All posts by Icecreamdif

I’d say the very nature of his being ensures that. When somebody believes that they are better than everybody else, they are going to grow arrogant.

There are basically two possibilities here. One is that the rebellion was part of Eru’s design from the beginning. Eru punished the humans for something that he created them to do, in which case he is being unfair.

The other possibility is that humans used the freewill that Eru granted them to go against his will. In this case, it was hubris on Eru’s part to imagine that humans would simply be grateful to the Valar for the “gift” of mortality and that they would continue to follow the will of the Valar after going several generations with no direct contact. Eru may have created mortals, but as an immortal being he can never truly understand them. He has never felt the fear of death. He doesn’t need to be reminded of the reasons for instructions given thousands of years ago.

To anyone who really understands people, the Numenoreans actions were inevitable. Eru was either taken by surprise, or he chose not to step in until he felt that the humans went to far.

Any intelligent being is capable of hubris. Especially a being that believes that it can never be wrong.

You’re allowed to return gifts if you don’t like them. Eru and the Valar just made humanity mortal, left them with nothing more than a promise that things will be great after death, and expected humanity to be grateful. That’s hubris.

That’s not how gifts work. When you give someone a gift, it no longer belongs to you. Eru and the Valar might have called Numenor a gift, but it seems that what they actually did was loan the island to the Numenoreans with conditions.

There are so many less genocidal ways he could have handled that. He could have reshaped Arda without destroying Numenor. As you said, Numenor was a gift. You can’t call backsies once you give a gift.

Even if they did make a TV show, which I think is unnecessary, the film trilogy would be untouched and unruined. It would still exist, exactly as it always has.

Now, if Peter Jackson decided to go full George Lucas and add in new effects and stuff and make the originals unavailable, then you might have a point.

I’m not sure if one morality can be objectively considered to be superior to any other morality. To get along, we do need rules that most people agree on, and I think most people agree that it is wrong to kill innocents. Eru might disagree, but I think he would be in the minority.

It is also hard to see what right Eru has to punish anyone for anything when everything that happens is part of his plan. Surely, if he didn’t want the Numenoreans to turn against the Valar then they wouldn’t have.

Eru may be god, but that doesn’t make him right.

So…you’re agreeing with me?

But it wasn’t the so-called evil that exacted that price. It was the Valar, who are supposed to be the ultimate good.

And what about the Numenoreans who were just going about their lives? The ones who weren’t among the faithful, but weren’t taking an active role in persecuting them? What about the babies? Was everyone who the Valar murdered on Numenor responsible for these supposed crimes? And did any of those crimes warrant death?

Well, they may have Mordor now. Before it was Sauron’s, and they had to do what he told them to. The story pretty much ends after Sauron’s defeat, so we don’t know what the Orcs did next.

If I recall, the Aztecs were destroyed by invaders from another continent. It isn’t as if they were going around Spain and killing people. It’s been a while since I’ve taken history classes, so I could be remembering wrong.

As a farmer, it would be easy to think only of yourself and advocate wiping out the Orcs. That is selfish thinking though. From the Orc perspective, they don’t really have their own homeland, and they are driven out of every home that they do establish. I don’t think we’ve ever seen any Orc farmers, so they likely rely on raiding humans in order to eat. If they are given their own land, and their own methods of obtaining resources, they might not be as quick to attack humans. It might not work, but it is worth a try. Nobody is beyond redemption, and you can’t deny every Orc, and all future generations of Orc, their right to be better just because some Orcs sided with Sauron. They may not take the opportunity for redemption, but they deserve the chance,

I would think we should defend ourselves, but I would certainly not be in favor of committing genocide against the Aztecs. I actually find it somewhat concerning that you are now advocating for a genocide against a real life group of humans that once actually existed,

The Orcs will probably keep pillaging if Men just do nothing, but genocide is not the only solution. They can defend their lands from Orcs, and they can create political and economic conditions that make it less rewarding for the Orcs to pillage Men. The Orcs may not be trustworthy, but they may be willing to abide by a deal that they find advantageous to themselves.

Wasn’t Azog the father of Bolg? I think they do reproduce sexually. If they didn’t it would be much easier. Just leave them alone for a generation and they’ll die out.

There is no evidence that anybody went and taught the Orcs to sing. It’s just something they do. They have a culture. It may not be a particularly pleasant culture, but it’s a culture. When they capture Merry and Pippin, and when Frodo and Sam are in Mordor, we hear them talking. They are unpleasant, but it is clear that they each have individual opinions and personalities. They aren’t a monolith.

It should also be noted that, even if Orcs were animals, it is not okay to wipe out an entire animal species. Even if animals are dangerous to humans, we try to conserve them.

I’m also not sure if anybody has ever actually tried to negotiate a peace with the Orcs when Sauron or Morgoth aren’t around to boss them around. It probably wouldn’t be a peace built on mutual trust, but they might be able to negotiate something along the lines of “Orcs stay in Orc lands and Men stay in Men lands and we won’t kill each-other.” It would be an uneasy peace, and both sides would probably violate it at times, but it would be something to try before jumping straight to genocide,

So you think it wouldn’t be genocide if you wiped out the Dwarves or the Hobbits?

The Orcs aren’t animals. Even just in The Hobbit and LotR we see that they have personality and culture. Mindless animals couldn’t write a banger like “Goblin Town”. They have as much right to exist as anyone.

The Orcs may not be able to conceive of a way to coexist, but the humans can. Even if the humans have to keep an army on the ready to prevent Orc raids, it is better than wiping out an entire culture.

Even if we assume that the Orcs are inherently evil and beyond redemption, they shouldn’t be wiped out. All sentient beings have a right to exist. Genocide is never acceptable.

I just don’t see the point. Harry Potter, for example, is getting remade as a TV series, but they cut a lot out of the movies and really butchered the stories. The LotR movies obviously cut some stuff out, but they are pretty comprehensive and they kept most of the important stuff. Apart from Tom Bombadil and the Scouring of the Shire, I’m not sure if there is anything significant that a TV series can add that the movies didn’t have.

Plus, we all know that the TV show would be more diverse, and a bunch of people on here would be whining about it.

The Valar may refer to Elves and men as their children, but Elves and men are not children. They are functional adults capable of making their own decisions. And, to use your analogy, parents do not kill their children when they misbehave. It is important for parents to set clear boundaries for their children, and to make sure that their children understand why these rules are in place. The Valar set the rules and then disappeared for millenia. If they are parents, then they are deadbeat parents.

Tolkien obviously wrote the books through a Christian lens, but it is up to the reader to interpret the stories through their own lens. I am not a Christian, so I do not view these events in the same way that Tolkien did.

It doesn’t matter if they’re a government or gods. They’re the ones making the rules. When unelected officials, be they gods or men, decide what rules everyone else has to follow without any checks on their power, then that is tyranny. No being has the right to subjugate another, no matter how powerful they are.