Joshua Dyal said:
[Re: Dragonlance based on Mormonism?!?] Saw this in the D&D movie poll, and I didn't want to clutter that thread up with tangents, but what's this about? Other than the fact that one of the authors, Tracy Hickman is a Mormon, I've never seen any correllations between Dragonlance and Mormonism, even to the extent that Lord of the Rings weakly correllates to Catholicism.
This is the first I've heard of it. But I have no knowledge of Mormonism, so I doubt I'm capable of making a informed judgement.
There are various levels of this sort of thing.
Narnia is Christian allegory. This is pretty easy to spot, as one thing in the story represents something else; Edmund=Judas. The reason Tolkien would reject this for
Lord of the Rings is because there are none of these correspondences.
The next level down is to use the metaphysics of a religion, and is subtler.
The Lord of the Rings is Catholic, and
Earthsea is Taoist. Though you'd miss a lot of this without careful reading and a pretty clear understanding of various theologies (and their nuances).
Too be honest, I'm not sure that
Dragonlance is deep enough for this. It's been a while since I read the books, but I don't think there's anything in there that is unique even to Christianity. I'm with Joshua that the ethics just seem very generic. It wouldn't surprise me if it was compatible; but I'm sure there's lots of stuff that would be compatible, without any intent on the part of the author to make it so.
I have heard that
Battlestar Galactica is based on Mormonism. True, False, Nonsense?