[davem]

Originally Posted by Raynor

This is pretty pointless, but I will ask anyway: how?

It is pretty pointless of course. You set up a false dilemma. 'How can one distinguish between two identical things?' We aren't dealing with two identical things - we were talking about two similar things.

I am not aware that reading a book merely as a fantasy novel precludes naturally identifying moral or religious elements.

Again, they may not be looking for such elements, they may not even care about such elements.

But surely you recognise that what is immoral is "torture of living beings" in itself.

Elves are not 'living beings'. Again, you're failing to distinguish between a reader's response to fictional characters in a fictional world & real people in the real world. You cannot claim the 'thought' behind the two events is identical - its like claiming that thinking about a blue car is the same as thinking about blue sky because both thoughts are about blue things.