Eru Ilúvatar created Valar, Maiar, Elves and Men. The Valar Aulë created the Dwarves and his wife Yavanna created the Ents but they were both among the good Valar. In Peter Jackson's The Fellowship of the Ring, Saruman raises an army of Uruk-hai from clay - akin to golems in Jewish legend or Adam in the Book of Genesis. Saruman is an Istari - one of the Maiar - so if even he can shape life from inanimate matter, I can't really see why one of the greatest of the Valar, Melkor, equal to Manwë in power, couldn't. It would make sense that the products of his efforts, driven by malevolence, would themselves be corrupted and evil. Obviously, the movie version is not canonical but it's the way I make sense of how Orcs and similar creature are created. Otherwise, you've got to imagine Orc/Goblin/Troll etc. families (much like in World of Warcraft) which humanises them too much for my taste. Fine for WoW itself, of course.
Not quite.
You are missing something very important with your example of Aule and Yavanna and the Dwarves/Ents; the Valar might be create life (Yavanna created most plants and animals) but they are NOT capable of creating souls, and in Tolkien's world you need a soul for sapience and true language and creating settlements and weapons and all of that.
Aule might have carved the first Dwarves...but in the chapter of the Silmarillion Eru steps in and makes it clear to Aule that the Dwarves are only automations imbued with a semblance or even mockery of life by Aule's will and only following his commands (like one of the variant of pre-human orcs i meantioned later). Aule then is ready to destroy the Dwarves because by even trying to create sapient life he has done a great sin. And that is when Eru, touched by Aule's sacrifice, incarnates souls into the Dwarf bodies.
Later on Yavanna learns of the Dwarves and is dismayed because all she creates, especially trees, who take long to grow, but are felled swiftly, only exists for the benefit of the Children of Eru she (and Manwe) pray to Eru and he "sends spirits from far away" to inhabit some of the trees and of the eagles.
So even if Aule designed the Dwarves and Yavanna wished for the Ents, it was Eru who created their souls.
Also when does Saruman ever "shape life out of inanimate matter"? Never. And the movies are irrelevant.
Morgoth lost the power to create original things when he fell to evil (read the history of Middle Earth books,if you don't believe me, it's all in there) after that he was only able to corrupt and misshape begins and things that already existed.
The earlier concept of the Dwarves being his creation (and later redeemed) was rejected because of that.
And as to them having "families". In a letter Tolkien said that Orc women existed, we just never got to see any, because they were in settlements and encampments far away from where the story took place.
We never get to see any Dwarf women either, but one is mentioned in the
Ergo, they were created from the elves.
Not according to the last word by Tolkien. I think it was because he later had the concept of the Elves as being innocent of original sin (unlike the humans) and that they can't be corrupted that much, at least not as that large a number. Humans on the other hand had their sin-fall during the very beginning of their existence and opened themselves up for corruption (that's also when old age came to humans)
Plus it opens up the problems that Orcs would be immortal, and that they somehow are able to reproduce much faster than Elves ever were.
I think his later idea of humans makes a lot more sense. Plus it was his last word on the topic.
So nothing "ergo"
