I am currently listening to various YouTube essays on LOTR lore. I have read most of the books and watched the films multiple times. Now it is entertaining to listen to summaries about deeper lore from people who also read The Silmarillion, The Book of Lost Tales, and have researched various other writings by Tolkien himself.

I find it fascinating how deep the lore he has invented for his world is, and I totally respect the amount of work he put into it. He did create a great piece of literature that I like and undoubtedly will read again.

But I never read The Silmarillion. I tried twice, and I could not get thru the first chapter. It read like the Bible, albeit more coherent.

And that is the thing baffling me the most about Tolkien. He was sufficiently self-aware to notice that what he writes sounds like a religious text, yet not so to realize what it implies. He essentially wrote a creation myth that is more logical, more internally consistent, and in much better prose than the Bible, yet he remained a devout Catholic for his whole life.

I have never believed in any God, god, or supernatural being, or superstition. Not really, really believed, although there were times when I tried, and there certainly were times – and still are – when I would much wish for a benevolent and kind omnipotent being who would intervene on behalf of those in need, me included. It would be nice if I could pray for good weather, for example. But deep down, I always recognized this as an irrational desire disconnected from reality. The only thing that religion more broadly, and prayer and various superstitions (knock on wood) in particular, do is give a comforting illusion of hope and control when there is none.

Thus, I fundamentally lack the understanding those atheists have, who had an epiphany during their life and lost their faith. I never had faith; therefore, I cannot empathise with those who do. I never had an epiphany losing my faith; therefore, I lack personal knowledge of how that happens.

But if I had to guess one way such an epiphany could happen, it would be a direct, detailed confrontation with the human ability to create fictional deities and spin intricate stories about gods out of the fabric of imagination and legend. And Tolkien had such a confrontation as detailed as it gets. Yet he remained a believer in the Virgin Birth and the whole convoluted, contradictory, and downright nonsensical and idiotic mess that is Christianity as a whole and Roman Catholicism in particular.

He is proof that highly intelligent and informed people can believe in objectively proven bullshit. I have struggled to understand that reality my whole life.