mundane but important details that male >writers tend to forget to consider....but then, JRRT did express the >opinion that women only want sex in order to have babies, so I suppose >the idea of a woman wanting sex without producing a baby didn't cross >his mind.... > In Morgoth's Ring, I think Tolkien sorta said that elves lose their sexual urges after a while. Childbirth occurs almost exclusively in the early years of a marriage Russ ###### From: Jereeza Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.tolkien Subject: Re: Elvish birth control (was: New Elves) Date: Sun, 22 Aug 1999 20:13:23 -0700 Organization: FFR Lines: 21 Message-ID: <37C0BC53.61E8@frodo.net> References: <7ov115$ncu@wapping.ecs.soton.ac.uk> <37b4248d.14625901@news.bigpond.com> <37bb9f7a.22019043@nntpserver.swip.net> <37B63F28.EFB6C835@mediaone.net> <37bff4bd.75636555@news.earthlink.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: ar1-p23-ri.tel.hr Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: as102.tel.hr 935345263 3085 195.29.232.23 (22 Aug 1999 18:07:43 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@tel.hr NNTP-Posting-Date: 22 Aug 1999 18:07:43 GMT X-Mailer: Mozilla 2.02 (Win16; I) Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!newsfeed-zh.ip-plus.net!news.ip-plus.net!News.Amsterdam.UnisourceCS!uunet!ams.uu.net!ffx.uu.net!news.globix.net!news.idt.net!newshub.northeast.verio.net!howland.erols.net!newsfeed.cwix.com!205.219.255.8!argos.tel.hr!not-for-mail Prembone wrote: > > On Sun, 15 Aug 1999 00:16:40 -0400, Cian > wrote: > > >Tolkien says that the Eldar have few > >children as a norm, 'seldom more than four in any house' and that number > >grew less as ages past. > > OK. So this naturally raises the question: How did they live all > those countless millenia and have only a few children? Isn't that to be expected? Longevity and number of children should be in reverse proprtion, or whatever the math term is :) - it's all about balance in nature - imagine them living all that time and breeding like the short-lived - the world would have more Elves than ants! -- Jereeza the Witch-Pearl of the East ps. remove dessin when replying ###### From: mark@pc-intouch.com (Mark Wells) Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.tolkien Subject: Re: Elvish birth control (was: New Elves) Organization: PC-InTOUCH Linux Conspiracy Message-ID: <37c06c1c.2459014@news.pc-intouch.com> References: <7ov115$ncu@wapping.ecs.soton.ac.uk> <37b4248d.14625901@news.bigpond.com> <37bb9f7a.22019043@nntpserver.swip.net> <37B63F28.EFB6C835@mediaone.net> <37bff4bd.75636555@news.earthlink.net> X-Newsreader: Forte Free Agent 1.11/32.235 X-Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: 1-54.dialup.pc-intouch.com Lines: 41 Date: Sun, 22 Aug 1999 21:54:24 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 207.212.198.18 X-Complaints-To: abuse@pacbell.net X-Trace: typhoon-la.pbi.net 935358951 207.212.198.18 (Sun, 22 Aug 1999 14:55:51 PDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 22 Aug 1999 14:55:51 PDT Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news1.sunrise.ch!news.imp.ch!sunqbc.risq.qc.ca!newsfeed.berkeley.edu!cyclone.swbell.net!typhoon-la.pbi.net.POSTED!not-for-mail On Sun, 22 Aug 1999 13:06:11 GMT, prembone@excitebitespam.com (Prembone) wrote: >On Sun, 15 Aug 1999 00:16:40 -0400, Cian >wrote: > >>Tolkien says that the Eldar have few >>children as a norm, 'seldom more than four in any house' and that number >>grew less as ages past. > >OK. So this naturally raises the question: How did they live all >those countless millenia and have only a few children? Was Elvish >libido incredibly low (since the biological imperative to reproduce >would be more of a *non* imperative in their case, I suppose that >would make sense biolgically) or was contraception among the Elvish >herb-lore? Actually, _Morgoth's Ring_ seems to indicate that the Elves are only fertile when they want to be. From "Laws and Customs among the Eldar": "In mortal count there was often a long interval between the wedding and the first child-birth, and even longer between child and child. For with regard to generation [i.e. procreation] the power and the will are not among the Eldar distinguishable. Doubtless they would retain for many ages the power of generation, if the will and desire were not satisfied; but with the exercise of the power the desire soon ceases, and the mind turns to other things." (In case you're not sure the statement about "a long interval between the wedding and the first child-birth" is specific enough, consider this: "As for the begetting and bearing of children: a year passes between the begetting and the birth of an elf-child ..." and this: "It was the act of bodily union that achieved marriage ...") ###### Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.tolkien From: Michael@xenite.org (Michael Martinez) Subject: Re: Elvish birth control (was: New Elves) Organization: The Xenite.Org Domain -- Worlds of Imagination on the Net Distribution: world Message-ID: <7ppuhi$3es_036@Org.xenite.org> References: <37bff4bd.75636555@news.earthlink.net> <19990822140253.05945.00001764@ngol03.aol.com> X-Newsreader: News Xpress 2.01 Lines: 21 Date: Sun, 22 Aug 1999 22:45:06 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 209.181.119.143 X-Complaints-To: admin@usenetserver.com X-Trace: news3.usenetserver.com 935362503 209.181.119.143 (Sun, 22 Aug 1999 18:55:03 EDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 22 Aug 1999 18:55:03 EDT Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!newsfeed-zh.ip-plus.net!news.ip-plus.net!News.Amsterdam.UnisourceCS!skynet.be!news.csl-gmbh.net!news-fra.pop.de!uunet!ams.uu.net!ffx.uu.net!news-in.usenetserver.com!news.usenetserver.com!news3.usenetserver.com.POSTED!Xenite In article <19990822140253.05945.00001764@ngol03.aol.com>, mcresq@aol.com (McREsq) wrote: > >In Morgoth's Ring, I think Tolkien sorta said that elves lose their sexual >urges after a while. Childbirth occurs almost exclusively in the early years >of a marriage A part of each parent goes into the child, so conceiving and bearing children is especially hard on Elven women and diminishes both the parents. Hence, after a certain number of children are born, the parents lose interest in conceiving more children. But Tolkien was at pains to reassure the [imagined] reader that the parents did not love each other less as time went by, they simply expressed that love in different ways. -- \\ // Worlds of Imagination on the Web info@xenite.org \\// //\\ [http://www.xenite.org/index.htm] // \\ENITE.org............................................... ###### From: Flame of the West Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.tolkien Subject: Re: Elvish birth control (was: New Elves) Date: Mon, 23 Aug 1999 01:17:59 -0400 Lines: 20 Message-ID: <37C0D97B.F870E25B@erols.com> References: <7ov115$ncu@wapping.ecs.soton.ac.uk> <37b4248d.14625901@news.bigpond.com> <37bb9f7a.22019043@nntpserver.swip.net> <37B63F28.EFB6C835@mediaone.net> <37bff4bd.75636555@news.earthlink.net> <37C0017E.8D375DB0@wizard.net> Reply-To: jsolinas@erols.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; x-mac-type="54455854"; x-mac-creator="4D4F5353" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: 9a5SZKXGd8e2kN3pftf72EVKH726vsVWEDka0JAEuqI= X-Complaints-To: abuse@rcn.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 23 Aug 1999 11:11:11 GMT X-Accept-Language: en X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.5 (Macintosh; I; PPC) Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news1.sunrise.ch!news.imp.ch!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!not-for-mail "James Russell Kuyper Jr." wrote: > Tolkien's Catholic background would argue against the contraceptive > option. However, this is one area where official church doctrine has > tended to differ significantly from the beliefs of many individual > catholics; I've no idea what Tolkien's personal opinion on the matter > was. The phoenomenon of the "cafeteria Catholic" who picks and chooses his beliefs while claiming to maintain his Catholic identity is a recent one. In Tolkien's day, such a thing would have been considered intellectually dishonest, and there is no evidence that JRRT was such. -- FotW "My opinions may have changed, but not the fact that I am right." ###### From: mark@colpanic.office.pc-intouch.com (Mark Wells) Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.tolkien Subject: Re: Elvish birth control (was: New Elves) References: <7ov115$ncu@wapping.ecs.soton.ac.uk> <37b4248d.14625901@news.bigpond.com> <37bb9f7a.22019043@nntpserver.swip.net> <37B63F28.EFB6C835@mediaone.net> <37bff4bd.75636555@news.earthlink.net> <37C0017E.8D375DB0@wizard.net> <37c00cf5.81837110@news.earthlink.net> <%xfw3.1466$H15.3605059@IRIS> Reply-To: mark@pc-intouch.com Message-ID: User-Agent: slrn/0.9.5.7 (UNIX) X-Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: colpanic.office.pc-intouch.com Lines: 15 Date: 23 Aug 1999 08:02:08 -0800 NNTP-Posting-Host: 207.212.198.18 X-Complaints-To: abuse@pacbell.net X-Trace: typhoon-la.pbi.net 935420735 207.212.198.18 (Mon, 23 Aug 1999 08:05:35 PDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 23 Aug 1999 08:05:35 PDT Organization: SBC Internet Services Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news1.sunrise.ch!news.imp.ch!sunqbc.risq.qc.ca!newsfeed.berkeley.edu!cyclone.swbell.net!typhoon-la.pbi.net.POSTED!not-for-mail > Of course, we are assuming that Elves has the same physiology that >humans have. Perhaps having children is a difficult thing to achieve. >Perhaps the elven menstrual cycle is such that there is an exceedingly small >window of oppourtunity to concieve. Perhaps Elven relationships are basd more >on love rather than sex, like human relationships are weather we like to admit >it or not... Elven relationships are based on love, sure, but that doesn't mean they don't have a major sexual component. _Morgoth's Ring_ says that Elven marriage is "chiefly of the body, but also of the spirit" or something to that effect. It also says that among the Elves the ability to conceive is tied to the will to conceive, which might be considered a physiological difference. ###### From: Flame of the West Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.tolkien Subject: Re: Elvish birth control (was: New Elves) Date: Mon, 23 Aug 1999 09:42:49 -0400 Lines: 49 Message-ID: <37C14FD7.62A71915@erols.com> References: <7ov115$ncu@wapping.ecs.soton.ac.uk> <37b4248d.14625901@news.bigpond.com> <37bb9f7a.22019043@nntpserver.swip.net> <37B63F28.EFB6C835@mediaone.net> <37bff4bd.75636555@news.earthlink.net> <37C0017E.8D375DB0@wizard.net> <37C0D97B.F870E25B@erols.com> <37c13221.20424316@news.pc-intouch.com> Reply-To: jsolinas@erols.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1; x-mac-type="54455854"; x-mac-creator="4D4F5353" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: /1O4mZIO6ki2J7q9sBCgXBFgu1w50qvy+P7owxLPCGk= X-Complaints-To: abuse@rcn.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 23 Aug 1999 15:40:59 GMT X-Accept-Language: en X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.5 (Macintosh; I; PPC) Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!not-for-mail Mark Wells wrote: > At the same time, JRRT had some ideas that could be considered > un-Catholic. For example, he was quite hostile to the idea of > anyone being in a position of power over anyone else. Tolkien's views were quite in the mainstream of English Catholic thought of the early 20th century. Strongly influenced by Chesterton and Belloc, it was "distributist," i.e. holding out as the ideal a society of small property holders and tradesmen. This was seen as the economic situation of Catholic England before the Reformation and subsequent Industrial Revolution and rise of the British megastate. The proper role of the king was seen as a counterbalance to the grasping power of the noble class. Again, this was a throwback to a pre-Reformation conception of the royal power (although England has plenty of tyrannical kings in those days as well). All in all, this kind of thought was much more "libertarian" than was Catholic thought in such countries as France and Spain in which the royal power was Catholic. > And then there's the way he portrayed 'organized religion' in > "Akallabeth" and "The Lost Road". I haven't yet read "The Lost Road," but in Númenor there were two religions, that of Eru and that of Morgoth. They were the ancestors of monotheism and paganism, respectively. The worship of Eru was less "organized" than JRRT's own Catholic religion. This is not because of any Protestant leanings on JRRT's part, but rather because his myths were set in a time before most of the events of the Bible, so that the worship of the true God must have been a primitive monotheism. This is no more a rejection of the Catholic religion than was St. Thomas More's Utopia. The worship of Morgoth, OTOH, was a primitive ancestor of paganism, complete with human sacrifice (as was practiced, e.g. among the Canaanites and Aztecs). It was in fact an early form of Satanism, since Morgoth can be identified with Lucifer. -- FotW "My opinions may have changed, but not the fact that I am right." ###### Message-ID: <37C15817.A646B1D9@wizard.net> From: "James Russell Kuyper Jr." Organization: Not Enough X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.61 [en] (WinNT; I) X-Accept-Language: en,de,es,ru MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.tolkien Subject: Re: Elvish birth control (was: New Elves) References: <7ov115$ncu@wapping.ecs.soton.ac.uk> <37b4248d.14625901@news.bigpond.com> <37bb9f7a.22019043@nntpserver.swip.net> <37B63F28.EFB6C835@mediaone.net> <37bff4bd.75636555@news.earthlink.net> <37C0017E.8D375DB0@wizard.net> <37C0D97B.F870E25B@erols.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 21 NNTP-Posting-Host: 206.161.15.120 X-Trace: typ12.nn.bcandid.com 935417544 206.161.15.120 (Mon, 23 Aug 1999 10:12:24 EDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 23 Aug 1999 10:12:24 EDT Date: Mon, 23 Aug 1999 10:17:59 -0400 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news1.sunrise.ch!news.imp.ch!sunqbc.risq.qc.ca!newsfeed.direct.ca!gw12.nn.bcandid.com!gw22.nn.bcandid.com!gate.bCandid.com!hub1.ispnews.com!typ12.nn.bcandid.com.POSTED!not-for-mail Flame of the West wrote: > > "James Russell Kuyper Jr." wrote: > > > Tolkien's Catholic background would argue against the contraceptive > > option. However, this is one area where official church doctrine has > > tended to differ significantly from the beliefs of many individual > > catholics; I've no idea what Tolkien's personal opinion on the matter > > was. > > The phoenomenon of the "cafeteria Catholic" who picks and > chooses his beliefs while claiming to maintain his Catholic > identity is a recent one. In Tolkien's day, such a thing would > have been considered intellectually dishonest, and there is > no evidence that JRRT was such. It may have been that way in Europe, but I believe that "cafeteria" catholics have a longer history than that here in the US. As a non-believer, it seems to me that one should either accept the church's claim to authority completely, or not at all, but most of the catholics I've known don't see it as an all-or-nothing issue. ###### From: mark@colpanic.office.pc-intouch.com (Mark Wells) Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.tolkien Subject: Re: Elvish birth control (was: New Elves) References: <7ov115$ncu@wapping.ecs.soton.ac.uk> <37b4248d.14625901@news.bigpond.com> <37bb9f7a.22019043@nntpserver.swip.net> <37B63F28.EFB6C835@mediaone.net> <37bff4bd.75636555@news.earthlink.net> <37C0017E.8D375DB0@wizard.net> <37C0D97B.F870E25B@erols.com> <37c13221.20424316@news.pc-intouch.com> <37C14FD7.62A71915@erols.com> Reply-To: mark@pc-intouch.com Message-ID: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit User-Agent: slrn/0.9.5.7 (UNIX) X-Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: colpanic.office.pc-intouch.com Lines: 54 Date: 23 Aug 1999 10:49:37 -0800 NNTP-Posting-Host: 207.212.198.18 X-Complaints-To: abuse@pacbell.net X-Trace: typhoon-la.pbi.net 935430782 207.212.198.18 (Mon, 23 Aug 1999 10:53:02 PDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 23 Aug 1999 10:53:02 PDT Organization: SBC Internet Services Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!newsfeed-zh.ip-plus.net!news.ip-plus.net!News.Amsterdam.UnisourceCS!newshunter!cosy.sbg.ac.at!logbridge.uoregon.edu!WCG!cyclone.swbell.net!typhoon-la.pbi.net.POSTED!not-for-mail On Mon, 23 Aug 1999 09:42:49 -0400, Flame of the West wrote: >Mark Wells wrote: > >> At the same time, JRRT had some ideas that could be considered >> un-Catholic. For example, he was quite hostile to the idea of >> anyone being in a position of power over anyone else. > >Tolkien's views were quite in the mainstream of English Catholic >thought of the early 20th century. Strongly influenced by >Chesterton and Belloc, it was "distributist," i.e. holding out as >the ideal a society of small property holders and tradesmen. Interesting. I wasn't aware of that. >> And then there's the way he portrayed 'organized religion' in >> "Akallabeth" and "The Lost Road". > >I haven't yet read "The Lost Road," but in Númenor there were >two religions, that of Eru and that of Morgoth. They were the >ancestors of monotheism and paganism, respectively. "The Lost Road" ("The Lost Road" proper, not the HoME volume of the same name) was a novel that Tolkien started to try his hand at a time travel story. It's a very early form of the story that later became "Akallabeth", but it's more detailed. Oh, and I'd call the worship of Morgoth monotheistic. There's only one Morgoth. >The worship of Eru was less "organized" than JRRT's own >Catholic religion. This is not because of any Protestant It was also much less organized than the worship of Morgoth. There were no temples or shrines to Eru. There were no priests of Eru. There were very few Eru-oriented public ceremonies. It was assumed that anyone who wanted to worship Eru could do so in private, with no distractions and no hypocrisy. There *was* a temple of Morgoth. There were priests of Morgoth. There were public ceremonies dedicated to Morgoth. The worship of Morgoth was very public and visible and showy. This seems like the kind of complaint that people like John Calvin were always making about the Catholic Church: that it was too busy being an organized religion to let people worship God. (It's also the kind of complaint Jesus made about the Pharisees: "You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when you do, you make him twice as much a son of hell as you are. ... You shut the kingdom of heaven in men's faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor do you let those enter who want to." Or something to that effect.) ###### From: mark@pc-intouch.com (Mark Wells) Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.tolkien Subject: Re: Elvish birth control (was: New Elves) Organization: PC-InTOUCH Linux Conspiracy Message-ID: <37c13221.20424316@news.pc-intouch.com> References: <7ov115$ncu@wapping.ecs.soton.ac.uk> <37b4248d.14625901@news.bigpond.com> <37bb9f7a.22019043@nntpserver.swip.net> <37B63F28.EFB6C835@mediaone.net> <37bff4bd.75636555@news.earthlink.net> <37C0017E.8D375DB0@wizard.net> <37C0D97B.F870E25B@erols.com> X-Newsreader: Forte Free Agent 1.11/32.235 X-Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: 1-37.dialup.pc-intouch.com Lines: 30 Date: Mon, 23 Aug 1999 11:40:39 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 207.212.198.18 X-Complaints-To: abuse@pacbell.net X-Trace: typhoon-la.pbi.net 935408460 207.212.198.18 (Mon, 23 Aug 1999 04:41:00 PDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 23 Aug 1999 04:41:00 PDT Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news1.sunrise.ch!news.imp.ch!sunqbc.risq.qc.ca!newsfeed.berkeley.edu!cyclone.swbell.net!typhoon-la.pbi.net.POSTED!not-for-mail On Mon, 23 Aug 1999 01:17:59 -0400, Flame of the West wrote: >"James Russell Kuyper Jr." wrote: > >> Tolkien's Catholic background would argue against the contraceptive >> option. However, this is one area where official church doctrine has >> tended to differ significantly from the beliefs of many individual >> catholics; I've no idea what Tolkien's personal opinion on the matter >> was. > >The phoenomenon of the "cafeteria Catholic" who picks and >chooses his beliefs while claiming to maintain his Catholic >identity is a recent one. In Tolkien's day, such a thing would >have been considered intellectually dishonest, and there is >no evidence that JRRT was such. At the same time, JRRT had some ideas that could be considered un-Catholic. For example, he was quite hostile to the idea of anyone being in a position of power over anyone else. And then there's the way he portrayed 'organized religion' in "Akallabeth" and "The Lost Road". It sounds like something out of a Reformation propaganda piece, except that Martin Luther didn't write about Morgoth. Here's a hypothetical question: if Martin Luther *had* written about Morgoth, would Fëanor have broken wind to chase Morgoth away from his house, or just thrown things at him? ###### Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.tolkien Subject: Re: Elvish birth control (was: New Elves) From: ross_presser@NOSPAMimtek.com.invalid (Ross Presser) References: <7ov115$ncu@wapping.ecs.soton.ac.uk> <37b4248d.14625901@news.bigpond.com> <37bb9f7a.22019043@nntpserver.swip.net> <37B63F28.EFB6C835@mediaone.net> <37bff4bd.75636555@news.earthlink.net> <37c06c1c.2459014@news.pc-intouch.com> Organization: Imtek, Inc. Message-ID: <8E2B67CB4pt101594@news.bellatlantic.net> User-Agent: Xnews/2.07.14 Lines: 8 Date: Mon, 23 Aug 1999 14:17:04 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 151.204.202.98 X-Trace: typhoon2.gnilink.net 935417824 151.204.202.98 (Mon, 23 Aug 1999 10:17:04 EDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 23 Aug 1999 10:17:04 EDT Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news1.sunrise.ch!news.imp.ch!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!gw12.nn.bcandid.com!gate.bCandid.com!hub1.ispnews.com!cyclone1.gnilink.net!typhoon2.gnilink.net.POSTED!not-for-mail All this talk about Elvish birth control (whether by abstinence, herb, or mental power over fertility) makes me wonder if maybe low Elf fertility wasn't a Design Decision by Eru. I mean, Elves never depart the world, so Eru has to go on animating their spirits even after they are sent to Mandos. Ten or twenty billion Elf spirits all requiring 24-7 personal attention might put a cramp in Eru's style. ###### Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.tolkien From: debi@_NOSPAMMING_blazenet.net (Tatonga®) Subject: Re: Elvish birth control (was: New Elves) References: <7ov115$ncu@wapping.ecs.soton.ac.uk> <37b4248d.14625901@news.bigpond.com> <37bb9f7a.22019043@nntpserver.swip.net> <37B63F28.EFB6C835@mediaone.net> <37bff4bd.75636555@news.earthlink.net> <37C0017E.8D375DB0@wizard.net> <37c00cf5.81837110@news.earthlink.net> X-Newsreader: News Xpress 2.01 Lines: 37 Message-ID: <%xfw3.1466$H15.3605059@IRIS> Date: Mon, 23 Aug 1999 14:29:28 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 24.104.44.19 X-Complaints-To: admin@usenetserver.com X-Trace: IRIS 935429371 24.104.44.19 (Mon, 23 Aug 1999 10:29:31 PDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 23 Aug 1999 10:29:31 PDT Organization: UseNet Server, Inc. http://www.usenetserver.com - Home of the fastest NNTP servers on the Net. Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!isdnet!newsfeed.icl.net!news.itconsult.net!news-in.usenetserver.com!news.usenetserver.com!IRIS.POSTED!tatonga X-No-Archive: yes In article <37c00cf5.81837110@news.earthlink.net>, prembone@excitebitespam.com (Prembone) wrote: >On Sun, 22 Aug 1999 09:56:14 -0400, "James Russell Kuyper Jr." > wrote: > >>Prembone wrote: >>... >>> those countless millenia and have only a few children? Was Elvish >>> libido incredibly low (since the biological imperative to reproduce >>> would be more of a *non* imperative in their case, I suppose that >>> would make sense biolgically) or was contraception among the Elvish >>> herb-lore? >> >>Tolkien's Catholic background would argue against the contraceptive >>option. > >Understood. ;-) But the pragmatic issue remains: How did they live >all those millenia and produce so few children? It's possible they >had a low degree of fertility -- but then TAT makes it sound like they >had fewer children by choice, not by default. Envisioning millenia of >abstinence...oh, let's not go there. > >Still, if (as I suggested as one option) Elves had a very low degree >of sexual desire, then I suppose it would have been bearable -- for >them. > >Or it may be that Elves, being patient and wise, practiced the >"natural" contraception of non-procreative sexual activity, reserving >the procreative "act" for when they were willing to conceive. > Of course, we are assuming that Elves has the same physiology that humans have. Perhaps having children is a difficult thing to achieve. Perhaps the elven menstrual cycle is such that there is an exceedingly small window of oppourtunity to concieve. Perhaps Elven relationships are basd more on love rather than sex, like human relationships are weather we like to admit it or not... ###### From: mcresq@aol.com (McREsq) Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.tolkien Subject: Re: Elvish birth control (was: New Elves) Lines: 70 NNTP-Posting-Host: ladder05.news.aol.com X-Admin: news@aol.com Date: 23 Aug 1999 18:36:14 GMT References: Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com X-Newsreader: AOL Offline Reader Message-ID: <19990823143614.15888.00001522@ngol06.aol.com> Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!newsfeed-zh.ip-plus.net!news.ip-plus.net!News.Amsterdam.UnisourceCS!skynet.be!cyclone.bc.net!newsfeed.direct.ca!portc01.blue.aol.com!audrey01.news.aol.com!not-for-mail In article , mark@colpanic.office.pc-intouch.com (Mark Wells) writes: >Oh, and I'd call the worship of Morgoth monotheistic. There's only one >Morgoth. The opposite of monotheism is polytheism, not paganism. Worship of Morgoth was not monotheistic. Morgoth was not God hence does not come under the "theos" part of the term. Worship of Morgoth is considered paganism because it is the ignorant worship os someone who is not God. One, for example, can be a sun-worshipper and believe that the sun is the only God - it is still paganism because the sun is, in fact, not God. Neither is it monotheism because although it is the worship of one thing, the thing is, is fact, not God. I guess you could call it monopaganism. All the above of course is from the POV of the person doing the naming . >>The worship of Eru was less "organized" than JRRT's own >>Catholic religion. This is not because of any Protestant > >It was also much less organized than the worship of Morgoth. Well, we really don't know much about the particulars of the worship of Morgoth. Nor for that matter do we know much about the Numenoreans worship of Eru. However, we do know that the Numenorean kings were something of a priest-king. This appears somewhat analogous to what I know of ancient egyptian belief. IIRC, all worship of the Gods went throught the Pharoh who was priest-king(and later god-king); indeed, regular people weren't allowed into temples to worship. Temples were the exclusive domain of the priests and the pharoah's. Numenor seems to go one step furthur and do away with the priests so that everything is wrapped up in the one priest-king. It's interesting that the Akallabeth seems to be not just a Noah and the Ark story, it also has elements of the story of Job and of the Exodus. The sins of the king and ruling class were visited on the entire population without regard to individual fault with only a select few (or faithful) being saved. > >There were no temples or shrines to Eru. There were no priests of Eru. >There were very few Eru-oriented public ceremonies. It was assumed that >anyone who wanted to worship Eru could do so in private, with no >distractions and no hypocrisy. See above, it also appears that societal worship was wrapped up in the priest-king along psuedo-Egyptian lines. >There *was* a temple of Morgoth. There were priests of Morgoth. There were >public ceremonies dedicated to Morgoth. The worship of Morgoth was very >public and visible and showy. Where do you get this from? I'd like to see the cite. I don't have all volumes of HOME so I might have missed it. > >This seems like the kind of complaint that people like John Calvin were >always making about the Catholic Church: that it was too busy being an >organized religion to let people worship God. (It's also the kind of >complaint Jesus made about the Pharisees: "You travel over land and sea to >win a single convert, and when you do, you make him twice as much a son of >hell as you are. ... You shut the kingdom of heaven in men's faces. You >yourselves do not enter, nor do you let those enter who want to." Or >something to that effect.) Is there some reason for the anti-Catholic remarks? Russ ###### Message-ID: <37C20E45.9CC2BBE3@wizard.net> From: "James Russell Kuyper Jr." Organization: Not Enough X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.61 [en] (WinNT; I) X-Accept-Language: en,de,es,ru MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.tolkien Subject: Re: Elvish birth control (was: New Elves) References: <19990823143614.15888.00001522@ngol06.aol.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 83 NNTP-Posting-Host: 206.161.15.133 X-Trace: typ12.nn.bcandid.com 935464178 206.161.15.133 (Mon, 23 Aug 1999 23:09:38 EDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 23 Aug 1999 23:09:38 EDT Date: Mon, 23 Aug 1999 23:15:17 -0400 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news1.sunrise.ch!news.imp.ch!sunqbc.risq.qc.ca!news-peer.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!gw12.nn.bcandid.com!gate.bCandid.com!hub1.ispnews.com!typ12.nn.bcandid.com.POSTED!not-for-mail McREsq wrote: > > In article , > mark@colpanic.office.pc-intouch.com (Mark Wells) writes: > > >Oh, and I'd call the worship of Morgoth monotheistic. There's only one > >Morgoth. > > The opposite of monotheism is polytheism, not paganism. Worship of Morgoth was > not monotheistic. Morgoth was not God hence does not come under the "theos" The worship of Eru was monotheistic, but that doesn't mean that the rival belief cannot also be monotheistic. Morgoth was indeed considered to be God by his worshippers, and he brooked no rivals. The opposite of monotheism is not a well defined concept. It's one of several different options, ranging from atheism, to monotheism, to dualism, to polytheism. Dualism doesn't count exactly as polytheism, because the dual gods are usually considered to be tightly paired; almost two sides of the same thing. Some religions also have tightly connected triplets of gods (like the Holy Trinity ;-). > part of the term. Worship of Morgoth is considered paganism because it is the > ignorant worship os someone who is not God. One, for example, can be a > sun-worshipper and believe that the sun is the only God - it is still paganism > because the sun is, in fact, not God. Neither is it monotheism because > although it is the worship of one thing, the thing is, is fact, not God. I > guess you could call it monopaganism. The term monotheism is a legitimate term for believers in such a religion to use to describe their own belief, and for non-believers like me to use to describe both of your beliefs. Check the dictionary - the term monotheism only refers to the number of gods believed in, not in the validity of that belief. By your definition, I'd be forced to call Christians monopaganists, to the considerable confusion of everyone involved, I think. Furthermore, by extension, your definition implies that there cannot be any such thing as polytheism, because you believe in only one God; anyone who believes in more than one is guaranteed to be wrong about all of them (with one possible exception ;-). The term pagan includes many beliefs, most of which have nothing in common with Morgoth's worship other than the fact that you don't believe in them. It's an unjustified insult to tar all pagans with that accusation. It makes no more sense than blaming all Christians, Catholic or not, Spanish or not, for the Spanish Inquisition, regardless of whether they participated, supported, or opposed it, or weren't even born yet. ... > See above, it also appears that societal worship was wrapped up in the > priest-king along psuedo-Egyptian lines. Well, the only case I could find where a priest is identified, it's Sauron, not Ar-Pharazon (see below). > >There *was* a temple of Morgoth. There were priests of Morgoth. There were > >public ceremonies dedicated to Morgoth. The worship of Morgoth was very > >public and visible and showy. > > Where do you get this from? I'd like to see the cite. I don't have all volumes > of HOME so I might have missed it. Temple: Akkallabeth: "But Sauron caused to be built .. a mighty temple." Priests: _Morgoth's Ring_, in _Notes on motives in the Silmarillion_: "Sauron, apparently a defeated rival for world power, now a mere hostage, can hardly propound himself [as an object of worship]; but as a former servant and disciple of Melkor, the worship of Melkor would raise him from hostage to high priest." Public ceremonies: Akkallabeth: "Ar-Pharazon the King turned back to the worship of the dark ... at first in secret, but ere long openly." ... > Is there some reason for the anti-Catholic remarks? No more so than for the anti-pagan ones, I imagine. You can't start making religiously partisan statements without receiving some in return. ###### Message-ID: <37C21359.DCD7B14F@wizard.net> From: "James Russell Kuyper Jr." Organization: Not Enough X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.61 [en] (WinNT; I) X-Accept-Language: en,de,es,ru MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.tolkien Subject: Re: Elvish birth control (was: New Elves) References: <7ov115$ncu@wapping.ecs.soton.ac.uk> <37b4248d.14625901@news.bigpond.com> <37bb9f7a.22019043@nntpserver.swip.net> <37B63F28.EFB6C835@mediaone.net> <37bff4bd.75636555@news.earthlink.net> <37C0017E.8D375DB0@wizard.net> <37c00cf5.81837110@news.earthlink.net> <%xfw3.1466$H15.3605059@IRIS> <37c1f93e.59366689@news.earthlink.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 15 NNTP-Posting-Host: 206.161.15.133 X-Trace: typ12.nn.bcandid.com 935465477 206.161.15.133 (Mon, 23 Aug 1999 23:31:17 EDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 23 Aug 1999 23:31:17 EDT Date: Mon, 23 Aug 1999 23:36:57 -0400 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news1.sunrise.ch!news.imp.ch!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!gw12.nn.bcandid.com!gate.bCandid.com!hub1.ispnews.com!typ12.nn.bcandid.com.POSTED!not-for-mail Prembone wrote: > > On 23 Aug 1999 08:02:08 -0800, mark@colpanic.office.pc-intouch.com > (Mark Wells) wrote: ... > >It also says that among the Elves the ability to conceive is tied to the > >will to conceive, which might be considered a physiological difference. > > Ooooo....I don't generally hold to envying the Elves, but I wouldn't > mind having THAT power. ;-) ZPG would be ever so much more attainable > if only we could will our ova and spermatazoa (sp?) to unite only when > we wished! The task would be easier, but I think that to achieve ZPG you'd have to also reduce the desire for children. ###### Message-ID: <37C2299D.598D8D99@wizard.net> From: "James Russell Kuyper Jr." Organization: Not Enough X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.61 [en] (WinNT; I) X-Accept-Language: en,de,es,ru MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.tolkien Subject: Re: Elvish birth control (was: New Elves) References: <19990823143614.15888.00001522@ngol06.aol.com> <37C20E45.9CC2BBE3@wizard.net> <37c21d4b.80635291@news.pc-intouch.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 21 NNTP-Posting-Host: 206.161.15.62 X-Trace: typ12.nn.bcandid.com 935471178 206.161.15.62 (Tue, 24 Aug 1999 01:06:18 EDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 24 Aug 1999 01:06:18 EDT Date: Tue, 24 Aug 1999 01:11:58 -0400 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news1.sunrise.ch!news.imp.ch!sunqbc.risq.qc.ca!newsfeed.cwix.com!206.132.58.119!gw12.nn.bcandid.com!gate.bCandid.com!hub1.ispnews.com!typ12.nn.bcandid.com.POSTED!not-for-mail Mark Wells wrote: ... > I'm not sure the idea of 'paganism' is sufficiently well-defined that > any religion can be incorrectly labeled as 'pagan'. It seems more > like a general-purpose insult: if you don't want to acknowledge the > legitimacy of someone else's religion, you call it 'paganism' instead > of using its real name. IIRC the word 'pagan' comes from a Latin word > meaning 'simpleton' or something. Webster's New World dictionary, 2nd College Edition, says: [Middle English < Late Latin (Ecclesiastic) _paganus_, a heathen (contrasted with Christian or Jew) < Latin, a peasant, rustic < _pagus_, country < Indo-European base *_pak_-, to join, enclose, fasten, whence Latin _pax_ & FANG] Which is a little less insulting than 'simpleton'. In any event, the meaning is shifting again. There is a growing movement of believers that call themselves Pagans. They claim continuity back to the pre-Christian pagans. They are definitely polytheistic and highly eclectic. Despite that, they do have a few core beliefs, and you can't be (their kind of) a Pagan if you don't share those beliefs. ###### From: prembone@excitebitespam.com (Prembone) Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.tolkien Subject: Re: Elvish birth control (was: New Elves) Date: Tue, 24 Aug 1999 01:49:44 GMT X-ELN-Insert-Date: Mon Aug 23 18:55:10 1999 References: <7ov115$ncu@wapping.ecs.soton.ac.uk> <37b4248d.14625901@news.bigpond.com> <37bb9f7a.22019043@nntpserver.swip.net> <37B63F28.EFB6C835@mediaone.net> <37bff4bd.75636555@news.earthlink.net> <37C0017E.8D375DB0@wizard.net> <37c00cf5.81837110@news.earthlink.net> <%xfw3.1466$H15.3605059@IRIS> X-Newsreader: Forte Free Agent 1.11/32.235 Organization: The Rescue Frodo SWAT Team X-Posted-Path-Was: not-for-mail Lines: 36 NNTP-Posting-Host: sdn-ar-006mnminnp192.dialsprint.net X-ELN-Date: 24 Aug 1999 01:53:49 GMT Message-ID: <37c1f93e.59366689@news.earthlink.net> Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news1.sunrise.ch!news.imp.ch!nntp-out.monmouth.com!newspeer.monmouth.com!newsfeed1.earthlink.net!nntp.earthlink.net!posted-from-earthlink!not-for-mail On 23 Aug 1999 08:02:08 -0800, mark@colpanic.office.pc-intouch.com (Mark Wells) wrote: >> Of course, we are assuming that Elves has the same physiology that >>humans have. Perhaps having children is a difficult thing to achieve. >>Perhaps the elven menstrual cycle is such that there is an exceedingly small >>window of oppourtunity to concieve. Perhaps Elven relationships are basd more >>on love rather than sex, like human relationships are weather we like to admit >>it or not... > >Elven relationships are based on love, sure, but that doesn't mean they >don't have a major sexual component. That was my thought, too. Why the dichotomy, as if love and sex were in opposition, or as if sexual love were somehow a "baser" desire than nonsexual love? >It also says that among the Elves the ability to conceive is tied to the >will to conceive, which might be considered a physiological difference. Ooooo....I don't generally hold to envying the Elves, but I wouldn't mind having THAT power. ;-) ZPG would be ever so much more attainable if only we could will our ova and spermatazoa (sp?) to unite only when we wished! Sex without babies...the other American dream. :-D I'd better stop there, or this thread will go Tilde. Prem All Homage To The Elton!!! The Elton John Worship Page - NEW URL http://eltonworship.virtualave.net ###### From: mark@pc-intouch.com (Mark Wells) Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.tolkien Subject: Re: Elvish birth control (was: New Elves) Organization: PC-InTOUCH Linux Conspiracy Message-ID: <37c20a4b.75770177@news.pc-intouch.com> References: <19990823143614.15888.00001522@ngol06.aol.com> X-Newsreader: Forte Free Agent 1.11/32.235 X-Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: 1-46.dialup.pc-intouch.com Lines: 83 Date: Tue, 24 Aug 1999 03:13:42 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 207.212.198.18 X-Complaints-To: abuse@pacbell.net X-Trace: typhoon-la.pbi.net 935464251 207.212.198.18 (Mon, 23 Aug 1999 20:10:51 PDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 23 Aug 1999 20:10:51 PDT Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news1.sunrise.ch!news.imp.ch!sunqbc.risq.qc.ca!newsfeed.berkeley.edu!cyclone.swbell.net!typhoon-la.pbi.net.POSTED!not-for-mail On 23 Aug 1999 18:36:14 GMT, mcresq@aol.com (McREsq) wrote: >In article , >mark@colpanic.office.pc-intouch.com (Mark Wells) writes: > >>Oh, and I'd call the worship of Morgoth monotheistic. There's only one >>Morgoth. > >The opposite of monotheism is polytheism, not paganism. Worship of Morgoth was >not monotheistic. Morgoth was not God hence does not come under the "theos" No, but his followers genuinely believed that he *was* God. >part of the term. Worship of Morgoth is considered paganism because it is the >ignorant worship os someone who is not God. One, for example, can be a >sun-worshipper and believe that the sun is the only God - it is still paganism >because the sun is, in fact, not God. Neither is it monotheism because >although it is the worship of one thing, the thing is, is fact, not God. I >guess you could call it monopaganism. > >All the above of course is from the POV of the person doing the naming . That's right. Objectively, I could say that both Judaism and Islam (and *probably* Christianity) are monotheistic religions: they both teach that there is one God. They just disagree as to which one. >>It was also much less organized than the worship of Morgoth. > >Well, we really don't know much about the particulars of the worship of >Morgoth. Nor for that matter do we know much about the Numenoreans worship of >Eru. However, we do know that the Numenorean kings were something of a Actually, we know quite a bit about both. >priest-king. This appears somewhat analogous to what I know of ancient >egyptian belief. IIRC, all worship of the Gods went throught the Pharoh who >was priest-king(and later god-king); indeed, regular people weren't allowed >into temples to worship. Temples were the exclusive domain of the priests and >the pharoah's. Numenor seems to go one step furthur and do away with the >priests so that everything is wrapped up in the one priest-king. That's not true. The only religious function of the king (or queen) of Numenor was to go to the Meneltarma twice a year (on specific days) and pray. Other than that, the worship of Eru was left to the individual. >>There were no temples or shrines to Eru. There were no priests of Eru. >>There were very few Eru-oriented public ceremonies. It was assumed that >>anyone who wanted to worship Eru could do so in private, with no >>distractions and no hypocrisy. > >See above, it also appears that societal worship was wrapped up in the >priest-king along psuedo-Egyptian lines. But 'societal' worship was a miniscule part of the Numenorean religion--it only occurred twice a year. Most of the worship that went on was personal. >>There *was* a temple of Morgoth. There were priests of Morgoth. There were >>public ceremonies dedicated to Morgoth. The worship of Morgoth was very >>public and visible and showy. > >Where do you get this from? I'd like to see the cite. I don't have all volumes >of HOME so I might have missed it. I'm pretty sure it's in 'Akallabeth'. >>This seems like the kind of complaint that people like John Calvin were >>always making about the Catholic Church: that it was too busy being an >>organized religion to let people worship God. (It's also the kind of >>complaint Jesus made about the Pharisees: "You travel over land and sea to >>win a single convert, and when you do, you make him twice as much a son of >>hell as you are. ... You shut the kingdom of heaven in men's faces. You >>yourselves do not enter, nor do you let those enter who want to." Or >>something to that effect.) > >Is there some reason for the anti-Catholic remarks? I'm simply saying that John Calvin had the same problem with the Catholic Church that Jesus had with the Pharisees--namely, that he thought they were hypocrites. I'm not saying that I agree with his assessment. ###### From: mark@pc-intouch.com (Mark Wells) Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.tolkien Subject: Re: Elvish birth control (was: New Elves) Organization: PC-InTOUCH Linux Conspiracy Message-ID: <37c21af1.80033354@news.pc-intouch.com> References: <7ov115$ncu@wapping.ecs.soton.ac.uk> <37b4248d.14625901@news.bigpond.com> <37bb9f7a.22019043@nntpserver.swip.net> <37B63F28.EFB6C835@mediaone.net> <37bff4bd.75636555@news.earthlink.net> <37C0017E.8D375DB0@wizard.net> <37c00cf5.81837110@news.earthlink.net> <%xfw3.1466$H15.3605059@IRIS> <37c1f93e.59366689@news.earthlink.net> X-Newsreader: Forte Free Agent 1.11/32.235 X-Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: 1-46.dialup.pc-intouch.com Lines: 34 Date: Tue, 24 Aug 1999 04:18:01 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 207.212.198.18 X-Complaints-To: abuse@pacbell.net X-Trace: typhoon-la.pbi.net 935468274 207.212.198.18 (Mon, 23 Aug 1999 21:17:54 PDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 23 Aug 1999 21:17:54 PDT Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!newsfeed-zh.ip-plus.net!news.ip-plus.net!News.Amsterdam.UnisourceCS!uunet!ams.uu.net!do.de.uu.net!newsfeed.tli.de!news.maxwell.syr.edu!dca1-hub1.news.digex.net!intermedia!cyclone.swbell.net!typhoon-la.pbi.net.POSTED!not-for-mail On Tue, 24 Aug 1999 01:49:44 GMT, prembone@excitebitespam.com (Prembone) wrote: >On 23 Aug 1999 08:02:08 -0800, mark@colpanic.office.pc-intouch.com >(Mark Wells) wrote: >>Elven relationships are based on love, sure, but that doesn't mean they >>don't have a major sexual component. > >That was my thought, too. Why the dichotomy, as if love and sex were >in opposition, or as if sexual love were somehow a "baser" desire than >nonsexual love? Especially if we accept Tolkien's statement that the Elves are supposed to represent certain aspects of non-fallen humanity. >>It also says that among the Elves the ability to conceive is tied to the >>will to conceive, which might be considered a physiological difference. > >Ooooo....I don't generally hold to envying the Elves, but I wouldn't >mind having THAT power. ;-) ZPG would be ever so much more attainable >if only we could will our ova and spermatazoa (sp?) to unite only when >we wished! The Elves would have a really tough time achieving ZPG, if you think about it. >Sex without babies...the other American dream. :-D > >I'd better stop there, or this thread will go Tilde. Oh, stop worrying. I think we can implicitly Tilde any post with your name on it by now. ;-) ###### From: mark@pc-intouch.com (Mark Wells) Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.tolkien Subject: Re: Elvish birth control (was: New Elves) Organization: PC-InTOUCH Linux Conspiracy Message-ID: <37c21d4b.80635291@news.pc-intouch.com> References: <19990823143614.15888.00001522@ngol06.aol.com> <37C20E45.9CC2BBE3@wizard.net> X-Newsreader: Forte Free Agent 1.11/32.235 X-Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: 1-46.dialup.pc-intouch.com Lines: 40 Date: Tue, 24 Aug 1999 04:28:57 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 207.212.198.18 X-Complaints-To: abuse@pacbell.net X-Trace: typhoon-la.pbi.net 935468888 207.212.198.18 (Mon, 23 Aug 1999 21:28:08 PDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 23 Aug 1999 21:28:08 PDT Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!newsfeed-zh.ip-plus.net!news.ip-plus.net!News.Amsterdam.UnisourceCS!newshunter!cosy.sbg.ac.at!logbridge.uoregon.edu!newsfeed.berkeley.edu!cyclone.swbell.net!typhoon-la.pbi.net.POSTED!not-for-mail On Mon, 23 Aug 1999 23:15:17 -0400, "James Russell Kuyper Jr." wrote: >The opposite of monotheism is not a well defined concept. It's one of >several different options, ranging from atheism, to monotheism, to >dualism, to polytheism. Dualism doesn't count exactly as polytheism, >because the dual gods are usually considered to be tightly paired; >almost two sides of the same thing. Some religions also have tightly >connected triplets of gods (like the Holy Trinity ;-). Dualism isn't necessarily theistic at all; Taoist yin-yang dualism, for example. (I think there's something similar in Zen Buddhism with a reality-illusion dualism, but I'm not sure.) As for religions with tightly paired or clustered gods, I agree that these aren't quite polytheistic. I would suggest that a polytheism is a religion in which the number of gods is indeterminate, as opposed to being some definite and cosmologically significant number. >The term pagan includes many beliefs, most of which have nothing in >common with Morgoth's worship other than the fact that you don't believe >in them. It's an unjustified insult to tar all pagans with that >accusation. It makes no more sense than blaming all Christians, Catholic >or not, Spanish or not, for the Spanish Inquisition, regardless of >whether they participated, supported, or opposed it, or weren't even >born yet. I'm not sure the idea of 'paganism' is sufficiently well-defined that any religion can be incorrectly labeled as 'pagan'. It seems more like a general-purpose insult: if you don't want to acknowledge the legitimacy of someone else's religion, you call it 'paganism' instead of using its real name. IIRC the word 'pagan' comes from a Latin word meaning 'simpleton' or something. >Well, the only case I could find where a priest is identified, it's >Sauron, not Ar-Pharazon (see below). "The Lost Road", IIRC, mentions other priests of Morgoth serving under Sauron, but Sauron was the high priest. ###### Message-ID: <37C29AEA.64CC7638@texas.net> From: Basty X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.51 [en] (Win98; I) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.tolkien Subject: Re: Elvish birth control (was: New Elves) References: <19990823143614.15888.00001522@ngol06.aol.com> <37c20a4b.75770177@news.pc-intouch.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 13 NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 24 Aug 1999 06:15:46 CDT Organization: Giganews.Com - Premium News Outsourcing X-Trace: sv1-BMYZ7QqFbZHe5bwaauZ7Ofpx47yehp7guxIr30WGSPQluO9rwelCRsAR+H8d5m3/mvjirwvEd91OOab!lNjO8XvYr4A= X-Complaints-To: abuse@GigaNews.Com X-Abuse-Info: Please be sure to forward a copy of ALL headers X-Abuse-Info: Otherwise we will be unable to process your complaint properly Date: Tue, 24 Aug 1999 06:15:22 -0700 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!newscore.univie.ac.at!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!hermes.visi.com!news-out.visi.com!news-out.nntp.giganews.com.MISMATCH!nntp2.giganews.com!news2.giganews.com.POSTED!not-for-mail Mark Wells wrote: > That's right. Objectively, I could say that both Judaism and Islam > (and *probably* Christianity) are monotheistic religions: they both > teach that there is one God. They just disagree as to which one. > Actually it could be (and has been) argued that they all worship the same God because they all are based on the same Old Testiment. The separations comes with the importence placed with different prophets. ###### From: Flame of the West Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.tolkien Subject: Re: Elvish birth control (was: New Elves) Date: Tue, 24 Aug 1999 06:24:49 -0400 Lines: 22 Message-ID: <37C272EE.6E7393C1@erols.com> References: <19990823143614.15888.00001522@ngol06.aol.com> <37C20E45.9CC2BBE3@wizard.net> <37c21d4b.80635291@news.pc-intouch.com> Reply-To: jsolinas@erols.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; x-mac-type="54455854"; x-mac-creator="4D4F5353" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: Xyx3ppTuG0FixNFGIsIWzxfocAtEiKT+M/5dCTl+Dxg= X-Complaints-To: abuse@rcn.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 24 Aug 1999 10:27:59 GMT X-Accept-Language: en X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.5 (Macintosh; I; PPC) Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!not-for-mail Mark Wells wrote: > I'm not sure the idea of 'paganism' is sufficiently well-defined that > any religion can be incorrectly labeled as 'pagan'. It seems more > like a general-purpose insult: if you don't want to acknowledge the > legitimacy of someone else's religion, you call it 'paganism' instead > of using its real name. IIRC the word 'pagan' comes from a Latin word > meaning 'simpleton' or something. Actually, it comes from the Latin word for "rustic." The rural parts of the Roman Empire were the last to be Christianized. The term "pagan" is a real term and not necessarily an insult, though it can be used that way. It refers to any non-Judaic religion, i.e. any religion that does not worship the God of Abraham, Issac and Jacob. -- FotW "My opinions may have changed, but not the fact that I am right." ###### Message-ID: <37C2CA8C.22A9115B@wizard.net> From: "James Russell Kuyper Jr." Organization: Not Enough X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.61 [en] (WinNT; I) X-Accept-Language: en,de,es,ru MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.tolkien Subject: Re: Elvish birth control (was: New Elves) References: <37C20E45.9CC2BBE3@wizard.net> <19990824103905.01527.00001847@ngol08.aol.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 91 NNTP-Posting-Host: 206.161.15.78 X-Trace: typ12.nn.bcandid.com 935512377 206.161.15.78 (Tue, 24 Aug 1999 12:32:57 EDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 24 Aug 1999 12:32:57 EDT Date: Tue, 24 Aug 1999 12:38:36 -0400 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!gw12.nn.bcandid.com!gate.bCandid.com!hub1.ispnews.com!typ12.nn.bcandid.com.POSTED!not-for-mail McREsq wrote: > > In article <37C20E45.9CC2BBE3@wizard.net>, "James Russell Kuyper Jr." > writes: ... > >The worship of Eru was monotheistic, but that doesn't mean that the > >rival belief cannot also be monotheistic. Morgoth was indeed considered > >to be God by his worshippers, and he brooked no rivals. > > I disagree. Unlike the *real* world today, we have no objective proof which > religion is correct. Out belief in a religion's correctness arises out of > faith. However, in ME, we know conclusively through the narrarator that > Illuvatar is the only deity and that Morgoth was not a deity - he was a created > being of immense power. Regardless of what his worshippers thought he was not > God and therefore worship of him was paganism. This same logic does not work > in *real* life, because we have no omniotent narrarators telling us the "truth" It wouldn't matter if they did. A false belief in a single God is still monotheism, because you believe him to be God, and because you only allow for one of them. Can you cite a dictionary definition for monotheism that makes validity of the belief one of the criteria? > >The opposite of monotheism is not a well defined concept. It's one of > >several different options, ranging from atheism > > no, the opposite of athism is theism. Yes; the opposite of atheism is fairly well-defined, because the word theism exists to cover the other three options I listed. The opposite of monotheism isn't well-defined, because there is no single term that covers all the other options. The term polytheism might reasonably be extended to cover duotheism, but there's no term I'm familiar with that includes both polytheism and atheism, while excluding all monotheistic faiths. In conventional Christian use, the term heathen or pagan includes atheists, but it also includes all monotheistic believers in any God other than the one Christians believe in. > , to monotheism, to > >dualism, to polytheism. Dualism doesn't count exactly as polytheism, > >because the dual gods are usually considered to be tightly paired; > >almost two sides of the same thing. > > I would argue that duotheism (better term than dualism) is covered under > monotheism Well, when one of those Gods is considered Good, and the other Evil, it's really hard for me to call it monotheism. Some variants of Christianity come close to this form, by elevating Satan to near-parity with God. They don't worship Satan, but they do believe in him, and in some sects they believe he has an nearly equal chance of ultimate victory. I would call such believers duotheists. > > Some religions also have tightly > >connected triplets of gods (like the Holy Trinity ;-). > > That's an incorrect description of the Catholic doctrine of the Trinity. I know that Catholics do not consider their three-part God to be three separate Gods, but for non-believers that looks like just a bunch of wordplay. ... > >> Is there some reason for the anti-Catholic remarks? > > > >No more so than for the anti-pagan ones, I imagine. You can't start > >making religiously partisan statements without receiving some in return. > > I wasn't making partisan statement or anti-pagan statement. You failed to > quote my sentence where pointed out that the definitions I was talking about > were subjective depending on the POV of the one stating them. However, in the That's because I don't think POV matters in defining monotheism. It does matter in defining paganism, but defining monotheism is strictly a matter of counting the number of Gods they believe in, not in judging the validity of that belief. Whether or not Morgoth's worship was the basis of all paganism is a statement of fact, not a matter of POV. And it is a false statement (even within Tolkien's world), regardless of your religious beliefs, because most pagan beliefs sprang up completely independently of Morgoth-worship (or, in our world, Satan worship). Most pagans I've known have nothing but contempt for the idea of Satan worship. > world of ME, worship of Morgoth *was* paganism because we know objectively > through the narrarator of the stories that Morgoth was not in fact a deity. > Most importantly, I was not making similes of paganism to a certain modern > religion as another had done. Agreed; but it did not thereby fail to be a monotheistic belief. They believed in One (mono) God (theism). That their belief was wrong is irrelevant to the issue of counting how many Gods they believed in. ###### Message-ID: <37C2CAB7.67D40CCF@wizard.net> From: "James Russell Kuyper Jr." Organization: Not Enough X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.61 [en] (WinNT; I) X-Accept-Language: en,de,es,ru MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.tolkien Subject: Re: Elvish birth control (was: New Elves) References: <37c20a4b.75770177@news.pc-intouch.com> <19990824103907.01527.00001848@ngol08.aol.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 47 NNTP-Posting-Host: 206.161.15.78 X-Trace: typ12.nn.bcandid.com 935512414 206.161.15.78 (Tue, 24 Aug 1999 12:33:34 EDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 24 Aug 1999 12:33:34 EDT Date: Tue, 24 Aug 1999 12:39:19 -0400 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!gw12.nn.bcandid.com!gate.bCandid.com!hub1.ispnews.com!typ12.nn.bcandid.com.POSTED!not-for-mail McREsq wrote: > > In article <37c20a4b.75770177@news.pc-intouch.com>, mark@pc-intouch.com (Mark > Wells) writes: > > >>In article , > >>mark@colpanic.office.pc-intouch.com (Mark Wells) writes: ... > >No, but his followers genuinely believed that he *was* God. > > I argue that this is irrelevant. Unlike that *real* world where we have no > objective proof of the truth of any one religious belief over the other - we > rely on our faith instead - in the world of Middle Earth, we *do* know the > truth because the omnipotent narrartor as well as Tolkien himself tells us that > Illuvatar is the only deity and that Morgoth is not. Thus, we can say that > worship of Morgoth was paganism because we know he is not God in Ea. Yes, but it was monotheism, because the worshipers believed in one and only one God - it doesn't matter whether they were right. The only thing that matters is the count of the number of Gods they believed in. ... > Your words went even furthur than that because you extend the simile back to > worship of Morgoth. You made descriptions of the worship of Morgoth and then > state "That seems like the kind of complaint that people like John Calvin were > always making about the Catholic Church..." It may not have been intentional > but that's how it came across - to me at least. It was the same kind of complaint. The fact that two complaints were similar doesn't justify (or denigrate) either complaint. The only thing that's relevant is how applicable each complaint was. Actually, I don't think the complaint is applicable to Morgoth's worshippers - I think that direct worship of their God was a major part of religion, and I don't think they let the temple rituals and the priestly bureaucracy interfere with that much. The rituals were bloody, but that seems an appropriate way of worshipping such a God. Most Protestants and many Catholics are in agreement (whether or not they were right) that the mediaeval Catholic church did in fact suffer from too much church organization, and too little real worship. The Catholics who felt that way were responsible for the counter-reformation that changed the situation sufficiently to prevent the Catholic church from being destroyed by the Protestant revolt. This isn't the right forum for thrashing out protestant/catholic difference, but there's nothing inappropriate about making out an analogy connecting those troubles with Tolkien's mythos. ###### From: mcresq@aol.com (McREsq) Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.tolkien Subject: Re: Elvish birth control (was: New Elves) Lines: 132 NNTP-Posting-Host: ladder05.news.aol.com X-Admin: news@aol.com Date: 24 Aug 1999 14:39:05 GMT References: <37C20E45.9CC2BBE3@wizard.net> Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com X-Newsreader: AOL Offline Reader Message-ID: <19990824103905.01527.00001847@ngol08.aol.com> Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!howland.erols.net!portc02.blue.aol.com!audrey01.news.aol.com!not-for-mail In article <37C20E45.9CC2BBE3@wizard.net>, "James Russell Kuyper Jr." writes: >> >Oh, and I'd call the worship of Morgoth monotheistic. There's only one >> >Morgoth. >> >> The opposite of monotheism is polytheism, not paganism. Worship of Morgoth >was >> not monotheistic. Morgoth was not God hence does not come under the >"theos" > >The worship of Eru was monotheistic, but that doesn't mean that the >rival belief cannot also be monotheistic. Morgoth was indeed considered >to be God by his worshippers, and he brooked no rivals. I disagree. Unlike the *real* world today, we have no objective proof which religion is correct. Out belief in a religion's correctness arises out of faith. However, in ME, we know conclusively through the narrarator that Illuvatar is the only deity and that Morgoth was not a deity - he was a created being of immense power. Regardless of what his worshippers thought he was not God and therefore worship of him was paganism. This same logic does not work in *real* life, because we have no omniotent narrarators telling us the "truth" > >The opposite of monotheism is not a well defined concept. It's one of >several different options, ranging from atheism no, the opposite of athism is theism. , to monotheism, to >dualism, to polytheism. Dualism doesn't count exactly as polytheism, >because the dual gods are usually considered to be tightly paired; >almost two sides of the same thing. I would argue that duotheism (better term than dualism) is covered under monotheism > Some religions also have tightly >connected triplets of gods (like the Holy Trinity ;-). That's an incorrect description of the Catholic doctrine of the Trinity. > >> part of the term. Worship of Morgoth is considered paganism because it is >the >> ignorant worship os someone who is not God. One, for example, can be a >> sun-worshipper and believe that the sun is the only God - it is still >paganism >> because the sun is, in fact, not God. Neither is it monotheism because >> although it is the worship of one thing, the thing is, is fact, not God. I >> guess you could call it monopaganism. > >The term monotheism is a legitimate term for believers in such a >religion to use to describe their own belief, and for non-believers like >me to use to describe both of your beliefs. Check the dictionary - the >term monotheism only refers to the number of gods believed in, not in >the validity of that belief. By your definition, I'd be forced to call >Christians monopaganists, to the considerable confusion of everyone >involved, I think. > >Furthermore, by extension, your definition implies that there cannot be >any such thing as polytheism, because you believe in only one God; >anyone who believes in more than one is guaranteed to be wrong about all >of them (with one possible exception ;-). > >The term pagan includes many beliefs, most of which have nothing in >common with Morgoth's worship other than the fact that you don't believe >in them. It's an unjustified insult to tar all pagans with that >accusation. It makes no more sense than blaming all Christians, Catholic >or not, Spanish or not, for the Spanish Inquisition, regardless of >whether they participated, supported, or opposed it, or weren't even >born yet. You missed the point of my message. First, you failed to quote where I stated that the above definition depended on the point of view of the person making the using the definition. So your criticism is not really germane to what I was say. And again, when talking about Middle Earth, we have benefit of knowing the objective truth throughthe narrarator and so (unlike in real life) we can make more absolute use of the terms we are discussing. >... >> See above, it also appears that societal worship was wrapped up in the >> priest-king along psuedo-Egyptian lines. > >Well, the only case I could find where a priest is identified, it's >Sauron, not Ar-Pharazon (see below). I think the priest-king stuff comes from Letters > >> >There *was* a temple of Morgoth. There were priests of Morgoth. There >were >> >public ceremonies dedicated to Morgoth. The worship of Morgoth was very >> >public and visible and showy. >> >> Where do you get this from? I'd like to see the cite. I don't have all >volumes >> of HOME so I might have missed it. > >Temple: >Akkallabeth: "But Sauron caused to be built .. a mighty temple." > >Priests: >_Morgoth's Ring_, in _Notes on motives in the Silmarillion_: >"Sauron, apparently a defeated rival for world power, now a mere >hostage, can hardly propound himself [as an object of worship]; but as a >former servant and disciple of Melkor, the worship of Melkor would raise >him from hostage to high priest." > >Public ceremonies: >Akkallabeth: "Ar-Pharazon the King turned back to the worship of the >dark ... at first in secret, but ere long openly." > >... >> Is there some reason for the anti-Catholic remarks? > >No more so than for the anti-pagan ones, I imagine. You can't start >making religiously partisan statements without receiving some in return. I wasn't making partisan statement or anti-pagan statement. You failed to quote my sentence where pointed out that the definitions I was talking about were subjective depending on the POV of the one stating them. However, in the world of ME, worship of Morgoth *was* paganism because we know objectively through the narrarator of the stories that Morgoth was not in fact a deity. Most importantly, I was not making similes of paganism to a certain modern religion as another had done. Russ ###### From: mcresq@aol.com (McREsq) Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.tolkien Subject: Re: Elvish birth control (was: New Elves) Lines: 70 NNTP-Posting-Host: ladder05.news.aol.com X-Admin: news@aol.com Date: 24 Aug 1999 14:39:07 GMT References: <37c20a4b.75770177@news.pc-intouch.com> Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com X-Newsreader: AOL Offline Reader Message-ID: <19990824103907.01527.00001848@ngol08.aol.com> Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!howland.erols.net!portc02.blue.aol.com!audrey01.news.aol.com!not-for-mail In article <37c20a4b.75770177@news.pc-intouch.com>, mark@pc-intouch.com (Mark Wells) writes: >>In article , >>mark@colpanic.office.pc-intouch.com (Mark Wells) writes: >> >>>Oh, and I'd call the worship of Morgoth monotheistic. There's only one >>>Morgoth. >> >>The opposite of monotheism is polytheism, not paganism. Worship of Morgoth >was >>not monotheistic. Morgoth was not God hence does not come under the "theos" > >No, but his followers genuinely believed that he *was* God. I argue that this is irrelevant. Unlike that *real* world where we have no objective proof of the truth of any one religious belief over the other - we rely on our faith instead - in the world of Middle Earth, we *do* know the truth because the omnipotent narrartor as well as Tolkien himself tells us that Illuvatar is the only deity and that Morgoth is not. Thus, we can say that worship of Morgoth was paganism because we know he is not God in Ea. > >>part of the term. Worship of Morgoth is considered paganism because it is >the >>ignorant worship os someone who is not God. One, for example, can be a >>sun-worshipper and believe that the sun is the only God - it is still >paganism >>because the sun is, in fact, not God. Neither is it monotheism because >>although it is the worship of one thing, the thing is, is fact, not God. I >>guess you could call it monopaganism. >> >>All the above of course is from the POV of the person doing the naming . > >That's right. Objectively, I could say that both Judaism and Islam >(and *probably* Christianity) are monotheistic religions: they both >teach that there is one God. They just disagree as to which one. My point was probably not as clear as it could have been. I was not making any real modern world similes when discussing monotheism, paganism, etc. That is because "beauty is in the eye of the beholder." However, as stated above, in ME we have the benefit of knowing the truth for sure. >>>This seems like the kind of complaint that people like John Calvin were >>>always making about the Catholic Church: that it was too busy being an >>>organized religion to let people worship God. (It's also the kind of >>>complaint Jesus made about the Pharisees: "You travel over land and sea to >>>win a single convert, and when you do, you make him twice as much a son of >>>hell as you are. ... You shut the kingdom of heaven in men's faces. You >>>yourselves do not enter, nor do you let those enter who want to." Or >>>something to that effect.) >> >>Is there some reason for the anti-Catholic remarks? > >I'm simply saying that John Calvin had the same problem with the >Catholic Church that Jesus had with the Pharisees--namely, that he >thought they were hypocrites. I'm not saying that I agree with his >assessment. Your words went even furthur than that because you extend the simile back to worship of Morgoth. You made descriptions of the worship of Morgoth and then state "That seems like the kind of complaint that people like John Calvin were always making about the Catholic Church..." It may not have been intentional but that's how it came across - to me at least. Russ ###### From: mcresq@aol.com (McREsq) Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.tolkien Subject: Re: Elvish birth control (was: New Elves) Lines: 17 NNTP-Posting-Host: ladder05.news.aol.com X-Admin: news@aol.com Date: 24 Aug 1999 14:39:07 GMT References: <37C2299D.598D8D99@wizard.net> Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com X-Newsreader: AOL Offline Reader Message-ID: <19990824103907.01527.00001849@ngol08.aol.com> Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!howland.erols.net!portc02.blue.aol.com!audrey01.news.aol.com!not-for-mail In article <37C2299D.598D8D99@wizard.net>, "James Russell Kuyper Jr." writes: >Mark Wells wrote: >... >> I'm not sure the idea of 'paganism' is sufficiently well-defined that >> any religion can be incorrectly labeled as 'pagan'. It seems more >> like a general-purpose insult: if you don't want to acknowledge the >> legitimacy of someone else's religion, you call it 'paganism' instead >> of using its real name. IIRC the word 'pagan' comes from a Latin word >> meaning 'simpleton' or something. > A friend of mine is a pagan, he calls himself a pagan. He doesn't seem insulted by it. Russ ###### Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.tolkien Subject: Re: Elvish birth control (was: New Elves) From: ross_presser@NOSPAMimtek.com.invalid (Ross Presser) References: <37c20a4b.75770177@news.pc-intouch.com> <19990824103907.01527.00001848@ngol08.aol.com> Organization: Imtek, Inc. Message-ID: <8E2C6FEC5pt101594@news.bellatlantic.net> User-Agent: Xnews/2.07.14 Lines: 34 Date: Tue, 24 Aug 1999 14:58:22 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 151.204.202.200 X-Trace: typhoon2.gnilink.net 935506702 151.204.202.200 (Tue, 24 Aug 1999 10:58:22 EDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 24 Aug 1999 10:58:22 EDT Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!gw12.nn.bcandid.com!gate.bCandid.com!hub1.ispnews.com!cyclone1.gnilink.net!typhoon2.gnilink.net.POSTED!not-for-mail (mark said) >>>>Oh, and I'd call the worship of Morgoth monotheistic. There's only >>>>one Morgoth. >>> (McREsq said) >>>The opposite of monotheism is polytheism, not paganism. Worship of >>>Morgoth was not monotheistic. Morgoth was not God hence does not come >>>under the "theos" >> (mark said) >>No, but his followers genuinely believed that he *was* God. > (McREsq said) >I argue that this is irrelevant. Unlike that *real* world where we have >no objective proof of the truth of any one religious belief over the >other - we rely on our faith instead - in the world of Middle Earth, we >*do* know the truth because the omnipotent narrartor as well as Tolkien >himself tells us that Illuvatar is the only deity and that Morgoth is >not. Thus, we can say that worship of Morgoth was paganism because we >know he is not God in Ea. > Not wanting to put words in others' mouths, but it seems that your difference with mark (and I agree with mark) is in assigning the word "monotheism" the force of literal truth, i.e., it's only *mono*theism if it's the *right* god. I don't think this word should be limited in this way, and I think mark agrees with me. Any religion that worships a SINGLE god should be called monotheism, even if there is a belief (in the case of Earthly believers) or knowledge (in the case of canon from JRRT) that the god in question is not really the true god. "paganism" is a much more emotionally charged word, at least in Christian history, but I don't think that you can brand Morgoth-worship "pagan", just "false". ###### From: mcresq@aol.com (McREsq) Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.tolkien Subject: Re: Elvish birth control (was: New Elves) Lines: 37 NNTP-Posting-Host: ladder07.news.aol.com X-Admin: news@aol.com Date: 24 Aug 1999 15:09:34 GMT References: <8E2C6FEC5pt101594@news.bellatlantic.net> Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com X-Newsreader: AOL Offline Reader Message-ID: <19990824110934.15206.00001738@ngol07.aol.com> Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!howland.erols.net!portc02.blue.aol.com!audrey01.news.aol.com!not-for-mail In article <8E2C6FEC5pt101594@news.bellatlantic.net>, ross_presser@NOSPAMimtek.com.invalid (Ross Presser) writes: >(McREsq said) >>I argue that this is irrelevant. Unlike that *real* world where we have >>no objective proof of the truth of any one religious belief over the >>other - we rely on our faith instead - in the world of Middle Earth, we >>*do* know the truth because the omnipotent narrartor as well as Tolkien >>himself tells us that Illuvatar is the only deity and that Morgoth is >>not. Thus, we can say that worship of Morgoth was paganism because we >>know he is not God in Ea. >> > >Not wanting to put words in others' mouths, but it seems that your >difference with mark (and I agree with mark) is in assigning the word >"monotheism" the force of literal truth, i.e., it's only *mono*theism if >it's the *right* god. I don't think this word should be limited in this >way, and I think mark agrees with me. Any religion that worships a SINGLE >god should be called monotheism, even if there is a belief (in the case of >Earthly believers) or knowledge (in the case of canon from JRRT) that the >god in question is not really the true god. > >"paganism" is a much more emotionally charged word, at least in Christian >history, but I don't think that you can brand Morgoth-worship "pagan", just >"false". > OK. So if I say I'm the only God, and I get some poor slob to believe it. And this fellow honestly believes I'm the only God, this guy is a monotheist? If so fine. Because all we're doing no is defining our terms. Admittedly its difficult to use terms made for our world - in which objective proof doesn't exist - and apply them toa world in which objective proof does exist. Russ ###### From: mcresq@aol.com (McREsq) Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.tolkien Subject: Re: Elvish birth control (was: New Elves) Lines: 64 NNTP-Posting-Host: ladder07.news.aol.com X-Admin: news@aol.com Date: 24 Aug 1999 17:11:50 GMT References: <37C2CA8C.22A9115B@wizard.net> Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com X-Newsreader: AOL Offline Reader Message-ID: <19990824131150.05945.00002313@ngol03.aol.com> Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!newsfeed.berkeley.edu!newsfeed.cwix.com!news.compuserve.com!news-master.compuserve.com!portc03.blue.aol.com!audrey01.news.aol.com!not-for-mail In article <37C2CA8C.22A9115B@wizard.net>, "James Russell Kuyper Jr." writes: >> >> Is there some reason for the anti-Catholic remarks? >> > >> >No more so than for the anti-pagan ones, I imagine. You can't start >> >making religiously partisan statements without receiving some in return. >> >> I wasn't making partisan statement or anti-pagan statement. You failed to >> quote my sentence where pointed out that the definitions I was talking >about >> were subjective depending on the POV of the one stating them. However, in >the > >That's because I don't think POV matters in defining monotheism. It does >matter in defining paganism, but defining monotheism is strictly a >matter of counting the number of Gods they believe in, not in judging >the validity of that belief. OK...see below. >Whether or not Morgoth's worship was the basis of all paganism is a >statement of fact, not a matter of POV. And it is a false statement >(even within Tolkien's world), regardless of your religious beliefs, >because most pagan beliefs sprang up completely independently of >Morgoth-worship (or, in our world, Satan worship). Most pagans I've >known have nothing but contempt for the idea of Satan worship. As do pagans I know. You're appear to be attributing to me ideas I didn't put forth. I never said or commented on another person's statement that worship of Morgoth was the basis of all paganism. All I started out saying is that worship of Morgoth was not monotheism but paganism simply because he was not God. I was not identifying worship of Morgoth with paganism based on theology or liturgical practice. My point was definitional not moral. You and Wells appear to have taken my point as the latter. In another message, I stated that terms such as monotheism used in the *real* world with respect to unprovable doctrinal issues is not easy to apply to Tolkien's world. What I did, perhaps not clearly, is convert the "theism" words to the absolute truths of Ea. That appears to not have been the best way to do it. I probably should have just have used the words as we know them here. I probably should have replied thusly: "Yes, worship of Morgoth may technically be monotheistic, but in Ea, unlike our universe, we know objectively that Illuvatar is the one true God and Morgoth was not a god. Therefore, from the readers point of view, such worsship may be called monothestic paganism" And left it at that. >> world of ME, worship of Morgoth *was* paganism because we know objectively >> through the narrarator of the stories that Morgoth was not in fact a deity. >> Most importantly, I was not making similes of paganism to a certain modern >> religion as another had done. > >Agreed; but it did not thereby fail to be a monotheistic belief. They >believed in One (mono) God (theism). That their belief was wrong is >irrelevant to the issue of counting how many Gods they believed in. So can we agree that worship of Morgoth was monotheistic paganism? Russ ###### Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.tolkien Subject: Re: Elvish birth control (was: New Elves) From: ross_presser@NOSPAMimtek.com.invalid (Ross Presser) References: <8E2C6FEC5pt101594@news.bellatlantic.net> <19990824110934.15206.00001738@ngol07.aol.com> Organization: Imtek, Inc. Message-ID: <8E2C8A3C1pt101594@news.bellatlantic.net> User-Agent: Xnews/2.07.14 Lines: 23 Date: Tue, 24 Aug 1999 17:17:14 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 151.204.202.171 X-Trace: typhoon1.gnilink.net 935515034 151.204.202.171 (Tue, 24 Aug 1999 13:17:14 EDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 24 Aug 1999 13:17:14 EDT Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!hermes.visi.com!news-out.visi.com!gw12.nn.bcandid.com!gw22.nn.bcandid.com!gate.bCandid.com!hub1.ispnews.com!cyclone1.gnilink.net!typhoon1.gnilink.net.POSTED!not-for-mail alt.distinguished.mcresq@aol.com (McREsq).wrote.posted.offered: >OK. So if I say I'm the only God, and I get some poor slob to believe >it. And this fellow honestly believes I'm the only God, this guy is a >monotheist? > Yes. >If so fine. Because all we're doing no is defining our terms. > Agreed. Let "monotheist" be a descriptive term without moral import, like "right-handed" or "bilingual". >Admittedly its difficult to use terms made for our world - in which >objective proof doesn't exist - and apply them toa world in which >objective proof does exist. > Well, we could go and invent another language tailored to ME ... oh, wait ... :) ###### From: mcresq@aol.com (McREsq) Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.tolkien Subject: Re: Elvish birth control (was: New Elves) Lines: 44 NNTP-Posting-Host: ladder07.news.aol.com X-Admin: news@aol.com Date: 24 Aug 1999 17:28:21 GMT References: <37C2CAB7.67D40CCF@wizard.net> Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com X-Newsreader: AOL Offline Reader Message-ID: <19990824132821.05945.00002315@ngol03.aol.com> Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!howland.erols.net!peerfeed.news.psi.net!nntp.psi.com!newsrouter.icnc.com!portc04.blue.aol.com!audrey01.news.aol.com!not-for-mail In article <37C2CAB7.67D40CCF@wizard.net>, "James Russell Kuyper Jr." writes: >> Your words went even furthur than that because you extend the simile back >to >> worship of Morgoth. You made descriptions of the worship of Morgoth and >then >> state "That seems like the kind of complaint that people like John Calvin >were >> always making about the Catholic Church..." It may not have been >intentional >> but that's how it came across - to me at least. > >It was the same kind of complaint. The fact that two complaints were >similar doesn't justify (or denigrate) either complaint. The only thing >that's relevant is how applicable each complaint was. Actually, I don't >think the complaint is applicable to Morgoth's worshippers - I think >that direct worship of their God was a major part of religion, and I >don't think they let the temple rituals and the priestly bureaucracy >interfere with that much. The rituals were bloody, but that seems an >appropriate way of worshipping such a God. > > >Most Protestants and many Catholics are in agreement (whether or not >they were right) that the mediaeval Catholic church did in fact suffer >from too much church organization, and too little real worship. The >Catholics who felt that way were responsible for the counter-reformation >that changed the situation sufficiently to prevent the Catholic church >from being destroyed by the Protestant revolt. > >This isn't the right forum for thrashing out protestant/catholic >difference, but there's nothing inappropriate about making out an >analogy connecting those troubles with Tolkien's mythos. But no one was complaining about Morgoth worship because some priestly class got in the way of direct worship of Morgoth or that there was too much orgainization on Morgoth's church. The complaint's (such as there were) were that Morgoth was not God and this the liturgical practices were bloody. It appeared to me as just a shot at the Catholic Church had nothing to do with the discussion. Russ ###### From: mcresq@aol.com (McREsq) Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.tolkien Subject: Re: Elvish birth control (was: New Elves) Lines: 35 NNTP-Posting-Host: ladder07.news.aol.com X-Admin: news@aol.com Date: 24 Aug 1999 17:32:56 GMT References: <8E2C8A3C1pt101594@news.bellatlantic.net> Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com X-Newsreader: AOL Offline Reader Message-ID: <19990824133256.05945.00002316@ngol03.aol.com> Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!news.idt.net!peerfeed.news.psi.net!nntp.psi.com!newsrouter.icnc.com!portc04.blue.aol.com!audrey01.news.aol.com!not-for-mail In article <8E2C8A3C1pt101594@news.bellatlantic.net>, ross_presser@NOSPAMimtek.com.invalid (Ross Presser) writes: >alt.distinguished.mcresq@aol.com (McREsq).wrote.posted.offered: alt.distinguished? You don't know me very well >>OK. So if I say I'm the only God, and I get some poor slob to believe >>it. And this fellow honestly believes I'm the only God, this guy is a >>monotheist? >> > >Yes. > >>If so fine. Because all we're doing no is defining our terms. >> > >Agreed. Let "monotheist" be a descriptive term without moral import, like >"right-handed" or "bilingual". Just to be clear, my intent was not to imply moral import. It was simply this: Since we have the benefit of knowing objective truth in Tolkien's work on this issue, we should take advantage of it in our use of descriptive words. We don't have that luxury in the real world so its not an issue. Admittedly, I think I just overcomplicated things. > >>Admittedly its difficult to use terms made for our world - in which >>objective proof doesn't exist - and apply them toa world in which >>objective proof does exist. >> > >Well, we could go and invent another language tailored to ME ... oh, wait >... :) Russ ###### From: Michael Guenther Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.tolkien Subject: Re: Elvish birth control (was: New Elves) Date: Tue, 24 Aug 1999 16:18:03 -0500 Organization: Purdue University Lines: 15 Message-ID: References: <37C2299D.598D8D99@wizard.net> <19990824103907.01527.00001849@ngol08.aol.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: london.physics.purdue.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-Trace: mozo.cc.purdue.edu 935529487 29529 128.210.67.35 (24 Aug 1999 21:18:07 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@mozo.cc.purdue.edu NNTP-Posting-Date: 24 Aug 1999 21:18:07 GMT In-Reply-To: <19990824103907.01527.00001849@ngol08.aol.com> Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!newsfeed-zh.ip-plus.net!news.ip-plus.net!News.Amsterdam.UnisourceCS!skynet.be!newsfeed.stanford.edu!logbridge.uoregon.edu!mozo.cc.purdue.edu!london.physics.purdue.edu!mbguenth On 24 Aug 1999, McREsq wrote: > A friend of mine is a pagan, he calls himself a pagan. He doesn't seem > insulted by it. > > Russ What, he's a member of People Against Goodness And Normalcy? (How do they take to Dragnet?) -- Michael Guenther mbguenth@physics.purdue.edu ###### Message-ID: <37C32BD4.6F1B4A95@wizard.net> From: "James Russell Kuyper Jr." Organization: Not Enough X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.61 [en] (WinNT; I) X-Accept-Language: en,de,es,ru MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.tolkien Subject: Re: Elvish birth control (was: New Elves) References: <37C2CA8C.22A9115B@wizard.net> <19990824131150.05945.00002313@ngol03.aol.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 15 NNTP-Posting-Host: 206.161.15.69 X-Trace: typ12.nn.bcandid.com 935537274 206.161.15.69 (Tue, 24 Aug 1999 19:27:54 EDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 24 Aug 1999 19:27:54 EDT Date: Tue, 24 Aug 1999 19:33:40 -0400 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!newsfeed-zh.ip-plus.net!news.ip-plus.net!news.datacomm.ch!newscore.gigabell.net!newscore.ipf.de!newsfeed.tli.de!newsfeed.cwix.com!gw12.nn.bcandid.com!gate.bCandid.com!hub1.ispnews.com!typ12.nn.bcandid.com.POSTED!not-for-mail McREsq wrote: .. > So can we agree that worship of Morgoth was monotheistic paganism? I've no problem with that at all. Realize, of course, that it's equally legitimate for Morgoth's worshippers to apply the same term to Eru's followers. It correctly states their (incorrect) understanding of the situation. As I wrote that, I realized that Morgoth had worshippers, but Eru only had followers. I think that this is one of the things I've liked about Tolkien's theology. I believe that it's inappropriate for any intelligent being to worship another, no matter how large the difference in rank. I wouldn't want to be worshipped, and I'd look with suspicion and disdain upon any supposed 'deity' who did want to be worshipped. ###### From: mark@pc-intouch.com (Mark Wells) Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.tolkien Subject: Re: Elvish birth control (was: New Elves) Organization: PC-InTOUCH Linux Conspiracy Message-ID: <37c3102a.142819631@news.pc-intouch.com> References: <37c20a4b.75770177@news.pc-intouch.com> <19990824103907.01527.00001848@ngol08.aol.com> X-Newsreader: Forte Free Agent 1.11/32.235 X-Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: 1-90.dialup.pc-intouch.com Lines: 59 Date: Tue, 24 Aug 1999 21:54:54 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 207.212.198.18 X-Complaints-To: abuse@pacbell.net X-Trace: typhoon-la.pbi.net 935531895 207.212.198.18 (Tue, 24 Aug 1999 14:58:15 PDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 24 Aug 1999 14:58:15 PDT Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!newsfeed.berkeley.edu!cyclone.swbell.net!typhoon-la.pbi.net.POSTED!not-for-mail On 24 Aug 1999 14:39:07 GMT, mcresq@aol.com (McREsq) wrote: >>No, but his followers genuinely believed that he *was* God. > >I argue that this is irrelevant. Unlike that *real* world where we have no >objective proof of the truth of any one religious belief over the other - we >rely on our faith instead - in the world of Middle Earth, we *do* know the >truth because the omnipotent narrartor as well as Tolkien himself tells us that >Illuvatar is the only deity and that Morgoth is not. Thus, we can say that >worship of Morgoth was paganism because we know he is not God in Ea. So your distinction between monotheism and pseudo-monotheistic paganism ('monopaganism') is that monotheism recognizes one God who actually exists and 'monopaganism' recognizes one God who doesn't exist and/or isn't God. Are these terms useful for discussing real-world religions? In our world, we can't peek behind the curtain and see, with 100% certainty, whose religion is right. (Not during this life, at least.) But to use either of these terms, according to your definitions, we *have* to do that. >>That's right. Objectively, I could say that both Judaism and Islam >>(and *probably* Christianity) are monotheistic religions: they both >>teach that there is one God. They just disagree as to which one. > >My point was probably not as clear as it could have been. I was not making any >real modern world similes when discussing monotheism, paganism, etc. That is >because "beauty is in the eye of the beholder." However, as stated above, in >ME we have the benefit of knowing the truth for sure. That's a pretty important little bit of context. It means that we can't use any terminology or concepts from the way we analyze religions in this world to discuss religions in ME. The only way we can really describe the difference between the worship of Eru and the worship of Morgoth is to say that one is true and the other is false. >>>Is there some reason for the anti-Catholic remarks? >> >>I'm simply saying that John Calvin had the same problem with the >>Catholic Church that Jesus had with the Pharisees--namely, that he >>thought they were hypocrites. I'm not saying that I agree with his >>assessment. > >Your words went even furthur than that because you extend the simile back to >worship of Morgoth. You made descriptions of the worship of Morgoth and then >state "That seems like the kind of complaint that people like John Calvin were >always making about the Catholic Church..." It may not have been intentional >but that's how it came across - to me at least. No, it wasn't intentional. I mentioned John Calvin to say that *Tolkien* may have had something against the Catholic Church. Yes, I know he called himself a devout Catholic. What I mean is that he may have believed in the Church's ideas but had some problems with certain aspects of how they were being implemented--specifically, those aspects that he seemed to satirize in 'Akallabeth'. ###### From: mark@pc-intouch.com (Mark Wells) Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.tolkien Subject: Re: Elvish birth control (was: New Elves) Organization: PC-InTOUCH Linux Conspiracy Message-ID: <37c31527.144096269@news.pc-intouch.com> References: <37C2CAB7.67D40CCF@wizard.net> <19990824132821.05945.00002315@ngol03.aol.com> X-Newsreader: Forte Free Agent 1.11/32.235 X-Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: 1-90.dialup.pc-intouch.com Lines: 16 Date: Tue, 24 Aug 1999 21:59:00 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 207.212.198.18 X-Complaints-To: abuse@pacbell.net X-Trace: typhoon-la.pbi.net 935531896 207.212.198.18 (Tue, 24 Aug 1999 14:58:16 PDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 24 Aug 1999 14:58:16 PDT Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!newsfeed-zh.ip-plus.net!news.ip-plus.net!News.Amsterdam.UnisourceCS!newshunter!cosy.sbg.ac.at!logbridge.uoregon.edu!newsfeed.berkeley.edu!cyclone.swbell.net!typhoon-la.pbi.net.POSTED!not-for-mail On 24 Aug 1999 17:28:21 GMT, mcresq@aol.com (McREsq) wrote: >In article <37C2CAB7.67D40CCF@wizard.net>, "James Russell Kuyper Jr." >But no one was complaining about Morgoth worship because some priestly class >got in the way of direct worship of Morgoth or that there was too much >orgainization on Morgoth's church. The complaint's (such as there were) were >that Morgoth was not God and this the liturgical practices were bloody. > >It appeared to me as just a shot at the Catholic Church had nothing to do with >the discussion. If you go back to how this discussion started, we were talking about whether Tolkien may have personally disagreed with some of the practices of the Catholic Church. I brought up 'Akallabeth' as what appeared to be a comment he made on 'organized religion'. ###### From: mcresq@aol.com (McREsq) Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.tolkien Subject: Re: Elvish birth control (was: New Elves) Lines: 61 NNTP-Posting-Host: ladder06.news.aol.com X-Admin: news@aol.com Date: 24 Aug 1999 22:33:21 GMT References: <37c3102a.142819631@news.pc-intouch.com> Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com X-Newsreader: AOL Offline Reader Message-ID: <19990824183321.15205.00002103@ngol07.aol.com> Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!newsfeed-zh.ip-plus.net!news.ip-plus.net!News.Amsterdam.UnisourceCS!skynet.be!hermes.visi.com!news-out.visi.com!newspump.sol.net!news.execpc.com!newspeer.sol.net!portc02.blue.aol.com!audrey03.news.aol.com!not-for-mail In article <37c3102a.142819631@news.pc-intouch.com>, mark@pc-intouch.com (Mark Wells) writes: >>My point was probably not as clear as it could have been. I was not making >any >>real modern world similes when discussing monotheism, paganism, etc. That is >>because "beauty is in the eye of the beholder." However, as stated above, in > >>ME we have the benefit of knowing the truth for sure. > >That's a pretty important little bit of context. It means that we >can't use any terminology or concepts from the way we analyze >religions in this world to discuss religions in ME. The only way we >can really describe the difference between the worship of Eru and the >worship of Morgoth is to say that one is true and the other is false. As I've conceded in other messages, you're probably right here. Although the theism terms might not completely correspond to silimar situations in ME (because in ME we know the *truth*) it doesn't make sense to convert the meaning for ME use or, put another way, make the real world meanings useless. >>>>Is there some reason for the anti-Catholic remarks? >>> >>>I'm simply saying that John Calvin had the same problem with the >>>Catholic Church that Jesus had with the Pharisees--namely, that he >>>thought they were hypocrites. I'm not saying that I agree with his >>>assessment. >> >>Your words went even furthur than that because you extend the simile back to >>worship of Morgoth. You made descriptions of the worship of Morgoth and >then >>state "That seems like the kind of complaint that people like John Calvin >were >>always making about the Catholic Church..." It may not have been >intentional >>but that's how it came across - to me at least. > >No, it wasn't intentional. > >I mentioned John Calvin to say that *Tolkien* may have had something >against the Catholic Church. Yes, I know he called himself a devout >Catholic. What I mean is that he may have believed in the Church's >ideas but had some problems with certain aspects of how they were >being implemented--specifically, those aspects that he seemed to >satirize in 'Akallabeth'. Considering Tolkien himself said there was no allegory in his works, I wonder why you think he might be talking about the Catholic Church when he was describing Morgoth's worship? In all honesty, I think you're grasping to find the satirization of elements of modern religion in the worship of Morgoth. That would have been utterly besides the point of the story. Worship of morgoth wasn't bad because it was too formalized; it was bad because Morgoth was evil and he wasn't God Russ ###### From: Flame of the West Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.tolkien Subject: Re: Elvish birth control (was: New Elves) Date: Tue, 24 Aug 1999 22:42:31 -0400 Lines: 18 Message-ID: <37C35815.BDD58D3B@erols.com> References: <37C20E45.9CC2BBE3@wizard.net> <19990824103905.01527.00001847@ngol08.aol.com> Reply-To: jsolinas@erols.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; x-mac-type="54455854"; x-mac-creator="4D4F5353" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: kDBZx/xaAzLRCyzNKOKNiSJmM7xGrPJcxTIAZeEJxq4= X-Complaints-To: abuse@rcn.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 25 Aug 1999 03:26:05 GMT X-Accept-Language: en X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.5 (Macintosh; I; PPC) Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!newsfeed-zh.ip-plus.net!news.ip-plus.net!News.Amsterdam.UnisourceCS!newshunter!cosy.sbg.ac.at!logbridge.uoregon.edu!howland.erols.net!outgoing.news.rcn.net.MISMATCH!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!not-for-mail McREsq wrote: > However, in ME, we know conclusively through the narrarator that > Illuvatar is the only deity and that Morgoth was not a deity - he was a created > being of immense power. Regardless of what his worshippers thought he was not > God and therefore worship of him was paganism. This same logic does not work > in *real* life, because we have no omniotent narrarators telling us the "truth" Ooo, watch out for the "Tolkien was wrong about Middle-Earth" crowd! -- FotW "My opinions may have changed, but not the fact that I am right." ###### From: Flame of the West Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.tolkien Subject: Re: Elvish birth control (was: New Elves) Date: Tue, 24 Aug 1999 23:03:40 -0400 Lines: 24 Message-ID: <37C35D08.FCD70956@erols.com> References: <37C20E45.9CC2BBE3@wizard.net> <19990824103905.01527.00001847@ngol08.aol.com> <37C2CA8C.22A9115B@wizard.net> Reply-To: jsolinas@erols.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; x-mac-type="54455854"; x-mac-creator="4D4F5353" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: kDBZx/xaAzIIz5Wlee0X3LpzPXapCLVJmfHmYcb9Qpk= X-Complaints-To: abuse@rcn.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 25 Aug 1999 03:26:06 GMT X-Accept-Language: en X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.5 (Macintosh; I; PPC) Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!newsfeed-zh.ip-plus.net!news.ip-plus.net!News.Amsterdam.UnisourceCS!golmote!isdnet!howland.erols.net!outgoing.news.rcn.net.MISMATCH!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!not-for-mail "James Russell Kuyper Jr." wrote: > It wouldn't matter if they did. A false belief in a single God is still > monotheism, because you believe him to be God, and because you only > allow for one of them. Can you cite a dictionary definition for > monotheism that makes validity of the belief one of the criteria? Whatever the dictionary says, it is a common usage to describe as "the monotheistic religions" those that worship the God of Abraham, namely Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. (No validity of belief is implied.) There may be other religions in the world that worship one god (e.g. sun-worship), but they are commonly called "pagan" even though they satisfy the literal definition of "monotheism." According to this common usage, worship of Eru was monotheistic since "Eru" is just the Quenya name for the Judeo-Christian God. -- FotW "My opinions may have changed, but not the fact that I am right." ###### From: mcresq@aol.com (McREsq) Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.tolkien Subject: Re: Elvish birth control (was: New Elves) Lines: 41 NNTP-Posting-Host: ladder05.news.aol.com X-Admin: news@aol.com Date: 25 Aug 1999 01:54:16 GMT References: <37C327B1.1CF86E09@wizard.net> Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com X-Newsreader: AOL Offline Reader Message-ID: <19990824215416.16940.00002702@ngol02.aol.com> Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news1.sunrise.ch!news.imp.ch!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!howland.erols.net!portc02.blue.aol.com!audrey01.news.aol.com!not-for-mail In article <37C327B1.1CF86E09@wizard.net>, "James Russell Kuyper Jr." writes: >McREsq wrote: >... >> But no one was complaining about Morgoth worship because some priestly >class >> got in the way of direct worship of Morgoth or that there was too much >> orgainization on Morgoth's church. ... > >Yes they did. > >> ... The complaint's (such as there were) were >> that Morgoth was not God and this the liturgical practices were bloody. > >That's a complaint that's certainly applicable, but isn't the one that's >being referred to. > >Here's a repeat of the original comment by Mark Wells: >> There *was* a temple of Morgoth. There were priests of Morgoth. There >were >> public ceremonies dedicated to Morgoth. The worship of Morgoth was very >> public and visible and showy. >> >> This seems like the kind of complaint that people like John Calvin were >> always making about the Catholic Church: that it was too busy being an >> organized religion to let people worship God. > Well, who are "they" that are complaining? Who, other than the people of Middle Earth could possibly are about the liturgical practices of the worship of Morgoth? Why compare it to Tolkien's as well as other members of this group's religion? Rather than simply just discuss the work and what was said in it, a comparison between Morgoth worship and Roman Cathoicism was made. Mark himself said he was not intending such, so why are you continuing it? Russ ###### From: mark@pc-intouch.com (Mark Wells) Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.tolkien Subject: Re: Elvish birth control (was: New Elves) Organization: PC-InTOUCH Linux Conspiracy Message-ID: <37c375e4.168865127@news.pc-intouch.com> References: <37c3102a.142819631@news.pc-intouch.com> <19990824183321.15205.00002103@ngol07.aol.com> X-Newsreader: Forte Free Agent 1.11/32.235 X-Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: 1-47.dialup.pc-intouch.com Lines: 29 Date: Wed, 25 Aug 1999 05:05:45 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 207.212.198.18 X-Complaints-To: abuse@pacbell.net X-Trace: typhoon-la.pbi.net 935557575 207.212.198.18 (Tue, 24 Aug 1999 22:06:15 PDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 24 Aug 1999 22:06:15 PDT Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!dca1-hub1.news.digex.net!intermedia!cyclone.swbell.net!typhoon-la.pbi.net.POSTED!not-for-mail On 24 Aug 1999 22:33:21 GMT, mcresq@aol.com (McREsq) wrote: >In all honesty, I think you're grasping to find the satirization of elements of >modern religion in the worship of Morgoth. That would have been utterly >besides the point of the story. Worship of morgoth wasn't bad because it was >too formalized; it was bad because Morgoth was evil and he wasn't God Think about this: If the problem with the worship of Morgoth had nothing to do with the fact that it was formalized, why was Sauron so insistent that they formalize it? There are several possible answers: so that he could appoint himself high priest and tell everyone what to think, so that he could see who was following Morgoth and who wasn't, so that he could take control of the government and use it to suppress his enemies. But these all come down to the issue of *control*. By setting up Morgothism as an organized religion, Sauron ensured that he could use it to control people. In fact, the historical record of our world shows that organized religion (Catholic and otherwise) is frequently used for exactly that purpose. The Crusades and the Inquisition and the colonization of America and the Arab-Israeli wars all had allegedly religious motivations, but they were driven largely by people with political or financial interests. What happened is that once religion became *organized*, the leaders of the religious hierarchy gained power over the followers. Then Acton's Law takes over: either the leaders become ambitious or they're quickly replaced by ambitious people. ###### Message-ID: <37C3E7DB.27112753@wizard.net> From: "James Kuyper Jr." Organization: Not Enough X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.61 [en] (WinNT; I) X-Accept-Language: en,de,es,ru MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.tolkien Subject: Re: Elvish birth control (was: New Elves) References: <37C20E45.9CC2BBE3@wizard.net> <19990824103905.01527.00001847@ngol08.aol.com> <37C2CA8C.22A9115B@wizard.net> <37C35D08.FCD70956@erols.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 34 NNTP-Posting-Host: 206.161.15.68 X-Trace: typ12.nn.bcandid.com 935585440 206.161.15.68 (Wed, 25 Aug 1999 08:50:40 EDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 25 Aug 1999 08:50:40 EDT Date: Wed, 25 Aug 1999 08:55:55 -0400 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!gw12.nn.bcandid.com!gw22.nn.bcandid.com!gate.bCandid.com!hub1.ispnews.com!typ12.nn.bcandid.com.POSTED!not-for-mail Flame of the West wrote: > > "James Russell Kuyper Jr." wrote: > > > It wouldn't matter if they did. A false belief in a single God is still > > monotheism, because you believe him to be God, and because you only > > allow for one of them. Can you cite a dictionary definition for > > monotheism that makes validity of the belief one of the criteria? > > Whatever the dictionary says, it is a common usage to describe > as "the monotheistic religions" those that worship the God of > Abraham, namely Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. (No validity of > belief is implied.) There may be other religions in the world that > worship one god (e.g. sun-worship), but they are commonly > called "pagan" even though they satisfy the literal definition of > "monotheism." Yes. They are also called monotheistic, because as you say, they satisfy the literal definition of monotheism. You seem to have reached the false conclusion that pagan and monotheistic are opposites. They describe completely different characteristics of a religion. Pagan has several different meanings, one of which is "neither Christian, Jewish, nor Muslim", another is "non-Christian", and a third is "non-believer". However, not a single one of those definitions refers to the number of gods believed in. According to the first two definitions, if you're not a pagan, you are a monotheist, but the reverse doesn't hold. However, even that connection doesn't hold up under the third definition. You can't argue from common use on this matter; monotheistic pagan religions are scarce enough that there is no common use. On questions of the definitions of words, if reference to an authoritative dictionary is not sufficient to resolve a disagreement, then there's no point in arguing. ###### Message-ID: <37C3EA2A.C85B3A3A@wizard.net> From: "James Kuyper Jr." Organization: Not Enough X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.61 [en] (WinNT; I) X-Accept-Language: en,de,es,ru MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.tolkien Subject: Re: Elvish birth control (was: New Elves) References: <19990823143614.15888.00001522@ngol06.aol.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 35 NNTP-Posting-Host: 206.161.15.68 X-Trace: typ12.nn.bcandid.com 935585998 206.161.15.68 (Wed, 25 Aug 1999 08:59:58 EDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 25 Aug 1999 08:59:58 EDT Date: Wed, 25 Aug 1999 09:05:46 -0400 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!isdnet!newsfeed.cwix.com!gw12.nn.bcandid.com!gw22.nn.bcandid.com!gate.bCandid.com!hub1.ispnews.com!typ12.nn.bcandid.com.POSTED!not-for-mail Matthew Collett wrote: ... > I think the word you are looking for here is 'henotheism', the worship of > one god. Some differences between henotheism and monotheism (_belief_ in > one God) are: > 1. The henotheist's god is immanent (part of the Universe), while the > monotheist's is transcendent (beyond time and space). In consequence, > > 2. the henotheist may believe either that there are many gods, but only > one is worth worshipping, or that there is as a matter of fact only one > god; the monotheist believes that the existence of more than one God is > logically impossible. So further, > > 3. different monotheistic religions are implicitly just different opinions > about the nature and correct worship of the same God; but different > henotheistic relgions may actually be worshipping different gods, and may > even accept the existence of one another's. > > From a philosophical or theological point of view, henotheism is close to > paganism or other forms of polytheism -- you can think of it as polytheism > with n=1. In practice, it's more like a sort of halfway point between > polytheism and monotheism, which can in time evolve into one or the other. Another way to put it is that a henoist is a polytheist; he believes in multiple gods, but has chosen one particular one of them to worship. Sort of like rooting for the home team in baseball. > In the context of Tolkien's Middle-Earth: Eru/Illuvatar is God and worship > of him is monotheism; Morgoth is a god and exclusive worship of him is > henotheism. Why? Morgoth worshiper's did not believe in multiple gods, with theirs as the only one worth worshipping. They believed that he was in fact the Creator, that the Valar were beings of a lesser order than him, and that Eru was a fiction created by the Valar. ###### From: Flame of the West Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.tolkien Subject: Re: Elvish birth control (was: New Elves) Date: Wed, 25 Aug 1999 10:17:30 -0400 Lines: 33 Message-ID: <37C3FAF5.544A648B@erols.com> References: <37c3102a.142819631@news.pc-intouch.com> <19990824183321.15205.00002103@ngol07.aol.com> <37c375e4.168865127@news.pc-intouch.com> Reply-To: jsolinas@erols.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; x-mac-type="54455854"; x-mac-creator="4D4F5353" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: F0fRbzPV726UppYbMZq86U6IQpJGYP1t3J0ZVukEfH4= X-Complaints-To: abuse@rcn.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 25 Aug 1999 14:42:22 GMT X-Accept-Language: en X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.5 (Macintosh; I; PPC) Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!newsfeed-zh.ip-plus.net!news.ip-plus.net!News.Amsterdam.UnisourceCS!uunet!ams.uu.net!do.de.uu.net!newsfeed.tli.de!newsfeed.cwix.com!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!not-for-mail Mark Wells wrote: > McREsq wrote: > > >In all honesty, I think you're grasping to find the satirization of elements of > >modern religion in the worship of Morgoth. That would have been utterly > >besides the point of the story. Worship of morgoth wasn't bad because it was > >too formalized; it was bad because Morgoth was evil and he wasn't God > > If the problem with the worship of Morgoth had nothing to do with the > fact that it was formalized, why was Sauron so insistent that they > formalize it? these all come down to the issue of *control*. By > setting up Morgothism as an organized religion, Sauron ensured that he > could use it to control people. > > In fact, the historical record of our world shows that organized > religion (Catholic and otherwise) is frequently used for exactly that > purpose. Yes, a religious organization *can* be used for that purpose. Many things can be used either for good or for evil. But that doesn't mean it must be, or that the thing is inherently evil. More to the point, there isn't a shred of evidence that Tolkien intended Morgoth-worship as an allegory of the Catholic Church in order to demonize it for being an organized institution. -- FotW "My opinions may have changed, but not the fact that I am right." ###### From: Flame of the West Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.tolkien Subject: Re: Elvish birth control (was: New Elves) Date: Wed, 25 Aug 1999 10:36:28 -0400 Lines: 33 Message-ID: <37C3FF66.EF651BB4@erols.com> References: <37c20a4b.75770177@news.pc-intouch.com> <19990824103907.01527.00001848@ngol08.aol.com> <37c3102a.142819631@news.pc-intouch.com> Reply-To: jsolinas@erols.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; x-mac-type="54455854"; x-mac-creator="4D4F5353" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: F0fRbzPV725qt75Low2PX5SEtN5cUBbykrBNug8Kyms= X-Complaints-To: abuse@rcn.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 25 Aug 1999 14:42:25 GMT X-Accept-Language: en X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.5 (Macintosh; I; PPC) Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!newsfeed-zh.ip-plus.net!news.ip-plus.net!News.Amsterdam.UnisourceCS!uunet!ams.uu.net!do.de.uu.net!newsfeed.tli.de!news.maxwell.syr.edu!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!not-for-mail Mark Wells wrote: > I mentioned John Calvin to say that *Tolkien* may have had something > against the Catholic Church. Yes, I know he called himself a devout > Catholic. What I mean is that he may have believed in the Church's > ideas but had some problems with certain aspects of how they were > being implemented--specifically, those aspects that he seemed to > satirize in 'Akallabeth'. I'm afraid you're not understanding Catholicism very well if you draw such a distinction between the Church's "ideas" and its organization (which is what you seem to mean by "how they were being implemented"). The Church is not a set of ideas along with a handy organization for implementing them. The Church *is* the organization. You can't take away the institution and be left with a set of coherent Catholic "ideas." That sort of dichotomy is from the Protestant view of Christianity. No serious and informed Catholic would take the Church to task for being organized; such organization is implicit in the Catholic view of what Christianity *is*. Since Tolkien was a loyal and informed Catholic, the idea of his criticizing the Church for being an institution via a Morgoth-worship allegory is simply preposterous. *You* may find it a handy tool for criticizing Catholicism, but it's simply absurd to imagine Tolkien doing so. -- FotW "My opinions may have changed, but not the fact that I am right." ###### From: "RLV" Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.tolkien Subject: Re: Elvish birth control (was: New Elves) Date: Wed, 25 Aug 1999 13:46:37 +0200 Organization: Telefonica Transmision de Datos Lines: 33 Message-ID: <7q0l0e$k5m$1@diana.bcn.ttd.net> References: <37C20E45.9CC2BBE3@wizard.net> <19990824103905.01527.00001847@ngol08.aol.com> <37C2CA8C.22A9115B@wizard.net> <37C35D08.FCD70956@erols.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: tn174-118.tinn.net X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 4.72.3110.5 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V4.72.3110.3 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news-fra1.dfn.de!news0.de.colt.net!colt.net!newsfeed.icl.net!news.algonet.se!algonet!masternews.telia.net!newsfeed.bcn.ttd.net!news.bcn.ttd.net!not-for-mail Flame of the West escribió en mensaje <37C35D08.FCD70956@erols.com>... >"James Russell Kuyper Jr." wrote: >Whatever the dictionary says, it is a common usage to describe >as "the monotheistic religions" those that worship the God of >Abraham, namely Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. (No validity of >belief is implied.) There may be other religions in the world that >worship one god (e.g. sun-worship), but they are commonly >called "pagan" even though they satisfy the literal definition of >"monotheism." > >According to this common usage, worship of Eru was monotheistic >since "Eru" is just the Quenya name for the Judeo-Christian God. I'm afraid this usage of "monotheistic" would be common usage only among Jews, Christians and Muslims. I would apply monotheism to any one-god religion. This is how it is commonly used in history and sociology books. About "pagan" there is more leeway, and it's used more like you say: applied to any non-Christian/Jew/Muslim religion, even if it is not exactly correct. R.L.V. ~~#~~ "Tilde Power!" ###### From: mcresq@aol.com (McREsq) Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.tolkien Subject: Re: Elvish birth control (was: New Elves) Lines: 14 NNTP-Posting-Host: ladder05.news.aol.com X-Admin: news@aol.com Date: 25 Aug 1999 13:56:27 GMT References: Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com X-Newsreader: AOL Offline Reader Message-ID: <19990825095627.15873.00001783@ngol06.aol.com> Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!howland.erols.net!portc02.blue.aol.com!audrey01.news.aol.com!not-for-mail In article , m.collett@auckland.ac.nz (Matthew Collett) writes: >In the context of Tolkien's Middle-Earth: Eru/Illuvatar is God and worship >of him is monotheism; Morgoth is a god and exclusive worship of him is >henotheism. > >Best wishes, >Matthew Collett Very interesting. Thanks for the information Russ ###### From: mcresq@aol.com (McREsq) Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.tolkien Subject: Re: Elvish birth control (was: New Elves) Lines: 42 NNTP-Posting-Host: ladder06.news.aol.com X-Admin: news@aol.com Date: 25 Aug 1999 15:38:26 GMT References: <37C3FF66.EF651BB4@erols.com> Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com X-Newsreader: AOL Offline Reader Message-ID: <19990825113826.05899.00002610@ngol03.aol.com> Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!howland.erols.net!portc02.blue.aol.com!audrey03.news.aol.com!not-for-mail In article <37C3FF66.EF651BB4@erols.com>, Flame of the West writes: >> I mentioned John Calvin to say that *Tolkien* may have had something >> against the Catholic Church. Yes, I know he called himself a devout >> Catholic. What I mean is that he may have believed in the Church's >> ideas but had some problems with certain aspects of how they were >> being implemented--specifically, those aspects that he seemed to >> satirize in 'Akallabeth'. > >I'm afraid you're not understanding Catholicism very well if you >draw such a distinction between the Church's "ideas" and its >organization (which is what you seem to mean by "how they >were being implemented"). The Church is not a set of ideas >along with a handy organization for implementing them. The >Church *is* the organization. You can't take away the institution >and be left with a set of coherent Catholic "ideas." That sort of >dichotomy is from the Protestant view of Christianity. No serious >and informed Catholic would take the Church to task for being >organized; such organization is implicit in the Catholic view of >what Christianity *is*. > >Since Tolkien was a loyal and informed Catholic, the idea of >his criticizing the Church for being an institution via a >Morgoth-worship allegory is simply preposterous. *You* >may find it a handy tool for criticizing Catholicism, but it's >simply absurd to imagine Tolkien doing so. > You're correct. In Letters, Tolkien alludes to some problems he was with certain members of the Church (hierarchy, I presume); however, he is quite clear that that criticism is not directed against the Church as an institution. The arguments put forward by Messrs Wells and Kuypers ignore two central facts - Tolkien said he didn't write allegory and there is simply no explicit ciriticism of the Church as an institution in any of his writings. They are creating an unsupported fiction (one contradicted by Tolkien himself) by arguing that Tolkien was writing an allegory of the Catholic Church when he described the institutional practices of Morgoth worship. Russ ###### From: m.collett@auckland.ac.nz (Matthew Collett) Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.tolkien Subject: Re: Elvish birth control (was: New Elves) Date: Wed, 25 Aug 1999 18:06:20 +1200 Organization: Physics Department, University of Auckland Lines: 49 Message-ID: References: <19990823143614.15888.00001522@ngol06.aol.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: mjc.phy.auckland.ac.nz X-Trace: scream.auckland.ac.nz 935561152 26831 130.216.7.157 (25 Aug 1999 06:05:52 GMT) X-Complaints-To: news@auckland.ac.nz NNTP-Posting-Date: 25 Aug 1999 06:05:52 GMT X-Newsreader: MT-NewsWatcher 2.4 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!newsfeed-zh.ip-plus.net!news.ip-plus.net!news.datacomm.ch!newscore.gigabell.net!newscore.ipf.de!newsfeed.icl.net!newsfeed.axxsys.net!newsfeed.direct.ca!usenet.net.nz!news.iprolink.co.nz!auckland.ac.nz!m.collett In article <19990823143614.15888.00001522@ngol06.aol.com>, mcresq@aol.com (McREsq) wrote: >In article , >mark@colpanic.office.pc-intouch.com (Mark Wells) writes: > >>Oh, and I'd call the worship of Morgoth monotheistic. There's only one >>Morgoth. > >The opposite of monotheism is polytheism, not paganism. Worship of Morgoth was >not monotheistic. [snip] > I >guess you could call it monopaganism. > I think the word you are looking for here is 'henotheism', the worship of one god. Some differences between henotheism and monotheism (_belief_ in one God) are: 1. The henotheist's god is immanent (part of the Universe), while the monotheist's is transcendent (beyond time and space). In consequence, 2. the henotheist may believe either that there are many gods, but only one is worth worshipping, or that there is as a matter of fact only one god; the monotheist believes that the existence of more than one God is logically impossible. So further, 3. different monotheistic religions are implicitly just different opinions about the nature and correct worship of the same God; but different henotheistic relgions may actually be worshipping different gods, and may even accept the existence of one another's. From a philosophical or theological point of view, henotheism is close to paganism or other forms of polytheism -- you can think of it as polytheism with n=1. In practice, it's more like a sort of halfway point between polytheism and monotheism, which can in time evolve into one or the other. In the context of Tolkien's Middle-Earth: Eru/Illuvatar is God and worship of him is monotheism; Morgoth is a god and exclusive worship of him is henotheism. Best wishes, Matthew Collett -- The word "reality" is generally used with the intention of evoking sentiment. -- Arthur Eddington ###### Message-ID: <37C4C120.C6CF0219@wizard.net> From: "James Kuyper Jr." Organization: Not Enough X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.61 [en] (WinNT; I) X-Accept-Language: en,de,es,ru MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.tolkien Subject: Re: Elvish birth control (was: New Elves) References: <37C3FF66.EF651BB4@erols.com> <19990825113826.05899.00002610@ngol03.aol.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 25 NNTP-Posting-Host: 206.161.15.102 X-Trace: typ12.nn.bcandid.com 935641021 206.161.15.102 (Thu, 26 Aug 1999 00:17:01 EDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 26 Aug 1999 00:17:01 EDT Date: Thu, 26 Aug 1999 00:22:56 -0400 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!newsfeed-zh.ip-plus.net!news.ip-plus.net!News.Amsterdam.UnisourceCS!skynet.be!hermes.visi.com!news-out.visi.com!gw12.nn.bcandid.com!gate.bCandid.com!hub1.ispnews.com!typ12.nn.bcandid.com.POSTED!not-for-mail McREsq wrote: ... > The arguments put forward by Messrs Wells and Kuypers ignore two central facts > - Tolkien said he didn't write allegory and there is simply no explicit > ciriticism of the Church as an institution in any of his writings. They are > creating an unsupported fiction (one contradicted by Tolkien himself) by > arguing that Tolkien was writing an allegory of the Catholic Church when he > described the institutional practices of Morgoth worship. I've never agreed with Mark Well's implication that some aspects of Morgoth worship were meant to taken as criticism of corresponding features of Catholic church. In fact, I hadn't even realized that this was what he meant until his message of two levels back on this thread. I'd previously assumed that he was merely commenting on the correspondence, not as suggesting that it was intentional, nor that it was meant as criticism. What I was defending was the appropriateness of his making that comment, given that he believed the correspondence existed. On the flip side, I've never taken Tolkien's comments against allegory to be absolute, merely an indication of his preferences. I've made no attempt to analyze all of his works to determine whether there were any allegories, but I'd be very surprised if there were in fact none. He's written too much, and he's too good a writer to have completely ignored one of the standard tools of the trade. ###### Message-ID: <37C4CFD7.D6C11040@wizard.net> From: "James Kuyper Jr." Organization: Not Enough X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.61 [en] (WinNT; I) X-Accept-Language: en,de,es,ru MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.tolkien Subject: Re: Elvish birth control (was: New Elves) References: <19990823143614.15888.00001522@ngol06.aol.com> <37C3EA2A.C85B3A3A@wizard.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 19 NNTP-Posting-Host: 206.161.15.102 X-Trace: typ12.nn.bcandid.com 935644794 206.161.15.102 (Thu, 26 Aug 1999 01:19:54 EDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 26 Aug 1999 01:19:54 EDT Date: Thu, 26 Aug 1999 01:25:43 -0400 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!gw12.nn.bcandid.com!gate.bCandid.com!hub1.ispnews.com!typ12.nn.bcandid.com.POSTED!not-for-mail Matthew Collett wrote: ... > I think this depends on details of individual beliefs. If a > Morgoth-worshipper worships because he believes that Morgoth is the > (necessarily unique) transcendent creator of everything, then I would The exact beliefs of Morgoth worshippers are not described, but Sauron described Morgoth as the "Lord of All", which was properly Eru's title, and which sounds fairly transcendent to me. > accept that he is a monotheist and is actually worshipping Eru under the > incorrect[*] name 'Morgoth'. If he worships just because he believes that > Morgoth is the 'top guy', perhaps older and enormously more powerful than > the Valar, perhaps even directly responsible for the creation of the world > (like the Platonic demiurge), but still 'part of the system', then he is a > henotheist. I can agree with that, but I don't see anything suggesting that this was the mode he was worshipped in. ###### From: mark@pc-intouch.com (Mark Wells) Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.tolkien Subject: Re: Elvish birth control (was: New Elves) Organization: PC-InTOUCH Linux Conspiracy Message-ID: <37c4d468.258611017@news.pc-intouch.com> References: <37C3FF66.EF651BB4@erols.com> <19990825113826.05899.00002610@ngol03.aol.com> <37C4C120.C6CF0219@wizard.net> X-Newsreader: Forte Free Agent 1.11/32.235 X-Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: 1-71.dialup.pc-intouch.com Lines: 12 Date: Thu, 26 Aug 1999 05:47:15 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 207.212.198.18 X-Complaints-To: abuse@pacbell.net X-Trace: typhoon-la.pbi.net 935646232 207.212.198.18 (Wed, 25 Aug 1999 22:43:52 PDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 25 Aug 1999 22:43:52 PDT Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!newsfeed.berkeley.edu!cyclone.swbell.net!typhoon-la.pbi.net.POSTED!not-for-mail On Thu, 26 Aug 1999 00:22:56 -0400, "James Kuyper Jr." wrote: >I've never agreed with Mark Well's implication that some aspects of >Morgoth worship were meant to taken as criticism of corresponding >features of Catholic church. In fact, I hadn't even realized that this >was what he meant until his message of two levels back on this thread. Neither did I. I should be careful typing when I haven't had much sleep. ###### From: mark@pc-intouch.com (Mark Wells) Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.tolkien Subject: Re: Elvish birth control (was: New Elves) Organization: PC-InTOUCH Linux Conspiracy Message-ID: <37c4d4f8.258754415@news.pc-intouch.com> References: <19990823143614.15888.00001522@ngol06.aol.com> <37C3EA2A.C85B3A3A@wizard.net> <37C4CFD7.D6C11040@wizard.net> X-Newsreader: Forte Free Agent 1.11/32.235 X-Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: 1-71.dialup.pc-intouch.com Lines: 16 Date: Thu, 26 Aug 1999 05:49:17 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 207.212.198.18 X-Complaints-To: abuse@pacbell.net X-Trace: typhoon-la.pbi.net 935646394 207.212.198.18 (Wed, 25 Aug 1999 22:46:34 PDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 25 Aug 1999 22:46:34 PDT Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!newsfeed.berkeley.edu!cyclone.swbell.net!typhoon-la.pbi.net.POSTED!not-for-mail On Thu, 26 Aug 1999 01:25:43 -0400, "James Kuyper Jr." wrote: >Matthew Collett wrote: >... >> I think this depends on details of individual beliefs. If a >> Morgoth-worshipper worships because he believes that Morgoth is the >> (necessarily unique) transcendent creator of everything, then I would > >The exact beliefs of Morgoth worshippers are not described, but Sauron >described Morgoth as the "Lord of All", which was properly Eru's title, >and which sounds fairly transcendent to me. It's also similar to the way Morgoth described himself to Húrin, so I would guess that Morgoth actually believed that he *was* the Lord of All. ###### From: m.collett@auckland.ac.nz (Matthew Collett) Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.tolkien Subject: Re: Elvish birth control (was: New Elves) Date: Thu, 26 Aug 1999 13:39:21 +1200 Organization: Physics Department, University of Auckland Lines: 41 Message-ID: References: <19990823143614.15888.00001522@ngol06.aol.com> <37C3EA2A.C85B3A3A@wizard.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: mjc.phy.auckland.ac.nz X-Trace: scream.auckland.ac.nz 935631559 20928 130.216.7.157 (26 Aug 1999 01:39:19 GMT) X-Complaints-To: news@auckland.ac.nz NNTP-Posting-Date: 26 Aug 1999 01:39:19 GMT X-Newsreader: MT-NewsWatcher 2.4 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!newsfeed-zh.ip-plus.net!news.ip-plus.net!News.Amsterdam.UnisourceCS!skynet.be!ihug.co.nz!news.iprolink.co.nz!auckland.ac.nz!m.collett In article <37C3EA2A.C85B3A3A@wizard.net>, "James Kuyper Jr." wrote: >Matthew Collett wrote: > >> In the context of Tolkien's Middle-Earth: Eru/Illuvatar is God and worship >> of him is monotheism; Morgoth is a god and exclusive worship of him is >> henotheism. > >Why? Morgoth worshiper's did not believe in multiple gods, with theirs >as the only one worth worshipping. They believed that he was in fact the >Creator, that the Valar were beings of a lesser order than him, and that >Eru was a fiction created by the Valar. I think this depends on details of individual beliefs. If a Morgoth-worshipper worships because he believes that Morgoth is the (necessarily unique) transcendent creator of everything, then I would accept that he is a monotheist and is actually worshipping Eru under the incorrect[*] name 'Morgoth'. If he worships just because he believes that Morgoth is the 'top guy', perhaps older and enormously more powerful than the Valar, perhaps even directly responsible for the creation of the world (like the Platonic demiurge), but still 'part of the system', then he is a henotheist. To reiterate the third point of my original post: there is no room for 'mistaken identity' when talking about a transcendent God. Either He exists, or He does not -- those are the only possibilities. Between different monotheistic religions it does not make sense to say 'My God exists but yours doesn't'. (This still permits e.g. 'You are mistaken about how God wants us to behave'.) Best wishes, Matthew Collett [*] This is the point at which any real-world parallels would differ: in ME we know that 'Eru' and 'Iluvatar' are names of God but that 'Morgoth' is not; in the real world we would not know this. -- The word "reality" is generally used with the intention of evoking sentiment. -- Arthur Eddington ###### From: mcresq@aol.com (McREsq) Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.tolkien Subject: Re: Elvish birth control (was: New Elves) Lines: 43 NNTP-Posting-Host: ladder07.news.aol.com X-Admin: news@aol.com Date: 26 Aug 1999 13:54:05 GMT References: <37C4C120.C6CF0219@wizard.net> Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com X-Newsreader: AOL Offline Reader Message-ID: <19990826095405.14753.00002202@ngol05.aol.com> Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!news.idt.net!news-peer.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!portc01.blue.aol.com!audrey01.news.aol.com!not-for-mail In article <37C4C120.C6CF0219@wizard.net>, "James Kuyper Jr." writes: >McREsq wrote: >... >> The arguments put forward by Messrs Wells and Kuypers ignore two central >facts >> - Tolkien said he didn't write allegory and there is simply no explicit >> ciriticism of the Church as an institution in any of his writings. They >are >> creating an unsupported fiction (one contradicted by Tolkien himself) by >> arguing that Tolkien was writing an allegory of the Catholic Church when he >> described the institutional practices of Morgoth worship. > >I've never agreed with Mark Well's implication that some aspects of >Morgoth worship were meant to taken as criticism of corresponding >features of Catholic church. In fact, I hadn't even realized that this >was what he meant until his message of two levels back on this thread. OK, fair enough >I'd previously assumed that he was merely commenting on the >correspondence, not as suggesting that it was intentional, nor that it >was meant as criticism. What I was defending was the appropriateness of >his making that comment, given that he believed the correspondence >existed. > >On the flip side, I've never taken Tolkien's comments against allegory >to be absolute, merely an indication of his preferences. I've made no >attempt to analyze all of his works to determine whether there were any >allegories, but I'd be very surprised if there were in fact none. He's >written too much, and he's too good a writer to have completely ignored >one of the standard tools of the trade. Well, I'll take his word for it until I get some evidence. All you're talking about here is speculation. Tolkien told us what his stories were about, so why try to find some allegorical realtionship to the Catholic Church. That is why it seemed to me just a shot at the Church because unless the allegation of allegory can be supported by some evidence (as opposed to speculation) that is precisely what it was. Russ