I've just gotten out of a long 30-page arguement on religion, democracy, and homosexuality, then more recently on those nutty, nutty scientologists, and now this...
After reading through this, Im not sure if you people are agreeing or disagreeing with me, or if youre all just arguing amongst yourselves...
Just to make myself clear, Im going to state the fact that made me post the story here:
Im so tired of those people thinking everything is about them, and the person writing that story obviously believs that the one reason that lord of the rings has a positive message is because his god planted it there. Not because there are people out there with different beliefs who indeed can have good intentions by themselves. Sickening.
ShadowDancerWhen I say, "Why aye, gadgie," in my heart I say, "Och aye, laddie."London, UK
[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by Messiah [/i]
[B]......or if youre all just arguing amongst yourselves...[/B][/QUOTE]
nothing new there then!:p
[QUOTE]Just to make myself clear, Im going to state the fact that made me post the story here:
[/QUOTE] [QUOTE]Im so tired of those people thinking everything is about them, and the person writing that story obviously believs that the one reason that lord of the rings has a positive message is because his god planted it there. Not because there are people out there with different beliefs who indeed can have good intentions by themselves. Sickening.[/QUOTE]
The way i see it:
if there is an allmighty god, why on earth can 'he' only get 'his' message across in a frickin movie!?! i mean honestly! for someone who can part an ocean and all that stuff with the fish and wine! something a little more convincing shouldnt be that hard!
I read the article, its good, frankly I dont know what your peoples psycho problem is.
Ive felt the hand of god, he's been there while I faced down a man who raped children, drugged women and raped them, and easily resorted to violence.
He's been there as Ive tried to hold a family togeather who's child was just torn from them cruely.
As for Tolkien and god, read the histories, read the similiron, hell, if you have read it you realize that "the devine" laces the ENTIRETY of Tolkeins work, it his annotated notes he even jots down mention of god, and most importantly of the fact that morality is an absolute. There was a god in the LotR universe, who do you think granted power to the wizards? shit, if you read the whole thing you realize the wizards were not men at all, I mean not just the trillogy, but the histories and other books.
Religon is sometimes the cloak that wars wear, but more often it was about money and power. LOOK at the 20th century, none of the wars the US took part in were religiously motivated. There was no religious overtones to WWII, the single most bloodies conflict in all of human history, the war that when you calculate its total cost in bloody probably cost more lives then all of mans previous wars combined.
oh and Entil'Zha, bring your revolution, and it will not be those of us with faith against the wall. Ive got my M1a cleaned and ready, and a load bearing vest with 10 magazines. You ready to fight and die for what you believe? Ive already proved to myself I can do that, how about you?
seeing as how most of what he wrote was based in part on the western exprience, I think you could argue that it was mostly Christianity that fueled those religious undertones. I think though that the article argues more that its not about him, but rather about God, the argument that human beings alone come up with good thoughts is saying its only about us.
The original article was written by a WOMAN so stop saying "he wrote" and "he said"
sorry, its my sexist rant for the day :)
Biggles<font color=#AAFFAA>The Man Without a Face</font>
There are direct parallels between the structure of beings in Tolkein's work and the structure of beings in christianity. There was a god, the god had a host of angels. Some of the angels went bad and became the enemy. One of these was the leader and direct enemy. Sauron was one of his servents. There were the wizards, who were sent to Middleearth to help out (think prophets). The only major difference I can think of is that in Tolkein's work there is no direct promotion of that the way Christianity and other religions are promoted.
[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by Phi [/i]
[B]I finally found the article...read this a few months ago when RotK just came out. Shall we say, it's the other point of view.
Well, after reading that article, I believe this sums up my view succinctly:
:noidea:
"What disturbs me is the film's religiosity."
*snickers* [i]religiosity??[/i] Is that even a word? Someone please define this one for me :rolleyes: As for the rest, forget about how you feel about religion, this Johnson person's basically taken the tunnel-vision approach to LOTR. He's chosen to see some religious metaphors in the movie, then that must be the only way of looking at it. What a moron :p
Considering the fact that Tolkiens main source of inspiration according to himself was the nordic mythology, I dont think many parallells should be drawn from christianity. The morals of old norse mythology was much the same as these so called christian morals. Believe me.
First sorry if I said he when its she, I never really look at. second Tolkien does make many references to his faith in letters he worte to various people of the times. While he may have used nordic myths for the actual dramatic representation of LoTR in things like elves, dwarfs etc.. the influence of Christian ideas about moral absolutes, and the nature of evil make up a huge part of the underlying message of the book.
Having said that I will concede that nordic myths may have a similarity to Christian dogma since it is my beleif that most of our religious ideas are rooted in certain universal principles such as hope, love, good and evil.
Biggles<font color=#AAFFAA>The Man Without a Face</font>
[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by Messiah [/i]
[B]Considering the fact that Tolkiens main source of inspiration according to himself was the nordic mythology, I dont think many parallells should be drawn from christianity. The morals of old norse mythology was much the same as these so called christian morals. Believe me. [/B][/QUOTE]
I never said they were intentionally direct parallels. :) The same structure could be easily applied to nordic mythology as well, with the pantheon of gods and so forth.
I seem to remember reading somewhere, that Tolkien himself cautioned not to try and read too much into the plot and subtext of the story, that in the end it was just a story. Now I believe that more in reference to those proclaiming that LOTR was a metaphor for the cold war arms race, but still, I think its appropriate.
If you looked at Star War (just the episode 4-6 anyway) you could draw many of the same conclusions as the first author did for LOTR, such as a clear view of right and wrong.
Good stories and legends, those that stick around for the ages, tend to deal with abosolute morality.
Jake
Biggles<font color=#AAFFAA>The Man Without a Face</font>
That is absolutely true. Because morality is a big part of religion, and because good stories often involve it in some way, many people will assume that it was put there for religious reasons.
right, then maybe its more of a universal concept of morality that gets into our stories wether we are concious of them or not. And they last in our collective culture because they resonate with something deep inside us all.
Biggles<font color=#AAFFAA>The Man Without a Face</font>
Probably. Also, we are most of us brought up in a culture that teaches those morals right from the start, so they get pretty deeply embedded in you, whether you actually follow them or not.
Stepping away from the Fictional work(s) for a moment, what I find amusing in a sad way is how most "Christians" have no knowledge of the long and narrow path it has taken to create this thing we call Christianity.
For example, without Jews, Israel, Judaism, the prophets, the Babylonians, the Egyptians, etc etc etc There would be no Christianity, since Jesus was a Jew.
How can a Christian forsake Jesus for one, and second forsake Israel and the Jewish brothers in the other.
But that goes off on it's own tangent. I have to chuckle when someone claims they are a Chrsitian, and then in the same breath say that they doubt Jesus even walked the Earth, and that all his wisdom are childrens stories.
The problem is Western Culture at the core... Christianity in it's truest from doesn't exist, or is very small in population.
Did Tolkien imply Christian concepts in the LOTR writings, likely, but I say again that only he will really know when all is said and done.
I do have to agree with some of the comments made about Hollywood, but I don't take it to the level that the Author of that Article does...
[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by Freejack [/i]
[B]I seem to remember reading somewhere, that Tolkien himself cautioned not to try and read too much into the plot and subtext of the story, that in the end it was just a story.[/B][/QUOTE]
You probably read that in his foreward to the LOTR. He empatically states that this is not an allegory, either Christian, national (WWII), industrial vs. rural, etc. It was his myth to explain the language he was inventing.
[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by Biggles [/i]
[B]Because morality is a big part of religion, and because good stories often involve it in some way, many people will assume that it was put there for religious reasons.[/B][/QUOTE]
I agree with this, that seeing morality, especially western morality, many people associate it with Christianity. I don't think they are the same by any means, though.
I also think it was the lack of morality in the movie that made it less of an epic than the novel. I'm beginning to think this is what I've been perceiving as the characters change in motivation between the book and film.
JackN, I agree with what you're saying.
Dang, another discussion where we're acting (resonably) civil. What's happened to this place? ;)
Oh, and thanks for the clarification, MartianDust. :)
Biggles<font color=#AAFFAA>The Man Without a Face</font>
[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by bobo [/i]
[B]Dang, another discussion where we're acting (resonably) civil. What's happened to this place? ;) [/B][/QUOTE]
Comments
too much religion already >_<
Just to make myself clear, Im going to state the fact that made me post the story here:
Im so tired of those people thinking everything is about them, and the person writing that story obviously believs that the one reason that lord of the rings has a positive message is because his god planted it there. Not because there are people out there with different beliefs who indeed can have good intentions by themselves. Sickening.
[B]......or if youre all just arguing amongst yourselves...[/B][/QUOTE]
nothing new there then!:p
[QUOTE]Just to make myself clear, Im going to state the fact that made me post the story here:
[/QUOTE] [QUOTE]Im so tired of those people thinking everything is about them, and the person writing that story obviously believs that the one reason that lord of the rings has a positive message is because his god planted it there. Not because there are people out there with different beliefs who indeed can have good intentions by themselves. Sickening.[/QUOTE]
The way i see it:
if there is an allmighty god, why on earth can 'he' only get 'his' message across in a frickin movie!?! i mean honestly! for someone who can part an ocean and all that stuff with the fish and wine! something a little more convincing shouldnt be that hard!
Ive felt the hand of god, he's been there while I faced down a man who raped children, drugged women and raped them, and easily resorted to violence.
He's been there as Ive tried to hold a family togeather who's child was just torn from them cruely.
As for Tolkien and god, read the histories, read the similiron, hell, if you have read it you realize that "the devine" laces the ENTIRETY of Tolkeins work, it his annotated notes he even jots down mention of god, and most importantly of the fact that morality is an absolute. There was a god in the LotR universe, who do you think granted power to the wizards? shit, if you read the whole thing you realize the wizards were not men at all, I mean not just the trillogy, but the histories and other books.
Religon is sometimes the cloak that wars wear, but more often it was about money and power. LOOK at the 20th century, none of the wars the US took part in were religiously motivated. There was no religious overtones to WWII, the single most bloodies conflict in all of human history, the war that when you calculate its total cost in bloody probably cost more lives then all of mans previous wars combined.
oh and Entil'Zha, bring your revolution, and it will not be those of us with faith against the wall. Ive got my M1a cleaned and ready, and a load bearing vest with 10 magazines. You ready to fight and die for what you believe? Ive already proved to myself I can do that, how about you?
* throws a [COLOR=green]GREEN[/COLOR] grenade. *
* Runs away *
sorry, its my sexist rant for the day :)
[B]I finally found the article...read this a few months ago when RotK just came out. Shall we say, it's the other point of view.
[URL]http://www.macleans.ca/culture/films/article.jsp?content=20031222_71899_71899[/URL]
-Φ [/B][/QUOTE]
Well, after reading that article, I believe this sums up my view succinctly:
:noidea:
"What disturbs me is the film's religiosity."
*snickers* [i]religiosity??[/i] Is that even a word? Someone please define this one for me :rolleyes: As for the rest, forget about how you feel about religion, this Johnson person's basically taken the tunnel-vision approach to LOTR. He's chosen to see some religious metaphors in the movie, then that must be the only way of looking at it. What a moron :p
Having said that I will concede that nordic myths may have a similarity to Christian dogma since it is my beleif that most of our religious ideas are rooted in certain universal principles such as hope, love, good and evil.
[B]Considering the fact that Tolkiens main source of inspiration according to himself was the nordic mythology, I dont think many parallells should be drawn from christianity. The morals of old norse mythology was much the same as these so called christian morals. Believe me. [/B][/QUOTE]
I never said they were intentionally direct parallels. :) The same structure could be easily applied to nordic mythology as well, with the pantheon of gods and so forth.
If you looked at Star War (just the episode 4-6 anyway) you could draw many of the same conclusions as the first author did for LOTR, such as a clear view of right and wrong.
Good stories and legends, those that stick around for the ages, tend to deal with abosolute morality.
Jake
For example, without Jews, Israel, Judaism, the prophets, the Babylonians, the Egyptians, etc etc etc There would be no Christianity, since Jesus was a Jew.
How can a Christian forsake Jesus for one, and second forsake Israel and the Jewish brothers in the other.
But that goes off on it's own tangent. I have to chuckle when someone claims they are a Chrsitian, and then in the same breath say that they doubt Jesus even walked the Earth, and that all his wisdom are childrens stories.
The problem is Western Culture at the core... Christianity in it's truest from doesn't exist, or is very small in population.
Did Tolkien imply Christian concepts in the LOTR writings, likely, but I say again that only he will really know when all is said and done.
I do have to agree with some of the comments made about Hollywood, but I don't take it to the level that the Author of that Article does...
;)
[B]I seem to remember reading somewhere, that Tolkien himself cautioned not to try and read too much into the plot and subtext of the story, that in the end it was just a story.[/B][/QUOTE]
You probably read that in his foreward to the LOTR. He empatically states that this is not an allegory, either Christian, national (WWII), industrial vs. rural, etc. It was his myth to explain the language he was inventing.
[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by Biggles [/i]
[B]Because morality is a big part of religion, and because good stories often involve it in some way, many people will assume that it was put there for religious reasons.[/B][/QUOTE]
I agree with this, that seeing morality, especially western morality, many people associate it with Christianity. I don't think they are the same by any means, though.
I also think it was the lack of morality in the movie that made it less of an epic than the novel. I'm beginning to think this is what I've been perceiving as the characters change in motivation between the book and film.
JackN, I agree with what you're saying.
Dang, another discussion where we're acting (resonably) civil. What's happened to this place? ;)
[B]Dang, another discussion where we're acting (resonably) civil. What's happened to this place? ;) [/B][/QUOTE]
Nothing. We've always been weird like that. :)