Jim, everyone knows perfectly well that the Hobbits were created as fictional creatures in a book that was clearly written by its author AS fiction from the start and was never intended as anything but fiction and allegory.

Therefore it's not a suitable example to illustrate your point.

Skepticism is indeed a useful skill. That's why I bring a certain amount of it to what ANY authority system or peer group tells me...not just the traditional religious authority systems.

The shortcoming of the average so-called "skeptic" is that he is only vigorously skeptical about things in certain mental boxes that he has already labelled in his mind as "unreal"...such as the "religious" box or the "UFOs and aliens" box...or the "spirits and ghosts" box or the "existence of a soul" box, etc. He has an antipathy toward those certain subjects, and he directs his skepticism just at those subjects while he fails to be equally rigorous in his skeptical approach to a whole host of far more conventional mental boxes that he takes for granted, such as the box of conventional science, conventional medicine, conventional politics, conventional social customs, etc.

His skepticism is not parcelled out in a fair and equal fashion acorss the board. Prior prejudice directs it only into certain specific areas of life and spares the rest.