Re: CHAT: Religions (was: Visible planets)

On Wednesday, November 12, 2003, at 05:01 PM, John Cowan wrote:

> Costentin Cornomorus scripsit:
>
>> While [the Ainulindale] may be "compatible" in some strange
>> sense, it's not Catholocism.
As the events in JRRT's works are supposed to have taken place some
millennia before the birth of Christ, one could hardly expect
Catholicism.  I first read the LotR some years before I converted
to Catholicism or even had any inkling of doing so; but even then,
in my late teens, I saw echoes of JRRT's Catholicism pervading the
books.  He was, in fact, a devout Catholic.

> I mean that it's compatible in the same sense that the heliocentric
> theory, or the theory of evolution by natural selection, or the
> belief that exactly 1,114,111 angels can dance on the head of a pin
> are compatible with Catholicism.
Quite so
- tho I'm not sure how many Catholics today would put the
number at 1,114,111!  I suspect its infinite - tho why any angels
would want to dance on a pinhead beats me   :)

> At least the second of these,
> and perhaps even the first, are incompatible with some other
> flavors of Christianity.
Are you serious about the 1st? I know 'Merkan Fundamentalist are
very 'fundamental' by UK standards - but you mean that some still
hold to the geocentric theory, like the good ol' "Flat Earth
Society"?

Ray
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