de-conversion

Lord Of The Rings’ Heretics

RL Wemm recently posted this analogy here on de-conversion.com in response to an anonymous theist. It seemed worthy of being its own article, so with a few touch-ups (including two italicized additions of my own), here it is. (Thanks RL.)

Imagine if the people you trusted and looked up to believed that the Lord of the Rings was a work of fact, and imagine that you had lived your early life as if this were true. Then imagine the turmoil you would feel as you gradually discovered that the stories just did not gel with reality without an unacceptable degree of “special pleading”. Imagine your consternation and discomfort upon recognizing that Gandalf’s self-sacrifice made no logical sense given the other properties which he was supposed to have; that Sauron is an unrealistically one-dimensional character (all bad); that the archeologist who discovered the site of Rivendell was likely to have been mistaken and that Frodo may not have actually existed.

Then imagine that your community has deified Bilbo as the Real Son of Gandalf, and Frodo as the Real Son of Bilbo. Imagine that Bilbo, Frodo, Gandalf, and Sauron have been imbued with a whole lot of magical and personal characteristics that are at variance with the descriptions of these characters provided in many sections of the Holy Books of the Rings. Imagine that your community tells you that it is the Evil Mind of Sauron that makes you aware of these inconsistencies and that dwelling on them is a sin that will result in eternal torture for you in the furnace of Mt. Doom along with the Unholy Ring…

Continue Reading May 12, 2009 at 5:13 pm LeoPardus 60 comments