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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8839991" data-attributes="member: 42582">To me it's more simple than this.First, DL is no different from JRRT's work, with has a more-or-less identical cataclysmic event in the Downfall of Numenor. But none of these critics of DL are out there attacking The One Ring, Adventures in Middle Earth, etc, or saying that people who enjoy the LotR films are endorsing genocide. There's a fixation on DL that (to me) is quite unexplained.Second, DL is a work of fiction (as is JRRT's work). It doesn't depend for it's narrative power on believing that there was an actual Flood decreed by an actual God. It depends, rather, on the reader being familiar with that story as a cultural artefact. Someone can be an atheist and yet understand a story that uses the tropes of the Flood to present the question of the relationship of human action, and political power, to self-destructive and self-defeating hubris. Not everyone will find the story compelling - they might think it's silly, or think that concerns about power and hubris are essentially obscurantist (eg a certain sort of Marxist might think that). But for anyone familiar with the story of the Flood, the story should be comprehensible.Attacking it as a tale about genocide is just a bizarre misreading.</blockquote>