: : : [BZZT!]

: : : No Balrogs ever fell to their deaths. Two balrogs, mortally
: : : wounded, FELL. Big difference.

: : That is a matter of personal opinion. I don't recall reading
: : anywhere that the Balrogs which fought Glorfindel and Gandalf
: : were mortally wounded. Besides, Balrogs were pretty tough
: : characters: Gothmog continued to fight even after having his
: : arm hacked off.

: I'll have to go with Tolkien on this one. He says quite clearly that Glorfindel (in the original story, with a non-Maiaric Balrog) gutted Balrog and it uttered a death-cry.
As you mentioned in an earlier post, The Fall of Gondolin Balrogs cannot be compared to those of Tolkien's later works...

: Gandalf says he threw down his enemy, which means he vanquished him, killed him. It doesn't mean the Balrog was merely tossed from the mountain top. This is the same Balrog that, when caught off guard by Gandalf's breaking of the bridge, fell and still managed to lash out with its whip and drag Gandalf with it.

You interpret it to mean that Gandalf killed him. I interpret it as the fall which killed him. Regarding the Balrog's whip, who is to say that he still had it at the time he reached Durin's Tower?

: Only a dead or dying Balrog is NOT going to take Gandalf with it when he tosses it off a mountaintop.

There is nothing to say that Gandalf physically threw the Balrog off the mountain - perhaps he created a rockslide or some other form of attack which did not require physical contact.

: Earendil also threw down Ancalagon. Are we to suppose that Earendil was a man of such strength that he could throw a viable dragon -- the largest and most powerful of its kind -- from his ship in the sky with sufficient force to overcome its ability to fly so that it was killed when it hit the mountains below?

Earendil did not "throw down" Ancalagon; he killed him. From The Silmarillion:

'... Before the rising of the sun Earendil SLEW Ancalagon the Black, the mightiest of the dragon-host, and cast him from the sky; and he fell upon the towers of Thangorodrim, and they were broken in his ruin.'

: That's too much to accept, and I will not accept it, in either case. Dead and dying Balrogs, like dead and dying dragons, do not fly. That is the simplest explanation and there is no evidence to indicate that Tolkien was depicting anything more complicated.

It is not the simplest explaination, it is your opinion (which you are entitled to). IMO, the simplest explaination is that Balrogs did not have wings.

: : It is physically impossible to use a cloak as a parachute (or
: : even as a glider). If such were the case, the Greeks would
: : have been gliding since the days of Archimedes.

: It is physically impossible for anything to breathe fire of its own accord. It is physically impossible for a man to live 2000 years. These things are taken for granted in Middle-earth. The point above is that Tolkien didn't write the passage the way your question implies he should have in order to prove a point. He wrote the passage to provide a brief account of a battle which lasted for days.

Mythological dragons have frequently been credited with the ability to breath fire (or poison in some cases); Tolkien is merely borrowing from folklore in this case. And Gandalf was not a man - he was an immortal spirit bound to a physical body. However, Tolkien never suggested that it was possible for Gandalf to fly.

: : Regarding the lake, I will have to reread the passage, but for
: : the purpose of discussion it is irrelevant - water is water.

: Water IS water, but you're insisting there was a lakeshore for the Balrog to land on (and implying it should have been able to ignore Gandalf enough to maneuver itself around, even though he was hacking at it with Glamdring all the way down).

Well, I'm not insisting he landed in a lake. However, rivers have banks, and unless this particular river was infinitely wide, I think the Balrog could have made for one bank or the other. And yes, I am implying that if the Balrog was capable of flight, he could have disengaged himself from Gandalf, especially if the wizard was on the defensive.

: : : You're disregarding the fact that the Balrog had lashed at
: : : out Gandalf with its whip so as to drag him after it, and
: : : that Gandalf fought with the Balrog on the way down.

: : It could have simply been a desperation move - i.e., if I'm
: : going down, you're going with me...

: Yes, and it's just as likely the Balrog tricked Gandalf into destroying the bridge precisely so that it could drag him down into the chasm and thus get him away from the Company of the Ring.

I find this hard to believe, but I suppose its possible the Balrogs were more cunning than I give them credit for. However, it was the Ring which the Balrog sought, so if he was going to abduct anyone, it should have been Frodo.

: : : Clearly battle, not sending him to his death, was what it had
: : : on its mind. And since Gandalf said they fell for a long
: : : time, it's a pretty good bet they didn't fall at a fast rate.

: : All objects fall at the same rate (unless acted upon by an
: : outside force)

: [snip]

: Balloons do not fall at the same rate as rocks.

Which is why I said "unless acted upon by an outside force". In the case of a balloon, the force is atmospheric (wind) resistance, or the balloon contains a lighter-than-air gas. However, neither Gandalf nor the Balrog were balloons. Short of some kind of braking mechanism, they would fall at the same rate. Simple Newtonian physics.

: There are other aspects to physics which one must allow for, such as the presence of an atmosphere. Hence one cannot conclude that Gandalf and the Balrog fell at any particular rate of speed. We have too little information on the matter.

I think it goes without saying that Middle-earth had an atmosphere and gravitational attraction similar to that of our world. Gandalf and the Balrog fell at the same rate.

: : Creative license is one thing, but I think Tolkien should have
: : rethought this entire scene before submitting the final draft.

: The passage is adequately written in my opinion. People just need to stop rewriting it for him in order to justify their assumptions. If you make no assumptions and don't alter the passage, there is only one logical conclusion to reach: we have too little information to know precisely what happened, or even to guess with any hope of verification at what happened.

: : : (This all sounds so familiar....)

: : The Encyclopedia of Arda has a rather long and unbiased
: : discussion concerning the subject of Balrog wings...

: I have long and unbiased discussions concerning the subject of Balrog wings (I assume nothing, I have no personal agenda, I accept the story as told without revising it).

You believe that Balrogs had wings. That in itself makes you biased - just as I am biased toward the opposite opinion.

: The Encyclopedia of Arda, on the other hand, sets out to strongly imply (and thus prove) there are no wings and uses, as all other failed no-wings arguments, the illogic that the word "like" means there weren't real wings there.

I disagree, but the article is there for anyone to read and form their own opinion.

: They fail to take into consideration (as do many "no wingers") the fact that their argument, if it were valid, would mean there was no shadow because it, too, is introduced with the word "wings".

I did not get that impression from the article.

: Furthermore, they make the same misapplication of "metaphor" that other people have. They are clearly relying upon the disproven arguments which have been posted to the news groups to make their case.

I don't recall anyone ever definitively proving or disproving whether or not Balrogs have wings. Nor have I ever seen the common arguments for wingless Balrogs disproven (at least not to my satisfaction).

: And the fact they completely misrepresent the argument in favor of wings in order to shoot it down reveals just how biased they actually are.

I do not believe that they misrepresented anything. However, as I said, the article is available for anyone to read and form their own opinions.

: I do not link to the Encyclopedia of Arda because it's a highly untrustworthy work. It's simply not a credible source of information, and their apparently deliberate bastardization of well-documented discussions does neither them nor Tolkien fandom any credit.

That is not my impression of the Encyclopedia. If it has a fault, it is that it often provides far too little information on a given topic. Of course it is a work in progress, so that may change in the future.