A nice start, but lets find the real lesson here.

You've defined 3 impossible terms. Lets tweak them a bit.

Omniscient - A being which knows what can possibly be known.
Omnipotent - A being which is as powerful as a being can possibly be.
Omnibenevolent - A being which is as good as a being can possibly be.

Now the contradiction goes away. Define impossible terms and you get impossible results.

Redefining the terms might seem to remove the contradiction, but it really just hides it behind vaguer language. If “omniscient” now means “knows what can possibly be known,” the obvious question is: who decides what counts as “possible”? If suffering is deemed “unknowable” or “unpreventable,” that’s not solving the problem - it’s admitting that the being isn’t truly all-knowing or all-powerful. It turns the classical God into a very capable but ultimately limited entity.

Likewise, “as powerful as a being can possibly be” is circular. Possible given what? If a world without suffering is logically possible, then failing to create such a world shows a lack of either power, knowledge, or will. If it’s not possible, then reality itself imposes limits on this being, meaning omnipotence was never real to begin with.

And morally, the issue doesn’t go away. Even if this being is “as good as possible,” if it foresaw preventable suffering and chose to allow it, then by any coherent moral standard, it’s not maximally good. If goodness allows needless agony, the word loses meaning.

So, redefining the terms doesn’t eliminate the contradiction - it just concedes that the traditional “all-knowing, all-powerful, all-good” God can’t exist without being reinterpreted as a finite or morally compromised one.

it’s admitting that the being isn’t truly all-knowing or all-powerful. It turns the classical God into a very capable but ultimately limited entity. — Truth Seeker

Correct. Thus, the problem is solved. No being can be unlimited. The lesson is to ensure that one's definitions do not cross into impossible territory. Whenever listening to anyone's proposed terms, one should first evaluate whether the terms are logical in themselves before accepting them as true.

Likewise, “as powerful as a being can possibly be” is circular. Possible given what? — Truth Seeker

Given the limits of reality. We don't know those limits, so putting them forth is futile.

If a world without suffering is logically possible — Truth Seeker

We do not know this. It may not be possible.

If it’s not possible, then reality itself imposes limits on this being, meaning omnipotence was never real to begin with. — Truth Seeker

Even if it were possible, omnipotence defined as "All powerful" is impossible. The term itself results in the ability to not contradict when a contradiction occurs. There are limits to everything.

And morally, the issue doesn’t go away. Even if this being is “as good as possible,” if it foresaw preventable suffering and chose to allow it, then by any coherent moral standard, it’s not maximally good. — Truth Seeker

If it foresaw unnecessary suffering, had the power to do something about it, and suffering was truthfully evil in this instance, then we can imagine a better being existing because there are humans who would do something about that. Meaning you haven't made a contradiction, you've simply yet to describe the the most benevolent being that has the power to prevent 'evil'.

So, redefining the terms doesn’t eliminate the contradiction - it just concedes that the traditional “all-knowing, all-powerful, all-good” God can’t exist without being reinterpreted as a finite or morally compromised one. — Truth Seeker

It doesn't have to be that a God is morally compromised. It simply means if you are going to describe a God with impossible terms, you're going to get an impossible conclusion. The only realistic way to describe a God is with realistic terms.

:halo: :up:

(2020) my two shekels ...
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/506435

Suffering is good for the soul.
Imperfection is better than perfection.
Knowledge creates the unknown.

Thank you for the link to your other post. I read it and I totally agree.

You’ve correctly pointed out that “no being can be unlimited.” But that admission doesn’t solve the problem - it changes the subject. The argument was never about a limited superbeing, but about the logical incoherence of the traditional theistic claim that God is simultaneously omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent.

If you concede that omnipotence and omniscience are impossible, then you’re agreeing that the classical God concept is self-contradictory. That’s not a solution to the problem of evil - it’s the abandonment of classical theism. You’re left with a finite, naturalistic being operating within the limits of reality - powerful perhaps, but not divine in any ultimate sense.

Saying “we don’t know if a world without suffering is possible” also doesn’t rescue the theistic claim. Theists don’t usually portray God as uncertain about metaphysical possibilities; they claim that God created all metaphysical possibilities. If suffering is built into reality’s fabric, then God either designed it that way (which contradicts perfect goodness) or lacked the power to design differently (which contradicts omnipotence).

Regarding your point that omnipotence itself is impossible: if so, then every theology that attributes omnipotence to God collapses into incoherence. The “lesson” here isn’t to adjust definitions but to recognize that the very concept of an all-powerful, all-good, all-knowing deity fails under logical and moral analysis.

So yes - I agree that redefining God with “realistic terms” avoids contradiction. But what you’re describing then is not the God of classical monotheism; it’s a finite being within a constrained universe. In that case, the argument doesn’t refute my point - it confirms it.

“Suffering is good for the soul” only makes sense if (1) souls exist, and (2) suffering actually improves them. Both claims lack evidence. What we do know is that suffering destroys countless lives - human and other sentient species - including those who never learn, grow, or recover from it. If an omnipotent, omnibenevolent being needs agony to teach virtue, it’s a design failure, not moral wisdom. A competent creator could achieve moral growth through joy, empathy, or insight - not torture.

“Imperfection is better than perfection” is self-contradictory unless you redefine “better.” Better than what? If something is better, that means it surpasses another state, implying a standard of perfection that it moves closer to. You can’t coherently claim imperfection is superior to perfection without hollowing out the meaning of both terms.

“Knowledge creates the unknown” is a poetic statement, but epistemologically false. Knowledge reduces the unknown; ignorance is what creates it. Expanding understanding reveals new questions, yes - but that’s a deepening of knowledge, not a return to ignorance.

So all three claims rely on romantic inversions of meaning rather than reasoned argument. They sound mystical, but once unpacked, they offer no coherent defence of suffering or imperfection.

So all three claims rely on romantic inversions of meaning rather than reasoned argument. They sound mystical, but once unpacked, they offer no coherent defence of suffering or imperfection. — Truth Seeker

What is your evidence to the contrary? You can claim the meaning of words as evidence, but then you are retreating from factuality yourself. But there is a religious tradition of asceticism that is by no means romantic, that regards voluntary privation as a spiritual discipline, and even mere athletes regard pain as a barrier to be overcome.

Likewise physicists often say that the more one knows the more one is aware of the extent of one's ignorance. In the case of God, He is a simple. He can know everything, but he can also create the unknown-to-Himself. He can hide things from himself, just as you can shut your eyes to some things.

For God, to create is necessarily to create the ungodly, that is creation. Creation is lesser than the creator and thus imperfect. But though imperfect and superfluous, creation adds something to the perfection that is God.

But let me tell you my position. My real claim is that reality cannot be constrained by words. If there is God, words cannot force him out of existence, and if there is no God, words cannot argue Him into existence. So a careful truth seeker will not try to prove with words the existence or non-existence of anything, but will be content to say merely that they have had no experience and found no evidence of God, unless and until they have had such experience or evidence.

↪Philosophim You’ve correctly pointed out that “no being can be unlimited.” But that admission doesn’t solve the problem - it changes the subject. The argument was never about a limited superbeing, but about the logical incoherence of the traditional theistic claim that God is simultaneously omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent. — Truth Seeker

Correct, but any good thinker and philosopher is not going to take the low hanging fruit. They're going to be charitable to ideas they don't like themselves. This is a problem that is easily solved by high schoolers (I know, I was in high school when I first encountered it), and so we have to ask why its stuck around so persistently.

One thing to realize is that if you hold impossible terms, its also impossible to counter someone who believes in them. "Can God create a rock so big even he can't lift it?" Sure, he made himself a man, now he can't lift it. The realm of impossibility is the realm of imagination and child play. It is literally child's play to take your contradiction and simply ignore it because 'unlimited' means I can ignore your contradiction.

If you're accepting that impossible terms can exist and be considered, you're going to end up not winning. Because you haven't proven that impossible terms are impossible, you've only proved a contradiction through some word play to someone who believes in impossibility. Notice how you can point out a contradiction that can be realized in high school and yet there are hundreds of millions of people who still believe in a God? Crowing over a simple contradiction while it changes no one is foolish. You have to think deeper than that. And part of that is being kind to your opponents viewpoint.

If instead you can get the other person to think, "The way to solve the contradiction reasonably instead of simply brushing it off, is to revise the terms to be reasonable," now you have something. You're being charitable. "Couldn't it be," you say, "that people thousands of years ago were simply defining the terms as exaggerations, but really when we examine the word carefully it makes more sense to think in them this way?" NOW you've got the other person thinking. Most people will think, "Yeah, that makes sense." You haven't disproved God, but you were never going to do that anyway. You're doing one better. You've gotten them away from thinking in impossible terms, and now thinking in possible terms.

This is the difference between a person who has a goal of convincing someone of a particular assertion, and instead gets a person to think in a more rational way. That's the goal. Get a person to start thinking rationally and then you can have a reasonable discussion. Meet the person you're talking with half way. Try to see what they want, find what is irrational, then try to shape it in the most rational way from what they want. Then you can take the next step and demonstrate how the next steps of rationality do not lead to a particular conclusion.

That’s not a solution to the problem of evil - it’s the abandonment of classical theism. You’re left with a finite, naturalistic being operating within the limits of reality - powerful perhaps, but not divine in any ultimate sense. — Truth Seeker

Incorrect. You're simply setting "The divine" in terms of "The real" instead of the imaginary. Again, if your goal is to invalidate theism with "The problem of Evil", an ancient and basic argument, hundreds of millions of people will show you its a fools errand. You cannot convince someone of something rational if they aren't already thinking in rational terms. You aren't going to invalidate their faith, so do one better. Get them to think in rational terms. You're not invalidating theism, you're reshaping it to be in the realm of reasonability first. Then you might have a chance.

There's a potential theodicy I quite like, but whether you'd buy it depends on how you'd answer this question:

If it could be proved to you, right now, that at one point in the past you'd suffered terrible hardship but a) had completely forgotten it, and b) suffered no ongoing ill effects, would you regard that situation as in any way a misfortune? Would there be anything there to regret or deplore?

A world where all sentient beings are equally omniscient and omnipotent would contain no involuntary suffering, no vulnerability, and no inequality, since each being could prevent harm to itself and others. — Truth Seeker

Under the previous assumptions/definitions, there could be multiple omniscient beings, but what would happen if two omnipotent sentient beings wanted to prevent harm on different ways? Doesn't seem logically possible unless you also assume that such beings will always agree on everything (maybe so if omniscient). But that additional assumption would have all sorts of implications - e.g., lack of free will. Yes/no?

If a being is omniscient, it knows every possible outcome of every possible creation. — Truth Seeker

This is not necessarily true. It depends on what your definition of “omniscient” is. It might just mean knowledge of everything the way it is right now. If the universe is not determinate, an omniscient entity might not be able to know the future.

This highlights the fact that your whole argument is about language and not about reality.

If a being is omnipotent, it has the power to bring about any logically possible outcome, including the existence of beings who are equally omniscient and omnipotent. — Truth Seeker

Again, this comes down to the meaning of the word “omnipotent” which you’ve defined as having “the power to bring about any logically possible outcome.” it really doesn’t make much sense to me.

A world where all sentient beings are equally omniscient and omnipotent would contain no involuntary suffering, no vulnerability, and no inequality, since each being could prevent harm to itself and others. — Truth Seeker

This doesn’t strike me as necessarily true.

A perfectly omnibenevolent being necessarily prefers the outcome that maximizes well-being and minimizes suffering. — Truth Seeker

Again, I don’t see why this is necessarily true.

If a deity created sentient beings who suffer, that deity either lacked the knowledge, the power, or the will to prevent that suffering. — Truth Seeker

Again, again, I don’t see this as necessarily true either.

Therefore, a being responsible for preventable suffering cannot be all three at once. — Truth Seeker

In summary—your argument strikes me as the kind of argument someone who doesn’t have a good grasp on what omniscience, omnipotence, and benevolence mean. To be fair, I know you’re not the one who started this particular way of seeing things. It’s been around for centuries.

Why did you not add that the created beings, in addition to being omnipotent and omniscient, could also be created so that they are omnibenevolent? Or is the creation of an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent creature not logically possible? If not, that would seem to raise an objection to the argument. For, an omnipotent and omniscient creature whose will was inclined towards ill would seem able and inclined to cause suffering.

Free will seems relevant to the argument.

A claim is factual if it is based on evidence. You claimed that souls exist and that suffering is good for them. Please prove your two claims with evidence. I am an agnostic regarding the existence of Gods, fairies, leprechauns, unicorns, etc., as it is impossible to prove the non-existence of anything that does not exist.

Philosophim, I appreciate the call for interpretive charity. But charity does not mean accepting incoherent definitions or pretending that an argument disappears once the terms are clarified.

You say that because believers can simply ignore contradictions, pointing them out is “child’s play.” Yet that concedes the central issue: classical theism defines God using mutually incompatible attributes. This isn’t “word-play”; it’s conceptual analysis. If someone insists square circles exist, the error isn’t solved by saying we should make the term “square circle” more reasonable. The original concept collapses from within.

Your approach — encouraging believers to reinterpret omni-attributes in weaker, more realistic ways — is fine as a pastoral strategy, but it is not a defense of classical theism. It is a revision of it. And that distinction matters.

If omnipotence is no longer literally unlimited, if omniscience is no longer exhaustive knowledge of all truths, and if omnibenevolence must be scaled to finite capacities, then the “problem of evil” doesn’t just disappear — the theory has changed. The contradiction isn’t being solved; the definition is being replaced.

That is exactly what I stated: once the terms are naturalised, we no longer have the God of classical theism but a finite, contingent agent operating within the constraints of reality. There’s nothing wrong with that move — but it is a retreat from the original claim.

And that is the core point:
The problem of evil exposes the incoherence of the classical theological package.
If the solution is to abandon the classical attributes, then the problem has done its job.

You say, “Get them to think rationally first.” I agree entirely. But rational analysis of the omni-attributes leads precisely to the conclusion I drew: no being can be unlimited, and any coherent “God” must therefore be finite. Once that is admitted, the classical theistic problem isn’t “solved”; it is dissolved because the system has been replaced.

In other words:

The “high school contradiction” stays undefeated.
The revision you propose amounts to non-classical theism.
Charity does not require accepting impossible definitions.
A concept that must be rewritten to avoid contradiction has already failed on its own terms.

If someone wants to believe in a powerful, limited, non-omni agent, that’s a separate discussion. But it is not the God of historical Christianity, Islam, or Judaism — and the problem of evil was specifically aimed at that God.

J, the problem in your proposal becomes clear once we separate two different kinds of misfortune:

1. Subjective misfortune — how suffering feels to the sufferer while it is happening.
2. Objective misfortune — whether it is bad in itself that conscious beings undergo intense suffering, regardless of what they later remember.

Your question focuses only on memory, but memory is irrelevant to whether the suffering was bad while it occurred. Pain does not become retroactively good, harmless, or morally justified just because the victim later forgets it.

If I were tortured and then had my memory wiped, three things would still be true:

1. I really suffered.
2. The suffering was intrinsically harmful while I was experiencing it.
3. A morally perfect being permitting it would still need a justification at the time it occurred.

Forgetting trauma does not erase the ethical problem — it erases the awareness of it. But morality is about what happens to beings while they are conscious, not merely about what they later recall.

If your theodicy were valid, then the following would be acceptable:

All suffering in the world, including genocide and torture, would be “not a misfortune” if victims were later forced to forget it.
A morally perfect God could allow unlimited agony as long as everyone’s memory was erased afterward.
The moral relevance of suffering would depend entirely on later cognitive states instead of the suffering itself.

That is intuitively and ethically implausible.

Even if I forget my suffering, the moral status of the event is unchanged:
it was still suffering, and a morally perfect being with unlimited power who allows preventable suffering still faces the problem of evil.

So the proposed theodicy doesn’t answer the challenge — it sidesteps it by appealing to amnesia.

And if we try to generalise the idea (e.g., earthly suffering is “forgotten” in heaven), we still have the same problem:

The world contains horrific amounts of suffering right now.
A being who is both omnipotent and omnibenevolent would prevent that suffering at the time it occurs, not repair it or wipe memories later.

Retroactive consolation cannot justify present preventable harm.

Good questions, but there’s an important distinction to keep in mind:
omnipotence does not imply the capacity to perform logical contradictions.

Two points address your concern:


1. Omniscient beings would not disagree, because disagreement depends on ignorance.

Disagreement arises only when at least one party lacks some relevant knowledge. If two beings possess identical, complete, and perfect knowledge:

They know every fact.
They know all causal consequences.
They know all values, preferences, and outcomes.
They know what course of action is best, all things considered.

In that case, disagreement is impossible - not because their “free will” is removed, but because the reasons for choice are perfectly understood by both.

You only disagree when you don’t know something, or when you’re mistaken about a fact or value. With no ignorance, there is nothing to disagree about.

So:
Multiple omniscient beings would converge on the same optimal action because they share the same full information set.

This is not a limitation on free will; it’s a consequence of perfect rational clarity.

2. Omnipotence constrained by logic is not a defect; it is definitional.

The traditional understanding of omnipotence excludes logical contradictions - no “square circles,” no “married bachelors,” and no mutually incompatible states of the world.

Thus:
Two omnipotent beings cannot simultaneously will contradictory states, because contradictions are not objects of power.

Preventing suffering is not contradictory.
Preventing and not preventing suffering simultaneously is.

If two truly omniscient beings know exactly the consequences of every possible action, they would see:

Which intervention produces a world with least suffering.
Which choice is morally optimal.
Which action aligns with perfect rational insight.

Given identical perfect knowledge, they will inevitably choose identically. Not because their freedom is removed, but because freedom does not require irrational divergence.

3. Therefore: multiple omniscient, omnipotent beings can coexist without conflict.

No disagreement ⇒ no contradictory acts
No contradictory acts ⇒ no logical impossibility
No logical impossibility ⇒ coexistence is coherent

And because each could prevent all harm to itself and others, involuntary suffering would still be impossible in such a world.

This reinforces my original argument:

A world with equal maximal power and knowledge contains no preventable suffering.
The only worlds containing involuntary suffering are those with unequal capacities or insufficient knowledge.

Thus, the problem of evil persists for classical theism, because an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-benevolent being could trivially create the suffering-free world that multiple coequal omni-beings would themselves inhabit.

T Clark, thanks for the thoughtful response. But almost all of your objections rely on saying “this isn’t necessarily true” without supplying a workable alternative definition. Rejecting a definition is easy; offering a coherent replacement is the real test. Let me go through your points clearly.

1. “Omniscience might only mean knowing everything right now.”

If omniscience is defined as “knows all facts about the present moment”, then the being is not omniscient, it is simply very well-informed, and the traditional attribute of foreknowledge disappears.

That’s not a criticism of my argument; it’s an abandonment of classical theism.
The God described in Christianity, Islam, and Judaism absolutely is defined as knowing all truths - past, present, and future. Your alternative definition is too weak to capture what the doctrine actually asserts.

If someone wants to redefine omniscience as “limited snapshot awareness,” that’s fine - but then the problem of evil doesn’t apply, because the doctrine being examined has changed.

This illustrates my point, not yours.

2. “Omnipotence defined as ability to realize any logically possible outcome doesn’t make sense to me.”

This is the standard philosophical definition, used precisely because it avoids paradoxes like “square circles” or “rocks too heavy to lift.”

If you reject the standard definition, you need to supply your own:

Does omnipotence include the power to do contradictions?
If yes → the term becomes meaningless and cannot be reasoned about.
If no → you’ve returned to the standard definition without realizing it.

There is no viable third option.

3. “A world of co-omnipotent, co-omniscient beings need not lack suffering.”

On what basis?
If each being:

knows every threat, every causal chain, every detail of harm in advance, and
has the power to prevent all harm to itself and others,

then the only way suffering could still occur is if:

1. they choose to allow it (contradicting omnibenevolence), or
2. their omniscience or omnipotence is incomplete.

In either case, classical omni-properties collapse.
You can’t keep the omni-attributes and the suffering at the same time.

4. “An omnibenevolent being wouldn’t necessarily minimize suffering.”

Then what does “omnibenevolent” mean?

If it does not entail preferring the best possible state of affairs, then the word loses any usable content.
If it does entail that preference, then my argument stands.

You can’t simultaneously:

affirm omnibenevolence
deny that it prefers maximal flourishing

and still be using the term meaningfully.

5. “A deity might cause suffering even if it is all-knowing, all-powerful, and perfectly good.”

Only by redefining one or more of those attributes into trivialities.

The classical formulation - used for centuries by theologians - holds:

an omniscient being knows all consequences,
an omnipotent being can prevent any avoidable harm,
an omnibenevolent being desires the best possible outcome for all.

From these three premises, the conclusion follows:

If preventable suffering exists, at least one of the three attributes is not present.

If you deny the conclusion, you must revise one or more of the attributes.
But that revision is exactly my point: classical theism becomes internally inconsistent.

6. “Your argument is just about language.”

No - language is how we make concepts precise.
If a doctrine relies on self-contradictory concepts, the contradiction lies in the doctrine, not the analysis.

Saying “these concepts don’t make sense” is not a refutation of my argument; it is a concession that the omni-triad as traditionally formulated is incoherent.

If your position is:

“Omniscience, omnipotence, and omnibenevolence are unclear or incoherent concepts,”

then we are in agreement.

But that means the traditional God-concept collapses, because classical theism requires these attributes to be meaningful, coherent, and jointly applicable.

You haven’t challenged the internal logic of the argument - you’ve challenged the concepts themselves.
And challenging the concepts is fine, but it supports my conclusion:

The omni-triad is incoherent as traditionally defined, and revising the definitions fundamentally abandons classical theism.

Yes, good analysis. As you point out, it comes down to 1) whether you think suffering can be anything other than subjective, and 2) whether my identity largely consists of being the same person I was in the past.

When I run the thought experiment on myself, try as I may, I can't make myself believe that forgotten (and consequence-less) suffering matters. To whom? But then I'm stopping at the subjective, as you clearly are not. I think different people will have different intuitions about this.

Good questions — but none of them undermine the argument once we distinguish three things:

1. what is logically possible,
2. what is consistent with the omni-attributes, and
3. what is compatible with free will as typically defined.

Let me go through your points one by one.

1. Why not assume the created beings are omnibenevolent too?

You absolutely can include omnibenevolence.

And doing so strengthens the argument rather than weakening it, because:

An omniscient being knows all consequences of its actions.
An omnipotent being can actualize any logically possible benevolent outcome.
An omnibenevolent being necessarily prefers the morally best possible outcome.

Therefore, omniscient + omnipotent + omnibenevolent creatures would:

foresee all possible harms,
be able to prevent all harms,
wish to prevent all harms,

and thus
no involuntary suffering would occur in such a world.

So adding omnibenevolence makes the conclusion even more airtight.

2. Is it logically possible for created beings to be omni?

Yes — if we are using the classical definitions.
The only properties logically excluded from omnipotence are contradictions (e.g., square circles).

Nothing contradictory is involved in these three propositions:

“X knows everything that can be known.”
“X can do everything that is logically possible.”
“X always wills the best possible state of affairs.”

These are definitional claims, not metaphysical constraints.

If God cannot create a being equal in knowledge, power, and goodness, then God is not omnipotent.
That alone collapses classical omnipotence.

So either:

it is possible, and suffering disappears, or
it is impossible, and omnipotence is abandoned.

Both directions undermine classical theism.

3. What about the possibility of an omni-being “inclined towards ill”?

This suggestion is actually incoherent.

If a being is:

omniscient → it knows the full moral truth, the full consequences, and what maximizes well-being;
omnipotent → it can realize the morally optimal outcome;
omnibenevolent → it prefers the morally optimal outcome;

then being “inclined towards ill” is a contradiction in terms.
Malice requires either:

1. ignorance (not omniscience),
2. weakness (not omnipotence), or
3. moral defect (not omnibenevolence).

You cannot combine perfect knowledge + perfect power + perfect goodness with “inclined toward ill.”
That is as contradictory as “omniscient but mistaken” or “omnipotent but helpless.”

So the case you raise is only possible if one or more omni-attributes fail.

4. Free will does not rescue classical theism

Classical free will requires:

the ability to choose otherwise,
under conditions of incomplete information,
with limited causal power.

But beings who are omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent cannot:

be uncertain about outcomes,
be unable to bring about the best outcome,
prefer a worse outcome.

So the typical libertarian notion of free will is logically incompatible with the omni-attributes.

Moreover, even if you introduce free will in a weaker form, the problem remains:

A creator who is omniscient and omnipotent knowingly creates agents who will cause catastrophic suffering when the creator could have created equally powerful, equally knowledgeable, equally benevolent agents who cause none.

Thus free will does not offer an escape; it merely highlights that the suffering is:

foreknown, foreseeable, preventable, not prevented, and therefore inconsistent with omnibenevolence.

Adding omnibenevolence strengthens the argument.
Creating omni-creatures is logically possible unless omnipotence is abandoned.
An omni-being cannot be “inclined toward ill” without contradiction.
Free will does not salvage the omni-triad; it makes preventable suffering even more ethically damning.

J, I appreciate your honesty here — you’re acknowledging the core hinge: whether suffering has intrinsic moral significance independent of later memory.

But the moment we ask, “To whom does forgotten suffering matter?” we’ve already moved off-track. The question isn’t:

Does the later version of the person remember it?
but
Was a conscious subject harmed at the time the suffering existed?

A few points sharpen this:

1. Subjective suffering is intrinsically bad at the moment it is experienced.

If a mind is enduring agony, that state is bad for that mind right then, regardless of whether a future self remembers it.

Memory is a later cognitive state.
Suffering is a present experiential state.
One cannot retroactively change the valence of the earlier conscious experience.

This is why the ethical weight doesn’t depend on identity persistence.

2. Ethical evaluation depends on what happened, not on what is later remembered.

If someone were tortured and their memory wiped, we would not say:

“No harm occurred.”
“There is nothing to regret ethically.”
“It’s morally identical to no torture ever happening.”

We would say:

A conscious being was harmed, and that matters even if forgotten.

The moral status of an event is determined at the time it occurs, not by the cognitive condition of the survivor.

3. Your intuition tracks current psychological impact, not moral relevance.

You say:

“I can't make myself believe that forgotten suffering matters. To whom?”

You mean:
“It no longer matters to me psychologically today.”

And that is true. If I forget an event, I am unaffected today.

But “who is affected now?” is the wrong metric for moral evaluation.
Ethics is concerned with:

Was a sentient being harmed during the period in which it was experiencing harm?

The answer is yes, always, independent of memory.

Present you may not care.
But the relevant subject — past you — did care while the suffering was happening.

And morality cares about the subject at the moment it is harmed, not only about the aftermath.

4. If forgotten suffering “doesn’t matter,” monstrous implications follow.

Your view implies:

Torture is morally neutral if we erase memories afterward.
Permanent amnesia would ethically sanitize any atrocity.
The moral weight of suffering = the durability of memory, not the intensity of pain.

No serious moral framework accepts that.

If a theodicy relies on memory erasure to justify suffering, it’s effectively saying:

“God can permit any amount of agony as long as He later wipes it from your mind.”

But that justifies everything, including the worst horrors imaginable.

A theory that justifies everything justifies nothing.

5. Intuitions differ, but reasons do not.

Yes, people may differ in intuitions about identity and memory.
But the reasons cut one way:

Suffering is bad during the moment of conscious experience.
Memory does not retroactively alter the moral quality of past events.
A perfectly benevolent, omnipotent, omniscient being would prevent the suffering at the time it occurs.
A theodicy that relies on memory erasure collapses into moral nihilism.

Even if your emotional intuitions don’t fire on forgotten pain, the ethical logic remains clear.

Why would God be responsible for the actions of another agent? That is, why does creation entail responsibility for the actions of another?

Here is a thought experiment: would parents be morally responsible for their adult child's actions if they foresaw, but did not will or cause, that the child would do something morally wrong? If so, why are they morally responsible for another agent's free actions?

Strong arguments. Nicely done.

You perhaps know that this "heaven theodicy" is found in Kant (in the 2nd critique, I believe, though I can't cite the section), and your post prompted me to look back at some old notes and see whether Kant's version can stand up. Rereading, I saw that Kant frames the problem a little differently. For him, what's required of God is not the usual trio of omniscience, omnipotence, and omni-benevolence, but rather that he grant all humans eternal happiness. As long as he does this, he satisfies the requirements for a maximally moral being. And this, for Kant, can be done even if there is temporary suffering. So it's not exactly a traditional theodicy. And it raises interesting questions about what "heavenly happiness" would be. If it's meant to be a perfection, a state than which there is no better, then quite possibly I might agree, once I experience it, that I couldn't possibly be any happier even if I hadn't suffered on Earth. So the amnesia postulate may not even be necessary.

Do you think it makes a difference, then, if "perfect happiness" is substituted for "no suffering"? And can you accept the idea that such a perfect happiness might be consistent with having previously suffered? I guess part of the perfection would involve a realization that the past no longer matters, not just subjectively, but ethically.

Your logic seems reasonable, but a theist will see an escape hatch between these 2 premises:

Premise 3:A world where all sentient beings are equally omniscient and omnipotent would contain no involuntary suffering, no vulnerability, and no inequality, since each being could prevent harm to itself and others.

Premise 4:A perfectly omnibenevolent being necessarily prefers the outcome that maximizes well-being and minimizes suffering.

A theist could reason, that this "god" considers there to be some benefit to having beings who are not omnipotent/omniscient but must actually struggle with their choices. This forces them to have to earn their reward. Compare this to a child who has to do the work to achieve some goal, vs the child whose parents give him everything. Or there's always the old excuse "we mere mortals aren't equipped to understand God's reasons".

The parent analogy fails because it quietly removes every attribute that makes the classical God relevant to the problem of evil. Parents are not omnipotent, not omniscient, not the creators of their child’s nature, and not morally perfect. God, in classical theism, is claimed to be all of those.

Once those differences are restored, the analogy collapses.

Let me explain clearly.

1. Creation does entail responsibility when the creator designs the agent’s nature, selects all initial conditions, foreknows every consequence, controls all causal factors, has unlimited power to intervene, and has omnibenevolent motivation.

If you create the entire causal history, foresee every outcome, and have the power to prevent harm, then you are morally responsible for preventable harm.

Parents do not satisfy any of these conditions.

God, by definition, does.

So the question “why would God be responsible?” is answered by the very omni-attributes classical theism assigns to God.

2. The parent analogy quietly removes omnipotence and omniscience

Parents cannot choose every gene their child receives, control every environmental factor, prevent all harms, foresee all actions with certainty, guarantee that their child will not commit evil, and shape the child’s will infallibly.

If they could do all that, then they would be responsible if they knowingly brought a dangerous person into existence.

So the analogy works only by stripping the relevant power away. But you cannot strip power away from God without denying omnipotence.

3. If parents were omnipotent and omniscient, they would be responsible.

Let’s revise your thought experiment to include the classical attributes:

Suppose parents can design their child’s psychology perfectly.
Suppose they know infallibly exactly what their child will do.
Suppose they could prevent any harmful act effortlessly.
Suppose they choose to create the child anyway, knowing the exact future harms.

In that scenario, yes - they would be morally responsible.
Not for the child’s freedom, but for creating a being they knew would cause suffering when they could have prevented it entirely.

Once you restore the omni-attributes, the analogy actually supports the problem of evil.

4. Free will does not erase responsibility when the creator designed the will

Free will only reduces responsibility when:

the agent’s capacity for action was not designed by the creator
the creator did not foresee the outcomes
the creator could not prevent them

But if the creator:

designed the agent’s cognitive architecture
knew exactly how it would behave
could prevent any negative outcome
chose to create it anyway

then free will does not shield the creator from moral responsibility.

Classical theism makes God responsible by definition.

5. The decisive point: Preventable suffering is still preventable

Even if a creature freely chooses evil:

God knew this in advance.
God could have prevented the creature’s existence.
God could have given the creature a better nature.
God could intervene at any moment to stop harm, but God doesn’t.

A being with unlimited power, knowledge, and goodness who allows preventable suffering is responsible for that suffering.

Parents are not.

God, if classical theism is true, is.

Your analogy only works by reducing God to a powerless bystander. But a being who lacks causal responsibility, foresight, and the power to prevent harm is not the God of classical theism.

Restore the omni-attributes, and creation does entail moral responsibility - unavoidably.

J, thank you — and I’m glad you brought Kant into this, because his “heaven theodicy” is subtle, but it ultimately doesn’t resolve the issue. It shifts the criterion from preventing suffering to compensating for suffering, but that shift carries its own philosophical problems.

Let me go through your questions directly.

1. Does perfect future happiness offset past suffering?

No, not in any ethical sense that concerns a maximally moral being.

Two reasons:

(a) Compensation ≠ justification

Compensating someone after harm does not retroactively make the harm morally permissible.

If I torture someone today but give them infinite bliss tomorrow, the torture was still wrong while it happened.
My later generosity doesn’t erase my earlier responsibility.

Kant’s view addresses the ultimate fate of moral agents, but not the moral status of God’s permission of preventable suffering.

(b) A perfect being would not use “future bliss” to excuse preventable suffering

A maximally moral being doesn’t choose a worse path when a better one is available.

If God can create:

a world where someone suffers and then receives perfect happiness, or
a world where they receive perfect happiness without suffering,

then, the second is the morally superior option.

Choosing the first is inconsistent with moral perfection.

2. Is “perfect happiness” compatible with having suffered in the past?

Psychologically, yes; ethically, only if the suffering was necessary for the good achieved.

But in Kant’s model, the suffering is not necessary, because:

God could grant perfect happiness without first permitting horrors.
Perfect happiness does not depend logically on prior suffering.
Moral development does not require cruelty.

So even if I eventually feel no distress about the past, the God who permitted unnecessary suffering acted suboptimally.

Subjective acceptance does not erase objective responsibility.

3. Does “the past no longer matter ethically” make sense?

No, because:

Ethical valuation is time-indexed.

A state of affairs is morally evaluated when it occurs, not in light of later memory or reinterpretation.

For example:

A child’s suffering in 500 BCE has the same moral status whether or not it is later “redeemed” in an afterlife.
Divine compensation does not transform cruelty into goodness.

To say “the past no longer matters ethically” is to say the suffering had no moral weight at the moment it occurred - a view that collapses into moral nihilism.

In perfect happiness, I may not care about my past suffering, but what I feel in heaven does not determine the ethical status of past events.

A satisfied victim does not exonerate a negligent creator.

4. The deeper issue: Kant trades benevolence for a cosmic compensation scheme

Kant solves the problem only by weakening what “maximally moral” means.

He says:

God must guarantee ultimate happiness
But need not prevent earthly suffering

But that is already a concession:

It abandons omnibenevolence.
It abandons moral perfection as traditionally understood.
It transforms God into a cosmic compensator, not a cosmic protector.

That is closer to a bureaucrat than an omnibenevolent creator.

5. Why Kant’s move doesn’t help with the classical problem of evil

Even if:

I end up perfectly happy, and I no longer mind my past suffering, and I see it as irrelevant, the central problem remains:

A morally perfect, omniscient, omnipotent being knowingly allowed preventable suffering that achieved no necessary good.

Compensation is not justification.

A God who could have prevented a child’s agony but didn’t is not morally perfect, regardless of the afterlife.

Perfect happiness later does not make preventable suffering now morally acceptable.
A maximally moral being would choose the world with perfect happiness and no unnecessary suffering.
“The past doesn’t matter ethically” cannot be defended without erasing the moral weight of suffering entirely.

Kant’s solution is elegant, but ultimately it changes what “moral perfection” means.

The classical problem of evil remains intact.

Thank you for your reply. You’re right that the “escape hatch” you mention is exactly where many theists retreat. But it collapses once you look at what it actually assumes. Let me take each version of the move and show why they fail.

1. “God prefers beings who must struggle and earn their reward.”

This sounds plausible until you ask one simple question:

Why would a morally perfect being prefer a world with preventable suffering over one without it?

Two problems emerge immediately:

(a) If the suffering is unnecessary for moral growth, then permitting it is immoral.

If God could achieve the same virtues, character, or meaning without allowing children to be burned, starved, tortured, or raped, then permitting such suffering is morally indefensible.

A good parent does not orchestrate horrors to “build character.”

(b) If the suffering is necessary for virtue, then God’s omnipotence fails.

If God needs suffering to achieve a certain good, then that good is not logically achievable without suffering.

But omnipotence, by definition, includes the ability to achieve any logically possible good without collateral damage.

So either:

God is not omnipotent, or
virtue that requires torture and famine is not worth calling “virtue.”

This is the classic “soul-making theodicy collapses omnipotence” problem.

2. “Struggle makes the reward meaningful.”

(John Hick’s soul-making answer)

Even if struggle adds meaning, the argument breaks for three reasons:

(a) Meaning can be achieved without involuntary agony.

Challenge does not require cancer, earthquakes, pedophilia, or genocides.

It can be achieved through freely chosen effort, not imposed horror.

(b) Many victims do not survive long enough to “grow.”

Millions of infants die in agony.
What virtue did they learn?
What struggle did they “earn their reward” through?

Most suffering in the world has no soul-making payoff at all.

(c) If the reward is infinite, no finite struggle is required.

If infinite bliss awaits, the smallest amount of suffering is ethically unnecessary - unless God needs to torture creatures to make Himself look generous.

That is not moral perfection.

3. “We are not equipped to understand God’s reasons.”

(The fallback appeal to mystery)

This argument collapses into incoherence for four reasons:

(a) If you can’t understand God’s reasons, you have no grounds to call Him good.

You can’t simultaneously say:

“God’s goodness is beyond our understanding,”
and also
“God is morally perfect.”

If the concept of goodness is unintelligible, the praise is meaningless.

(b) If God’s ways are inscrutable, then every possible world is compatible with His goodness.

A world full of torture? God has a “mysterious reason.”
A world with no suffering? Same reason.
A world where He does the opposite of His commandments? Still mysterious.

A theory that explains everything explains nothing.

(c) If we cannot judge God’s actions, we cannot judge God’s commands.

If “God’s morality is unknowable,” then:

You cannot say “God is good.”
You cannot say “God is worthy of worship.”
You cannot say “God’s commands are moral.”
You cannot say “God does not lie.”
You cannot say “God does not deceive.”

If God’s moral logic is incomprehensible, then everything about Him becomes epistemically inaccessible.

Hence, theistic morality collapses.

(d) “Mystery” is indistinguishable from admitting defeat.

Once you allow “maybe God has a reason we can’t grasp,” you have blocked all possible refutation - not by solving the argument, but by abandoning rational analysis.

At that point, you’ve given up on philosophical theism and retreated into fideism.

4. The core point the theist cannot escape

Even if God wants “growth,” “struggle,” “earned reward,” or “meaning,” an omnipotent God could create a world that achieves all those good things without:

genocide,
starvation,
rape,
childhood leukemia,
parasitic worms eating children’s eyes,
billions of years of animal suffering,
natural disasters,
and every form of preventable agony.

If God permits suffering that He could prevent without losing any greater good, then He is not omnibenevolent.

If He cannot prevent it, He is not omnipotent.

If He does not foresee it, He is not omniscient.

The escape hatch closes.

“Struggle builds character” → implies God needs suffering → contradicts omnipotence.
“The reward is earned” → implies virtue is impossible without horrors → incoherent.
“We can't understand God’s ways” → collapses all theistic moral claims.

No theistic move preserves the omni-triad.

:100: :100:

:clap: