Can atheists appreciate/understand Lord of the Ring?

[Galadriel55]

Originally Posted by Lotrelf

Being theist does not mean you have to be religious. I'm not "religious" if being religious means belonging to a religion. The better word I use for this is SPRITITUAL.

You stole my thought, Lotrelf. I was just catching up on this thread and thinking that it's more about the spitiruality of the person than his religious denomination.

I'm not an atheist, but I don't assign myself to any religious dimension. I have more than slightly visible paganistic tendencies, or pantheistic maybe, or panentheistic, or whatever they call it, except that I'm neither really. I've been educated in two different monotheistic systems of belief, but at a certain point I decided that it's not so much that religion is rubbish and therefore God doesn't exist as organized (and especially monotheistic) religion is unappealing to me and therefore I don't like it. And, now that I think of it, around the same age I stopped liking the beginning-of-The-Sil backdrop - the more organized "theology" of the legendarium. Yeah, I don't appreciate it enough, most likely. However, I can't appreciate more the more mysterious references to the more obscure "fate" in LOTR. (And I've always loved the First Age tragedies, they remain amazing no matter what )

So can I appreciate LOTR? (hint: if you answer "no" to this question, you will suffer a slow and painful... lecture ). I can understand the relationship of Eru-Valar-World, but it doesn't feel right, or maybe doesn't appeal to me. I can still put myself in that perspective's shoes, though.