A Call to all Christians

Being a Christian is a mean business. It demands a self-control which is unnatural, a way of life which enters into the exuberance of Christ, and thus rejects all sin. It is a life of all out confrontation with the false, the wicked and the blasphemous, proclaiming the Gospel of our Lord, the Holy Trinity, and standing by that in our minds, bodies and souls. It is about being at war.

And yet, so many followers of Christ complain about their imperfections, their failings and their inadequacies. But when I look at their lives, I see so little battle, so little fight, so little action against these foes. They moan and murmur, but the Lord has provided us with a manual to launch from, a springboard to face the enemy within the books of the Bible. The person of Jesus defines this assault on the powers of darkness, exemplified by the cross and the resurrection. When Satan tried to tempt Jesus in the desert into breaking his fast, did the Son give in to his human weakness of hunger? No! He fought back. When the devil tried to make Jesus prove his divinity by tempting him to throw himself off the temple roof, did the Messiah succumb to the human temptation of pride, extravagance and a limited view of divine authority? No. He held his ground. And when Lucifer offered all the kingdoms of the world to the Lord, if he but kneel at the Accuser's feet, did he for go his path of suffering for a life of luxury, wealth and honour among men? No. He broke the power of the enemy in two.

The point is, we Christians our to lead a life of violence, as demonstrated by our King. But with whom, or with what, are we to be violent to? Not other people. Not Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, Atheists, Jews, Frenchmen, Republicans or any other fellow being. No, we are called to be violent to the violence we commit against others. We are to wrestle every urge in our soul to lust, covet, hate and any other sin against the Lord. Purging ourselves of sin is a dedication of our lives to God, and to often Christians forget this. We are to fight our own desires, putting them aside for Love and Truth, which proceed and reside in God alone. As St. Ignatius emphasised, imitation of Christ is in itself a union with Lord, something so special on cannot begin to describe it in a meaningful manner. Anything, which would make peace with sin, we are to rid ourselves of as best we can.

This means that all enslaving thoughts of food, caffeine, sugar, alcohol, pornography, clothes, material possessions, money, approval of others, prestige of man, power, fame, our a Christian's enemy. These our the things in ourselves we must fight, for they corrupt us from servitude from God alone. And the irony is, people just blame Satan for this. They pin all of these dark, dangerous demons of our live on his tempting ways. But in the book of Romans, a war on sin, Paul doesn't even confront Satan until chapter 16! Spiritual warfare is fought against Lucifer, and it is important to take on the dark power's principalities, but ultimately, no one goes to hell because of Satan. The only reason we go to hell is because of sin. And that is where he gets his foothold. Our biggest enemy is not the devil, but ourselves. My biggest enemy is not the fallen angel, but Nathan Hood. Fallen, flesh loving, selfish, hostile, jealous, mean, spiteful, power grabbing, sinful Nathan Hood. And he is the only reason why I would go to hell.

Take the temptations again. The devil had no power over Jesus' actions, he would only have gained momentum had Christ sinned. But Jesus did not sin. And we are called to follow his example. We are called to deny our selves in following him, picking up our cross and killing the old way of life you once lived. The Gospel is about a kingdom, and one cannot be half in and half out. You are either a child of God's or an antichrist, to use the language of St. John.

This can only be done by embracing and accepting God's grace. Jesus died for us so that we might be saved, and in doing so allowed us to trust in him and him alone. By his power, we are no free to fight our enemy, ourselves. And I call on all Christians to follow the Lord in waging a war upon our own, passivity and tackling head on our sinful nature.

On a side note, I wrote this article as a response to a growing passivity among Christians in their daily lives. If you are not Christian, this article will be of little relevance to you, and is not designed to help you learn.

Friendship

I am a very lucky person, as I have lots of great friends. Some are: tall, some are short; some clever, some dim; some extroverts, some inclusive; some musical, some sporty etc. but all of them are special. They are decent people who care about me, and there is no price one can pay for that. I just want to put it on record that I thank them all for what they have done for me, however little it is, as it is truly a gift.

You see, friendship is perhaps what defines us as individuals. What we do is determined by the views, feelings and opinions of our friends, and we try to act in ways which develop our bond of trust and love with them. When we make decisions, we consider what they would do, how to fit in with them and subsequently our own thinking becomes influenced by them. This process is not just one way, for genuine friendship is a two way system, with both participants sharing something with each other in a mutual way. Furthermore, friendship is key to fulfilling what Rousseau calls our  'amour propre', self love, our need to feel valued and respected. Friends provide that, and help satisfy the thing in our nature which makes us tick.

Despite the importance of friends, we often take them for granted. We imagine they always be there for us, making sure we are not in trouble, having a laugh with us and loving us. This can manifest itself in a lack of respect for them, expecting too much of them, not keeping in touch and pushing them too far with our demands. This can leave them disillusioned, annoyed and potentially ruin friendships. It can break the strongest of bonds, and will endanger our very identities.

And yet, we all do it. We all to some degree abuse our trust with our friends. We all expect them to do everything. We all depend on them in a one way system, not the healthy two way one. I speak from experience  about with a very dear friend of mine. When I left Handsworth Grammar School, I left behind a good friend in Joe Hodgson, to name but one. I expected him to be the one to make the effort to keep in touch. And as I put all the burden on him, we have fallen apart. It makes me sad, because we were really good mates. This is just one example of how I should have valued my friend higher. And I ask that all of you do the same.

As the saying goes 'you only miss something when it's gone'. That is the same with friends. But we should not allow that to be the case. We as a society should try harder to treat our friends as we would want them to treat us. We should love our neighbour as ourselves. Its fantastically simple, yet it is so hard to enact. If you appreciate the worth of your friends in defining who you are, and being integral in who you are, I commend you to treat them the best you possibly can.

Love

I am in love. Well, at least I think I am. The object of my affection is a person, more specifically a female. She is wonderful in every way to me, with her striking features, her fiery personality and her distinct refusal to be made into what other people want her to be really gets me. However, emotion has been the ruined many a person. Take the Abdication of Edward VIII: that happened through his love for Wallace Simpson, and his resulting actions left his reputation stained for his whole life. Another example would be in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, where the two protagonists meet a tragic ending because they followed their emotional urges over reason and logic. Likewise, in the film Titanic, the character who Leonardo Di Caprio plays dies because he sacrifices himself so the character Kate Winslet plays can live, but if he had followed his reasoning capacities he would have thrown her off that floating piece of wood and saved himself. My point is, love can be detrimental to your career prospects, social life and possibly endanger your life. So I want to assess a simple question in this article: is falling in love actually good? And depending on the result, should I act on my feelings?

On the face of it, love is perceived as an idyllic emotion. It unites individuals in ways nothing else can. It is the source of support, care, kindness, generosity, compassion and many other prized attributes. It encourages people to bond in a way words fail to capture, that can be conceptualised and experienced but not explained, and produces such a good state of affairs that it is a natural desire of almost all people to fall in love. It inspires a friendship which is so deep it is as if the people involved are one person, with their problems and worries solved together. It is truly marvelous.

Yet much hurt comes from love. If you look at literature from the very earliest of times, images of love destroying and ruining people is everywhere. Famously, King Arthur was cheated on by his wife Guinevere, who had many intimate encounters with Arthur's right hand man Lancelot. This was the beginning of the end for Arthur, with his luck running out soon after. Love can be easily manipulated, controlled, twisted, and abused by all parties, and it is striking how many people fail to recognise this, despite soaps, films, books, plays, and even blog articles pointing it out. The trust involved can be easily broken, and that is not something someone should have to go through.

Perhaps this topic needs to be taken from a different approach. Consider the implications of evolution in this debate. Ultimately, passing on our genes is one of the fundamental aspects of animal life, a lot of our actions and thoughts are driven by this desire to procreate. Whether this is good or bad is a separate issue, I just believe that being in love will increase your in chances of doing this, for you will have a stronger motive and a greater appeal to the potential mate, for they know you actually care about doing this as opposed to just wanting her as a physical object. So love can be beneficial in a long term sense.

To be honest, I don't think it really matter what I think about love, I am in love either way. Emotions are powerful things, and I think accepting the fact that you have them is a good thing. Whether I shall act on it is a different matter: love and exams don't go well together, and I don't think the girl I have feelings for likes me just as much. But I guess it will all help me learn for later life.

A quote from Leonard Cohen summarises for me the idea of love very well, with a metaphor so beautiful it is just wonderful contemplating it. 'You want to travel with her, and you want to travel blind and you think that she may crush you, as she's touched your perfect body, with her mind.'

Where Richard Dawkins Goes Badly Wrong

Richard Dawkins is the pinup boy of the New Atheist movement. He represents is, being its strongest and most aggressive warrior. He almost embodies its very nature and being, its views and personality, and with amazing prose demonstrates the reasons for his views with an eloquence theists could only dream of. However, whilst he has style, his substance seems to be lacking. Whilst he can attack the bottom rank of theist intellectuals, his arguments are weak when put up against the titans of our day, such as Plantinga's, Swinburne's and even atheists like Flew's. Furthermore, they have little weight or power, for they seem to fall apart on critical inspection. Thus, I wish to demonstrate that Dawkins' main argument against the existence of God is not very convincing at all, and thus his views as a philosopher should not be taken as authoritative. Note, this is not an attempt to show the truth of theism, nor the falsity of atheism. Rather, it is a stand alone analysis of Dawkins' argument and only a critique of his views.

Dawkins' central argument in his various debates and books can be summarised as follows:

1) A complex thing is something with many parts if its put together in such a way that it is unlikely just by chance.

2) The more complex a thing, the more unlikely it is to exist.

3) The universe is a complex thing, that we know exists.

4) To infer a designer of the universe, such as God, to explain the complexity of the universe would be to deposit an even more complex being, if not infinitley complex.

5) Thus, we would need to inquire who designed the designer, for this complexity would also need an explanation which is simple.

6) As there is 1: no explanation for the designer and 2: no need to add a more complex being, it follows that it is almost certain that God does not exist.

This argument appeals to various principles which can be recognised as intuitively true. Dawkins builds upon the idea of Ockham's razor, namely that in any explanation of observational evidence you should not multiply entities beyond necessity, commonly summarised as turning to the simplest explanation being the correct one. This seems to be the essence of his argument, that God is an over complication which is removed by the Ockhamistic method, and thus is irrelevant to explanation, and thus belief in God is irrational.

However, Dawkins seems to have a confused argument here. He claims that a complex being is one with many parts. So humans our complex compared to a pile of sand, for if you pick up a pile of sand, and then pour it on the floor, it is more likely to have the same structure than if you took a human apart and then dropped them on the ground and observed as to whether it regained its structure. Humans have hands, feet, eyes, teeth, hair and all the other aspects of the body, whereas sand is just tiny grains which are not complex in of themselves. This example clearly illustrates Dawkins first premise.


However, this breaks down because God isn't a being with parts. God is supposed to be a spirit, a transcendent being who has no physical aspects or parts to His divine nature. So it follows from Dawkins own definition that God couldn't be complex, which undermines the argument completely! God is a simple being on this definition of complex, and thus by Dawkins' reasoning he would be a highly probable and sound explanation for the apparent complexity within the universe.

This refutation of Dawkins argument is devastating. As it his fundamental reason for not believing in God, with its refutation he has no substantive reason for his rampant and aggressive atheism. Therefore, I would encourage atheist and theist alike to regard Prof. Dawkins arguments with a mindset of critical understanding and a revulsion to such poor objections to the existence of God. Rather, look at respected scholars like Hume, Flew, and Plantinga, to name but a few, to base your judgments on this most important of all topics.

(On a side note, I would like to say a special thanks to all of you who read my blog posts, especially those in foreign countries. It is a real honour, and I hope they engage, entertain and ignite your cognitive capacities. Feel free to leave your comments if you so wish as well!)

Forgiveness as the Way Forward

Everyday, I disagree with someone. It maybe over how tidy my room is, where people sit in the classroom or the nature of reality. I think we all face these experiences within our daily lives. But sometimes we take it too far. We are personally offended by how another treats us, infringing on how we want to use our time. We hold it against them, sulking over feelings of injustice and resentment, letting it poison our thoughts and actions. It festers, making relationships tense, with pangs of guilt and annoyance permeating the atmosphere. This is just human nature. But I think we need to fight it. I propose that this kind of behaviour on an amplified level is the cause of many of the problems within the world, and it is only love and forgiveness that can heal this and allow us as a community to progress and reach a greater state of being.

Why do I say this? The schismatic and individualistic society we live in has bred a new discord between groups of people, leaving great grievances hanging over the situation like a dark cloud. It is not only on a large scale that such feuds take place, but on a person to person basis. Looking at my own personal experience, arguments and transgressions have broken many a valuable friendship which are only recognised as treasures after it is too late. It is sad. And yet, so many people relish these things. They make great gossip, spark the most sensational of rumours and allow us to bitch about people without feelings of guilt or remorse cropping up. This can only lead to the creation of backstabbing, indulgent people, which there are many of in our social circles. And they cause much pain, much suffering and much torment. Even the relatively good our sometimes guilty of such acts.

Yet, the amazing thing about all this is we can actually fix this most divisive of problems.

To heal the world, we must be prepared to love our fellow human beings. Not in a fuzzy kind of way, like in the Teletubbies, but in an altogether more sophisticated sense. To love someone is to want the greatest good for them, which you will be willing to offer yourself as a servant in humility to bring this about. This doesn't mean you don't disagree with people, indeed if you sincerely think that how they behave or think is detrimental to what would be the greatest good for them, you should be willing to tell them how you feel. And crucially, it involves respect for the one you love, and an understanding that to generate a mutual union between the two of you is the best possible state of affairs.

Now it is a fact of life that people will fall out. But if our fellow human is truly sorry for their wrong doing, should we not forgive them? If they realise that they had done a bad thing, or not considered you properly, as a person who craves the best for them and wants to restore that precious union between the two of you, should you not accept their apology? Forgiveness is key in fixing the dark and bleak world we live in. Advocates of this view such as Martin Luther King, Desmond Tutu and Gandhi all tapped into the potential of love, and its action in forgiveness. Only this restores the vitality of life, the vibrancy of life and the glories that are to be realised. Apartheid was destroyed, oppression's have been crushed and barriers torn down by the power of forgiveness, and I encourage all of you reading this to follow suit in tapping into its potential.

So if you and another person have had a disagreement, make the first move for reconciliation. Recognise that blind ignorance and denial helps nothing, and that only love and forgiveness can take you both back to where you belong on the road to majesty, wonder and glory. Don't just agree that this is right, don't just think it is right, but live as though you believe that what I say is right. Then you will find that the impossible will become the possible.

Why reason and atheism don't go together

By agreeing to debate whether God exists, an atheist concedes the debate. Why is this so? It is not self-apparent, and it doesn't seem intuitively true. However, by examining the foundations of an atheist's beliefs, we can come to the conclusion that they rest on assumptions which require God to exist for them to be valid. (Note I take atheist to encompass those who deny God's existence and those who claim there is no good reason to believe in God in this article.)

When an atheist agrees to debate a topic, they assume the authority of reason and order. He assumes that I am arguing a certain position, and he is arguing another. These assumptions are all quite correct, that is what we are doing. He holds that to accept God's existence is different to denying God's existence. This is of course true, for A is not Not-A.

But these fundamental beliefs have are inconsistent with his belief in atheism. Our reasoning is assumed to have validity based on what appear to be genuine insights into the world. But there is a problem. The atheist maintains that logic is matter in motion, just the product of chunks of atoms colliding and doing what atoms do. This is problematic, because it means that on the face of it there is no good reason to trust the logic our minds created, for it is the produce of non-truth seeking forces, and as such there is no reason why our ideas would relate to the world.

However, the atheist may respond by arguing that reason does apply to the world, as mapped out by our extraordinary success at discovering principles about how the universe works, such as causality. But here again, the atheist will struggle to justify his foundational belief. The atheist philosopher David Hume pointed out that percieved order and causation (which are both things the atheist needs to assume if his argument is to hold) are just the product of human nature, and the only reason why we expect things to happen in the future like the past is our unjustified assumption that there is uniformity is the world. To use past experiences as the basis of predictions presupposes that there is conformity, which there is no justification for, it is circular reasoning. Now Hume does not for one minute deny the ball will bounce when we drop it, or that causation is true, he is just pointing out that from an atheist point of view there is no rational justification for believing it. So the atheist takes a leap of faith in claiming that the world is ordered, the world is intelligible and reason is reliable.

In fact, what the atheist is doing is admitting that God exists by doing these things. He of course admits that it is rational to hold that reason is reliable, that there is order and the world is intelligible. But his own worldview fails to back this up, it would just be an irrational view, as demonstrated by the failure to justify causation. However, on the theist worldview, it is clear that the creation is seen to mirror God's glory. Thus, we would expect and ordered universe, that our reasoning ability would be reliable so we could learn truths of God and that the universe is intelligible. The various scriptures affirm this. The point is, in claiming the rationality in trusting reason, they affirm there is a good reason for trusting the authority of reason, and the only good reason is the existence of God.

So why can't the atheist just say these foundational beliefs are just assumptions and carry on? Well, if they did, there whole worldview would be denying reason. If they deny the use of reason, then they deny that there argument has any meaning whatsoever, for reason helps define things apart. So they must accept reason. But that can only be done if you accept the existence of God.

Of course, many of you will disagree with this argument for emotional reasons (and maybe some logical points too). However, this argument naturally makes sense. If you approach it from the viewpoint of every belief needs justification, then you will see why atheism fails. As for the existence of God, well there are many arguments for that which I think work. But most importantly of all, if you accept the use of reason, you must have justification for that, which only God can give.

To conclude, we can summarise what I have argued:

1) Arguments against the existence of God rely on trusting the authority of reason.

2) An atheist cannot soundly justify why they trust reason, as all their attempts will rely on assumptions which are inconsistent with his worldview.

3) A theist can justify why they trust reason on the basis that God is the foundation of reason.

4) Thus, if an atheist trusts in reason, they are relying on the existence of God as their objective justification.

I would encourage anyone who has not come into contact with David Hume to read up on his ideas on causation, they are readily available on the web and he is a fantastic thinker to engage with.

Liars

Liars are everywhere. Turn on the TV, you will see an advert telling you that you need a certain hair product, or fashion item. That is a lie, you do not need those things unless human survival now depends on something more than food, water and shelter. A lot of the time people will tell lies about who they are, just to impress or to try and improve who they are in your eyes. And if you are playing the board game diplomacy, you will be surrounded by them.

This is not a very good thing. Lying is a very harmful thing. It betrays the trust of others, distorts the truth, and ultimatley causes great hurt. This cannot be good for the individual or the society. If an individual trusts a person who is lying to them, they will be manipulated, used, relying on a false ally for support and friendship: they will believe false things (and it is a fundamental point of logic that knowing the truth is better) which will lead to them making bad desicision, which in themselves may damage others: but most importantly, it can leave a mistrust of others, a broken, emotionally scarred person who will be less open in the future. Imagine a society filled with this kind of behaviour, it too would be broken, living in individualism, a lack of cohesion and friendship, with everyone looking out for themselves and not trusting another.

This cannot be good at all, because the whole idea of society relies on the trust of a group of peoples on one another to fulfill different roles, and that harm will not be done to one another. Of course, some people will abuse this, but on the whole we trust that the majority of individuals will be trustworthy. Indeed, governments, businesses, banks etc. all work on premises that the people they work with are telling the truth. Evidence of this is that the 2008 economic collapse arose because certain european companies were conned by subprime morgtage dealers in america (simplistic way of putting it).

As we can see lying is corrosive. It poisons communal spirit. But why should that stop those who lie from further lying. A lot of the time it can be quite profitable. If you can get one over on a rival, then you have more chance of fulfilling your desires. And in this society, success, sex, money, power are all things which are hard to come by. If you can achieve these things by lying to a few people, then it does not really matter, its good. And although it can destroy friendships, you will make a great deal more friends when you are rolling in the dough, whilst your victim is still bottom of the pile. Lying is for the winners, for the kings, for the glorious.

However, lying is a self-destructive force which ravages not just the lied too but the liar themself. Joseph Ratzinger, also known as Pope Benedict XVI, use to teach at many prestigious universities. One of his subjects were the effects of actions on our being as a person. Now many people in the 20th and 21st Centuries live lives where they believe that there short-term actions do not effect themselves as 'good people'. However, this view just does not work. What we do in our actions does effect our personalities, our characters, the things Aristotle called the Soul (not Plato's), our mental capacities. It is no surprise that this view that so many people hold has resulted in higher levels of depression, higher levels of social problems, people with lower self-esteem, lower levels of happiness in wealthier countries. This is because their harmful actions in the short-term have been embedded into their subconcious elements. Lying is such a thing which people just do, because they think it will not effect who they are. But in fact it can destroy the person you are, leaving you untrusting, unloving and low self-esteem. It rips you apart and leaves you and empty shell, removing the intrinsic beauty of humanity and love.

I write this not as one who judges those who lie, I myself used to do it all the time. But I have also felt the pain lies, and now realise the error of my ways. Wanting good for others for no selfish reasons, forgiveness, trust, hope, generosity, these are all things which if embraced lead to a life lived to its full value. Lies shatter this greatness, like a bolt of lightening and leaves a broken person. I forgive those who have lied to me, but I myself am not so much sad at my trust being betrayed but at the void of a person who felt it necessary to lie to me. And I commend the notion that we live in a society of truth, trustworthiness and togetherness as opposed to the lie, loniless and lacking of this kind of lifestyle.

So if you lie, do not be worried about your past wrongs. But turn it around today, confess yourself to your victims and now live a life of trust. If not for others, for yourself, do it.

The Lord of the Rings Most Striking Aspect

Wherever you go, if you just mention the name of Tolkien and people get excited. His creation of the fantasy works set in Middle Earth are massively popular. The Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit are not just books which are loved, but the LOTR brand are fantastic films, perfect works of art, which I am sure the Hobbit will be too. I do not know a person who has come into contact with Tolkien's works and not had some affection for their depth, imagination and emotional contact. This may be for a number of reasons. But what is most striking, is that the Lord of the Rings is a retelling of the Christian story, and this analogous tale is loved by many.

There are so many analogies I could make, but I will just look at a couple of the mains ones in this blog.

Firstly, there are three Christ like figures: Aragorn, Gandalf and Frodo. They fulfil Jesus' three characteristics: priest prophet and king. Frodo sacrifices his whole way of life, security, comfort, friends and family, with almost certain death as a prospect to save Middle Earth from Sauron, a fallen spirit like Satan. Likewise, Christ sacrificed his whole being to save man from the dark powers. Both come with no armies, are not great military leaders or what you expect to take on the greatest evils, but humble lowly creatures. Gandalf fulfils the role of prophet. He is a teacher, a guide, someone who can be trusted, and teaches and supports the personal growth of the main characters, such as can be seen in the Hobbits. Finally, there is Aragorn, who is the missing King, returning to triumphant glory over the forces of darkness and establishing a new, glorious age of peace. Likewise, Jesus is returning to the people of Israel and the world as their King, after a period of their exile in Babylon and much suffering. So we can see direct links here.

Secondly, all three of these characters must go through some form of death and darkness in their journey. Frodo must take the greatest evil upon himself (the Ring) to its home and source (mount doom) and destroy it there, just like Jesus took the greatest evils upon himself and defeated them in hell (for clarification see the Christian Creed.) Gandalf takes on the Balrog, another dark power, and journeys to the very depths of the earth and highest peaks to defeat this monster to let his allies escape this fate. He dies, but returns similar but different... primarily he is now Gandalf the White and has more power. Likewise, Jesus died, was resurrected, but the eyewitness testimony claimed his body had supernatural abilities, such as walking through walls etc. Finally, Aragorn journeys through the realm of the dead and the cursed to rally an army against evil, and then marches and destroys the forces of evil. I think you get the idea. These three characters not only fulfil certain aspects of Jesus' character, but their own journeys are allegories of his.

Lastly, Christians, in particular Catholics, see evil as a privation of goodness. That is, a lack of goodness. Now the evil characters in LOTR lack being: Ringwraiths are neither alive nor dead and lack physical form, orcs are twisted forms of elves, lacking their good qualities, gollum was a hobbit but has been corrupted by the Ring, and as such lacks his former self. Finally, Sauron is just an eye, he also lacks his former self of greatness as a sort of angel for Illuvatar (read the Simirillion). So here is another aspect of the Christian story  which Tolkien used.

Now sceptics may argue that I am reading to much Christianity into the text, and portraying my own conceptual scheme as what Tolkien meant. However, Tolkien himself was a Roman Catholic, and he said himself that by the end LOTR was explicitly Christian. So I think it is convincing that LOTR is a Christian work.

What strikes me is that despite the large scale rejection of Christianity by many of my peers, many seem to love this version of telling it. That is understandable, it is a brilliant work and really makes you think. But maybe those who enjoy Tolkien would like to enquire further into the beliefs and thoughts he based his books on, even if you do not believe it to be true. The Christian message is the most fantastic tale of them all, true or false, and LOTR embodies that too the highest degree.