[Rhod the Red]

Well if people read it with a kind of religious filter, they're idiots.

He didn't write the books as a religious kind of text, but to 'create a mythology' for the modern world. We know he was dissatisfied with the Aurthurian legends, etc.

And for the Hobbit; intended as a book for children.

Anything else for either book is pure intellectual dishonesty.