[littlemanpoet]

Originally Posted by Raynor

Although I very much enjoy a debate, it should be noted that this was far from what Tolkien intended with this "imaginative invention", that is, to present some of his apprehension of the world. He didn't put very much effort into synchronizing primary and secondary reality and he didn't expect much of it.

By saying this you seem to be implying that there is no need to resolve contradictions. If so, there is no debate, period. Any assertion may be made, and no one can contradict it on any evidence whatsoever.

I believe you are contradicting yourself, since surely any surviving evil Maia, still interacting with Arda, would definitely qualify as a mythological incarnation of evil - an instance which cannot be accepted based on Tolkien's quote.

If you imply above that which I have inferred, my so-called contradiction doesn't matter. If not, then you are hoist with your own pitard, for I was arguing from your assertion that there have been no mythological incarnations of evil since Sauron; if we accept the evidence of the worldwide mythologies, there indeed were.

Some may even accept that all these stories are true, but have not manifested themselves on the material level, but on more subtle ones.

What precisely are those accepting who hold to this view?

Okay, the above was in part facetious. What follows is serious.

I would say that we evolved even morally. Many things that would have been accepted as normal decades or centuries ago are not so anymore (at least for the average person, disregarding what some politicians do or pass as laws). Human rights have taken great leaps forward, and even if there is much to fear today, there is also much reason for hope. I, for one, am not pessimist, but I hold to the idea that, "if we are indeed the Eruhin, the Children of the One, then He will not suffer Himself to be deprived of His own, not by any Enemy, not even by ourselves".

An assertion that humans have evolved morally is, sad to say, "gobtwiddle". The 20th century was a span of one hundred years in which the largest number of humans died unjustly at the hands of others, through war and genocide: World War One. World War Two. The Korean War. The Vietnam War. The India/Pakistan wars. Stalin's murder of tens of millions of Ukrainians. Hitler's murder of six million Jews. The Killing Fields of Campuchia. Mao Tse Tung's genocide of tens of millions of Chinese. Drug Cartels. Enslavement of young women internationally. Child pornography. International businesses that have grown so large that they can ignore the laws of the nations where they were started, engendering many of the injustices that are holding the nations of Africa in hock so that they cannot break out of abject poverty. Cynical powermongering warlords in Afghanistan, Sudan, Uganda, and so forth.

And politicians can only do what the citizens blithely allow them to do, if we actually have democratic governments anymore. If our governments are no longer democratic such that we can control the politicians, that speaks no better for your claim of moral evolution.

As for He who holds Justice as His own sole possession, no entity can deprive Him of anything at all, for He holds it all anyway. It is His to reward or punish, and the "deprivation" of any one soul in no way makes Him a loser.

I hold to hope as do you. But the questions being posed here, absent any sureties that we may hold as His followers, can only be answered with despair. It is only logical. Thus, the Nordic noble hero with no hope is the most logical ideal when argued to the question's conclusions.