Absolute Good in Lord of the Rings

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by Morthoron

A classic, logical rebuttal, yes; however, when has logic ever been an article of faith? The interesting thing about the Bible or Koran is just how thin a variance there is between peace and genocide. If you want to find a reason to kill or enslave your neighbor, the proper text is there in black and white, right alongside loving thy neighbor. Churches have for centuries used holy scripture to kill their neighbors (the neighbor being branded a heretic or infidel is no longer a neighbor but an enemy of god). Muslims that strap bombs to themselves truly believe they are going to heaven. Atrocity or Act of Faith? Depends on your interpretation. I am sure Hitler, even in his lunacy, could somehow justify the Holocaust from a doctrinal viewpoint as well -- others certainly have throughout history with horrifying success.

Perhaps this is why men of Gondor continued their feud with the Haradrim, and vice versa, for so many millenia: an earnest belief in the other people's inherent evil.

Hmm, that's interesting, Gondor Vs the Haradrim as reflecting the current West Vs East conflicts...

Lately I've been coming round to thinking that so many of the conflicts supposedly down to Faith are actually about other things if you look at them, and religion is just used as a handy excuse: Islamists for example often merely want their land back (Palestinians) or want to establish a new Caliphate empire; the Northern Ireland troubles were definitely about questions of Nationality much more than Faith; Henry VIII's (and the rest of the UK's monarchs) struggles were more about who ruled the Kingdom and owned the wealth and the people's allegiance, the monarch or the Pope.

OT, but not entirely so...because we do both blame religion for a lot and attribute a lot to it when other things are at work. This is what had me thinking:

Originally Posted by Bb

Aragorn would have received his code by virtue of his birthright and teachings from his mother and Elrond. Faramir's code comes from his inheritance. They have no practice of revealed religion, but their codes are learned, taught, instilled in them. For the Gondorians particularly, there is a sense of bloodline of the faithful.

Our culture can bring to us as many of these good things such as honour, compassion and fairplay as belief can. Plenty of people exist and existed without any faith but still possess that good stuff that the best believers do. Put simply, it's down to how you are raised and what you are taught, the environment you grow up in.

I don't think it's 'bloodline', as generations of people have for example come to live in the UK but quickly become 'British' and acquire our cultural norms and practises - it's not their blood which does this, just their surroundings and what they learn.

This is why I think the Orcs cannot have been 'bad to the bone', that they acquired much of their nature.