If an omniscient–omnipotent being is necessary, then its existence and actions are not contingent or chosen, but metaphysically fixed. In that case, whatever world exists - including its suffering - exists necessarily as well.

That move does not resolve the problem of evil; it dissolves moral agency altogether. A necessary being cannot meaningfully be praised for goodness or blamed for harm, since no alternative was possible.

Whether there is one such being, many, or infinitely many is irrelevant to the ethical issue. The presence of involuntary suffering remains unchanged. What results is not classical theism, but a form of necessitarian or pantheistic metaphysics in which moral predicates no longer apply in the usual sense.

Thank you, J. I appreciate that framing, and I agree that subjective suffering carries immense ethical weight. Where I’d want to keep a distinction clear is between responding to suffering with mercy, and explaining suffering within a metaphysical framework.

The problem of evil operates at the level of coherence between claimed divine attributes and observed reality. Compassion and mercy guide how we treat those who suffer, but they don’t, by themselves, resolve that explanatory tension. If anything, the moral pull toward mercy highlights how inadequate many justificatory theodicies feel when confronted with lived experience.

Thanks for the thoughtful engagement - I appreciate the discussion as well.

I’m explicitly using the classical libertarian definition - the ability to choose otherwise under identical conditions - because that is the version required to ground ultimate moral responsibility in traditional theistic frameworks.

If “free will” is instead defined as acting in accordance with one’s nature or cognitive architecture, then choices are fully explained by prior causes, and alternative possibilities do not exist. That may preserve a colloquial sense of freedom, but it cannot absolve a creator from responsibility for the outcomes of the system they designed.

So yes, if free will is determined by nature, then classical free will does not exist - and with it goes the standard moral defense against the problem of evil.

Your view effectively resolves the problem of evil by denying that benevolence is a property of reality at all. But that is not a defense of omnibenevolent theism - it is a rejection of it.

Redefining omniscience and omnipotence as impersonal properties of “all that exists” strips them of agency, intentionality, and moral relevance. What remains is causal completeness, not a morally accountable God.

Once benevolence is dismissed as anthropomorphic, suffering no longer requires justification - but neither does reality deserve moral trust, worship, or praise. At that point, “God” becomes a poetic synonym for nature, not a being to whom moral predicates meaningfully apply.

In other words, the argument is not answered; it is bypassed by abandoning the very kind of God it addresses.

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.

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.

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, 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

“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.

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.

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

I totally agree.

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.

My point is that when we are responsible for the species and the ecology, we have to make decisions that you seem not to think that don't have to be made. Veganism as a choice of an individual surely doesn't have to answer to these issues, but others have to do it.

I agree that humans have responsibilities toward species and ecosystems - but responsibility does not mean perpetual exploitation. It means stewardship guided by compassion, sustainability, and reduction of harm. Ending industrial breeding doesn’t mean abandoning animals; it means stopping the practice of creating billions of dependents for slaughter while maintaining ecological management through non-lethal and science-based methods.

Ecological management already exists without animal agriculture - through habitat restoration, rewilding, and fertility control programs. These are evidence-based tools used in conservation biology to prevent both overpopulation and collapse.

You're not making sense. How can you even say that you are treating animals equally when you are hell bent on eradicating all livestock and farm animals? That's billions of animals. That "they would die of old age" isn't as humane as you think it is... like genocide...

That analogy collapses immediately. Genocide is the intentional destruction of existing sentient beings who wish to live. Ending breeding is the prevention of future suffering through non-creation of victims. There is no killing, coercion, or hatred involved - only a refusal to keep breeding sentient beings for exploitation.

To be precise: veganism seeks non-existence of forced reproduction, not extermination of living animals. The animals alive today would continue to exist, cared for until natural death. What stops is the endless pipeline of artificial insemination, confinement, and slaughter.

Well, they are killed in the end. So what's different? You think every cow or chicken that has ever lived has been treated cruelly? And because of this they, as animals, shouldn't exist?

The difference is moral agency. Killing sentient beings for unnecessary reasons when we have alternatives is harm we choose. A lion killing a gazelle acts from survival necessity; humans killing cows for taste and tradition do not.

The issue is not whether every individual animal has been mistreated, but that their entire existence is designed around premature death and deprivation of freedom. Creating beings solely to kill them is incompatible with the claim that their lives “matter equally.”

If we truly value them equally, we stop breeding them into systems that guarantee suffering and death. That’s the moral consistency veganism seeks.

So your argument would be simply to "let nature take care of the reindeer"... In just a few years, reindeers would be a huge problem... famine... fragile tundra... rabbits in Australia...

You’ve built a strawman version of the position. “Let nature take care of it” does not mean “abandon all ecological management.” Vegan ethics does not entail passivity - it calls for active, non-exploitative stewardship.

In the case of reindeer, population control through non-lethal immunocontraception, controlled rewilding, and habitat management can maintain balance without slaughter. Such programs are already used worldwide - for example, in managing wild horse and deer populations humanely.

Moreover, invoking the rabbit invasion in Australia is misleading. Rabbits were an invasive species in a non-native ecosystem with no natural predators. Reindeer in Nordic regions are native herbivores that have co-evolved with their environment; their numbers can be ethically stabilized without turning them into products.

The deeper point: ecological complexity requires thoughtful transition, not resignation to the status quo of killing. Saying “the only way to keep balance is to slaughter” is an admission of moral imagination failure. We can do better - and we must.

The simplistic ideology of do not harm animals and let them be isn't going to work here...

It’s not simplistic - it’s principled. “Do not harm unnecessarily” is the foundation of every serious moral system, from medicine to law. The fact that transitioning to non-violence requires planning doesn’t invalidate the principle; it simply means the transition must be intelligent, phased, and context-sensitive.

Veganism is not a naive “hands-off” ideology; it’s an ethical framework that prioritizes minimizing preventable harm while adapting human systems - agriculture, conservation, and culture - to reflect that goal.

Thank you very much for sharing your position. It's always interesting to learn how others view reality.

"So your answer is to end them. With a "gradual, compassionate transition". You want these breeds to be erased, but are "compassionate" about it."

No - not “erased,” but retired. Compassionate transition means no longer breeding animals into dependence, suffering, and slaughter. The individuals alive today would be cared for in sanctuaries. What ends is the cycle of artificial breeding for exploitation, not the existence of animals themselves.

If we stop forcing billions of animals into existence only to kill them young, that is not hostility - it’s the cessation of harm. A being who never suffers or dies because we never bred them into bondage isn’t a victim; it’s a harm prevented.

"In this view you seem to put a lower value on animals that have been bred by humans than to other wildlife. Why the hostility and the categorical inequality between sentient animals? Or how about reindeer?"

There’s no hostility toward any sentient being - only opposition to exploitation. I already said in my previous post: all sentient beings matter equally. The ethical distinction isn’t between “wild” and “domesticated,” but between free existence and forced breeding for human exploitation.

Reindeer who roam freely in tundra ecosystems and maintain natural behaviors are not comparable to cows or chickens bred into total dependency, mutilation, and slaughter. The moral issue arises when we breed sentient beings solely as resources to be exploited. If reindeer were no longer bred for consumption but allowed to live and die naturally, that would align perfectly with veganism and ecological balance.

"Five years out of 20 years isn't a small fraction. And do note that not all live up to 20 years in the wild, just as not all humans reach 75 years."

A lifespan cut short by deliberate violence at the hands of humans is fundamentally different from a natural lifespan limited by disease or predation. Factory-farmed cows typically live 4–6 years; their natural lifespan averages 18–25. Chickens are killed at 6 weeks, not 6–10 years. Pigs at 6 months, not 15–20 years. The ethical objection isn’t numerical - it’s that we prematurely and deliberately end sentient lives for unnecessary reasons, when alternatives exist. It's not just the issue of reduced lifespan - the quality of life the farm animals have is horrific. You can search for videos online if you want to see the appalling conditions the chickens, turkeys, pigs, cows, etc. are kept in.

"I don’t share this view of humans being different from everything else as I think we are part of the biosphere and just a dominant species among others and what we do is similar to other species that mold their environment."

We are part of the biosphere, and precisely because of that, our moral awareness gives us greater responsibility, not exemption. Wolves don’t have slaughterhouses, nor do tigers selectively breed prey species for maximal suffering and yield. Ethical agency differentiates might from right.

Saying “we’re just another species” is true biologically but not morally. Other animals act from instinct; humans act with foresight, reflection, and the capacity to choose compassion over cruelty. Recognizing our participation in nature should lead us to minimize unnecessary harm, not rationalize it.

I thought I did answer your question. My answer is to put them in sanctuaries such as this one: https://www.farmanimalrescuesanctuary.co.uk All sentient beings matter equally.

You’re raising a fair logistical question, but it’s built on a mistaken premise. Veganism isn’t about retroactively erasing all domesticated animals - it’s about ending the breeding, exploitation, and killing of sentient beings for profit or palate.

Holsteins and Ayrshires, like dogs or cats, were selectively bred by humans to serve human ends. That doesn’t mean their dependence makes their exploitation ethically acceptable. Dependence isn’t consent. We created that dependence through artificial selection; we can end it responsibly through gradual, compassionate transition.

Sanctuaries are not meant to house all existing livestock. If the demand for dairy and meat declines, so does forced breeding. Populations shrink naturally over time, as fewer animals are brought into existence for human use. That’s not “mass extinction” - it’s the end of an industrial breeding cycle that exists only because humans perpetuate it.

And yes, the lives of most livestock are filled with suffering - separation from their young, physical mutilations, confinement, and slaughter at a fraction of their natural lifespan. The fact that humans created these conditions doesn’t make them justified. If beings are bred into existence primarily to be used and killed, their suffering outweighs the value of their artificially imposed existence.

Vegan ethics doesn’t deny that these animals have value; it insists that their value isn’t dependent on their usefulness to us. The goal is not zero cows - it’s zero exploitation.

In nature, cows can live around twenty to twenty-five years, but in farming, beef cows are typically killed between one and three years old, and dairy cows between four and six, once their milk yield declines. Veal calves are slaughtered at only four to six months old. Pigs can live fifteen to twenty years, yet “meat pigs” are killed at five to six months, and breeding sows after just three to five years when their fertility drops. Sheep and lambs have natural lifespans of ten to twelve years, but most lambs are slaughtered between four and twelve months, while adult sheep used for wool or breeding are killed around six to eight years. Chickens naturally live eight to ten years, but broiler chickens are slaughtered at only five to seven weeks, and egg-laying hens are killed after about twelve to eighteen months when their egg production declines. Male chicks, considered useless for egg production, are usually killed on the day they hatch. Turkeys can live around ten years, yet most are killed between four and six months. Goats can live fifteen to eighteen years, but dairy goats are killed after about four to six years, and meat goats - often called “kids” - between three and twelve months. Buffalo and oxen can live around twenty to twenty-five years, but they are usually slaughtered between three and six years old.

In every case, these animals die long before reaching even a small fraction of their natural lifespan. Veganism questions whether shortening and exploiting sentient lives for taste, tradition, or convenience can ever be morally justified. The issue is not the number of animals alive, but whether beings capable of suffering should exist only to be used and killed.

Only about 1% of the 8.25 billion humans currently alive are vegan even though the word vegan was coined 81 years ago. 80 billion sentient land organisms and 1 to 3 trillion sentient aquatic organisms are killed by non-vegans per year. Despite this, I don't think people should be forced to go vegan. I think conversion to veganism should be voluntary.

There are sanctuaries for animals where rescued animals live out their natural lives. Holstein and Ayshire cows could be moved to such sanctuaries.

If all people gradually become vegan, farmers won't breed animals for slaughter or milk or egg, etc. I think gradual change is easier to manage.

Thank you for explaining what you mean. Veganism is based on scientific evidence, reason and empathy. Evidence shows that other organisms are sentient, e.g. cows, dogs, cats, fish, octopuses, elephants, lions, meerkats, zebras, horses, monkeys, chimps, chickens, whales, dolphins, goats, ducks, lambs, turkeys, lobsters, etc. They all respond to pain, the way we respond to pain. They have sophisticated nervous systems. I empathise with the pain and distress of all sentient beings.

Why vegetarian isn't enough
The suffering caused by the dairy and egg industry is possibly less well publicised than the plight of factory farmed animals. The production of dairy products necessitates the death of countless male calves that are of no use to the dairy farmer, as well as the premature death of cows slaughtered when their milk production decreases. Similarly, in egg production, even 'ethical' or 'free range' eggs involve the killing of the 'unnecessary' male chicks when just a day old.

That's why I am a vegan.

Humans evolved as omnivores, but we are not obligate omnivores. There are many vegetarians and vegans among humans. I am a vegan. Who are you calling a hypocrite? Here are some resources if you want to learn more: https://www.vegansociety.com/go-vegan/why-go-vegan
https://veganuary.com
https://www.carnismdebunked.com

Thank you very much for answering my question. It's always fascinating to learn how others see reality.

Compliment works. Thank you.

Beautifully put - that’s a wonderfully clear way to mark the difference.

Yes, in science, our language aims for mind-to-world fit: we adjust our beliefs to mirror what is. In ethics, the movement reverses - world-to-mind fit - we attempt to bring what is into alignment with what ought to be. But what’s fascinating is that this reversal isn’t arbitrary; it rests on a prior recognition that “what is” includes beings capable of suffering and flourishing. The “ought” is already latent in the “is,” waiting to be actualized through choice.

In my view, this makes ethics not the negation of science but its completion. Science describes relations of fact; ethics transforms those relations through care. When I say “it is wrong to cause unnecessary suffering,” I’m not merely proposing a new state of affairs - I’m acknowledging a tension between the real and the realizable. Ethical language, in that sense, is a kind of creative realism: speech that doesn’t just reflect reality but helps it remember what it can become.

So perhaps the two directions of fit meet halfway: science refines our understanding of interdependence, and ethics tells us how to live that interdependence responsibly. Both, in their own registers, are ways of aligning ourselves with reality - one by describing its order, the other by deepening its compassion.

Yes - exactly. I agree that the problem lies less in ethics than in what we mean by realism. If we imagine moral facts as entities “lying about the place,” independent of all minds and cultures, then moral realism quickly collapses into absurdity. But if we reduce ethics to mere convention or preference, we lose the very distinction between right and wrong that moral language is meant to express. The challenge is to articulate a realism that isn’t naively objectivist yet isn’t dissolved into subjectivism.

My own position sits closer to what some call experiential realism or intersubjective realism. Moral truths aren’t things but relations that hold across conscious beings. When I say “it is wrong to cause unnecessary suffering,” I’m not pointing to a property out in the world; I’m describing a stable pattern in the space of coexistence - a regularity in the way awareness relates to awareness. In that sense, moral statements can be true or false because they correspond to the real dynamics of sentient life, not to floating moral particles.

This is why I keep returning to compassion. It isn’t a “fact” waiting to be measured, nor a mere sentiment; it’s the experiential disclosure of what sustains the relational field in which meaning, language, and value are even possible. If that field weren’t real, nothing else we call real - not science, not logic, not dialogue - could function, because all depend on trust, recognition, and shared intelligibility.

So yes, I accept your distinction: realism about ethics needs rethinking. But rather than abandoning the word, I’d redefine it. Moral realism, for me, means this: that value is as intrinsic to the fabric of relation as curvature is to space-time. We don’t find moral “facts” lying about; we find ourselves already entangled in moral space.

Excellent points, and I’m grateful for them - they go to the heart of what it means to speak of ethics as a real structure rather than a sentiment.

You’re right that harm, conflict, or even cruelty can enlarge the field of meaning in certain ways. Tragedy, trauma, and loss often deepen awareness and generate profound transformations of self and culture. But I would distinguish between enlarging meaning and affirming value. Violence may broaden the narrative field, but it does so through negation - by showing what breaks when relation collapses. Compassion, by contrast, reveals what holds the field together. Both are revelatory; one is diagnostic, the other sustaining.

To your question: “Why privilege one over the other?” - because only compassion can make coexistence coherent. Fear, domination, and cruelty can organize relations, yes, but only parasitically; they depend on the very trust and vulnerability they exploit. To be loved or feared are not symmetrical options, because fear corrodes the dialogical reciprocity on which understanding depends. In that sense, compassion isn’t just “nicer” - it’s structurally necessary for communication itself to remain possible.

You’re also right that care can wound - that good intentions may be felt as intrusion. For me this is not a counterexample but part of the texture of compassion. Genuine care includes respect for autonomy and an awareness of its own fallibility. It isn’t perpetual agreement but sustained responsiveness: the effort to repair when our help harms, to keep the conversation open. The ethical relation is asymptotic rather than static - it’s the ongoing calibration of good within complexity.

As for the gravity analogy, I take your point. Moral life is not predictable in the way physical law is; what I mean is that the consequences of ignoring compassion are as consistent as the consequences of ignoring gravity. We may not fall at a calculable rate, but civilizations and relationships collapse all the same. Over time, indifference erodes meaning as reliably as gravity pulls objects down.

So yes - behaviour is less predictable than matter, but the pattern of what sustains or destroys meaning is remarkably invariant. We might say compassion is to coexistence what gravity is to structure: the invisible coherence that keeps the whole from flying apart.

That’s beautifully put - I think our intuitions are indeed convergent. If relation is substance, then the universe is not a collection of things interacting but an interaction that gives rise to things. In that sense, Spinoza’s natura naturans and Rovelli’s relational ontology are saying the same thing: being is event, structure is process, substance is relation-in-motion.

Where I would add a small inflection is here: if relation is substance, then the quality of relation - its affective tone - matters metaphysically. The moment we feel compassion, we’re not adding sentiment to a neutral network; we’re glimpsing the network’s self-recognition. The ethical isn’t an overlay upon the physical - it’s the physical come to consciousness of its own interdependence.

So perhaps ecstatic naturalism describes the ontology, and compassion names its pathos: nature not only is relation but feels itself through sentient beings. When we care, the cosmos cares through us.

Thank you - that’s an insightful connection, and I’m glad you mentioned Buber. You’re right: the conception of compassion I’m working with probably leans closer to Buber’s I-Thou than to Levinas’s infinite Other. Levinas emphasizes transcendence and asymmetry - an ethical height that forever exceeds comprehension. Buber, by contrast, stresses reciprocity and presence: the moment when two beings meet in mutual openness, each confirming the other’s reality.

I see compassion as the living current that flows between these poles. It begins as Levinasian exposure - an encounter with the Other’s vulnerability that unsettles me - but it deepens, Buber-like, into a dialogical relation where both exist through the relation itself. Compassion is not self-sacrifice or self-assertion but the space between, the field of recognition that allows “I” and “Thou” to co-arise.

As for the naturalistic aspect, yes - I mean that quite literally. Compassion is not a supernatural virtue but a biological and phenomenological constant: an evolved mode of attunement that makes coexistence possible. Our neural and hormonal architectures, our mirror systems and attachment circuits, are the physiological correlates of what Buber calls the “dialogical principle.” The ethical, in this sense, is the felt continuity of life with life.

So perhaps my position could be described as dialogical naturalism: compassion as the empirical face of a metaphysical truth - the truth that relation precedes substance. Whether we speak the language of Levinas, Buber, or biology, the insight is the same: to exist is already to be with.

Science only works with what we can detect with instruments. Its conclusions are limited to that. It is mute about the basis of existence and key philosophical questions. — Punshhh

Beautifully said - and I completely agree. Science excels at mapping what happens and how it happens, but not why anything matters. Instruments can register particles, forces, and correlations, but not value, significance, or moral responsibility. Those arise in the first-person field of experience that science must presuppose but cannot exhaust.

For me, that’s exactly where philosophy begins - not in competition with science but as its horizon of intelligibility. Science describes the measurable; philosophy interprets the meaning of measurement. When I speak of Compassionism as a metaphysical condition, I’m not proposing an alternative physics but pointing to the fact that inquiry itself presupposes care: the desire to know, to reduce error, to communicate truth, are all ethical acts. Even science rests on a covenant of trust and cooperation - the minimal compassion of minds working together in a shared world.

So yes, science is mute about the basis of existence, but its very success depends on that silent ground: the lived, ethical, and relational world that gives data its sense. In that light, compassion isn’t opposed to reason - it’s the precondition of reason’s continuity. Without care for truth, evidence, or one another, even science would collapse into noise.

How does Vegan fit in? Vegan is…scientific? — DingoJones

Veganism is based on evidence, reason and empathy. Evidence shows that other organisms are sentient, e.g. cows, dogs, cats, fish, octopuses, elephants, lions, meerkats, zebras, horses, monkeys, chimps, chickens, whales, dolphins, goats, ducks, lambs, turkeys, lobsters, etc. They all respond to pain, the way we respond to pain. They have sophisticated nervous systems. I empathise with the pain and distress of all sentient beings. That's why I am a vegan. Non-vegans cause suffering and death to 80 billion sentient land organisms and 1 to 3 trillion sentient aquatic organisms per year. Veganism is also better for the environment and for human health. Here is more information about reasons to go vegan: https://www.vegansociety.com/go-vegan/why-go-vegan

I understand the appeal of the aesthetic-emotive stance very well. There’s a kind of honesty in admitting that our first contact with value is felt, not deduced. What you describe as intuition is, I think, the raw material of any genuine ethics: the moment when reality moves us before we have a theory about why.

As for your question - whether I’m a moral realist - the answer depends on what kind of realism we mean. I’m not a metaphysical realist in the sense that “goodness” or “compassion” exist as freestanding entities somewhere in the universe. But I’m also not a pure subjectivist. My position is what might be called phenomenological or relational realism: values are not “out there” independent of minds, yet they are not arbitrary projections either. They arise in the space between beings, as the disclosure of what sustains or destroys relation.

In that sense, compassion isn’t an invented rule but an encountered reality - the felt structure of coexistence itself. When I harm another, I don’t merely break a social convention; I diminish the field of meaning that connects us. The “realness” of ethics lies in that experiential invariance: wherever sentient beings coexist, the possibilities of care and harm appear as objectively distinct modalities of relation.

So yes, I would say I’m a moral realist of a weak, experiential sort: ethics is not a cosmic property but a condition of intelligibility. We discover it the way we discover gravity - by noticing what happens when we ignore it.

Your aesthetic approach, far from being opposed to this, may actually be its most authentic expression. Feeling and intuition are the first phenomenology; reason arrives later to articulate what we already know.

Yes - beautifully put. Compassion does indeed presuppose chaos in the sense that it awakens in response to vulnerability, loss, pain, disease, injury, harm or disorder. Without a fracture, there would be no need for mending. In that way, compassion and chaos form a polarity rather than an opposition: compassion arises because there is chaos, yet it points beyond it.

But I’d add a nuance. While compassion depends on suffering to manifest, it doesn’t depend on it to exist in principle. Even in a perfectly harmonious world - if such a thing could be - the relational openness that makes compassion possible would still be the same ontological structure, only without wounds to heal. What we call “chaos” is the circumstance that reveals compassion, not the ground that creates it.

The yin-yang metaphor is apt if we take it dynamically: each side generates and limits the other. Chaos exposes finitude; compassion answers it. The two are rhythmically entangled, but not equal in aim. Chaos describes what is; compassion describes what can restore relation. In that sense, compassion is not the mirror of chaos but its transformation - the movement through which Being reclaims coherence from fragmentation.

I love your questions. Thank you for asking them. These are exactly the questions that matter, and you raise them with admirable clarity.

You’re right that “compassion is the more natural relational core” cannot be demonstrated in the same way one demonstrates an empirical law. It isn’t an evidential claim about frequency or dominance, but a phenomenological and pragmatic one about coherence. When we look at the range of human possibilities - cruelty, indifference, care - which mode most fully realizes the structure of relation itself? Only compassion recognizes the other as subject rather than instrument. Violence treats the other as object, thereby erasing relation. That erasure may succeed in practice, but conceptually it’s parasitic: to negate relation, it must first presuppose it.

As for “better,” I don’t mean “better” by inherited theology but by existential intelligibility. Compassion is better not because a God commands it, but because it sustains the very conditions under which meaning, community, and dialogue can exist. I am not a Christian. Please see: https://www.evilbible.com and https://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com if you want to know why I am not a Christian. The moment we decide that conquest is equally valid, we undermine the shared world that makes any valuation - including the valuation of conquest - possible. Compassion, in that sense, is self-validating: it preserves the possibility of coexistence that all discourse presupposes. I am a vegan because of my compassion for all sentient beings. To say “better” at all implies that flourishing, not annihilation, carries weight. If we reject that, then we don’t just abandon compassion; we forfeit the basis for any normative distinction whatsoever. The nihilist and the sadist can live consistently only if they cease to ask why anything matters.

So I see Compassionism not as an ungrounded belief but as the minimal metaphysical condition for an intelligible world: if meaning is possible, some form of care must already be operative. The Ouroboros image you mention captures this beautifully - yes, suffering and healing seem entwined, but the loop only closes through response, not indifference. Without compassion, the circle breaks into chaos.

That’s a crucial question, and I agree that the record of our species reveals both tendencies in abundance: tenderness and atrocity, rescue and massacre. The human condition seems bifurcated between empathy and domination.

My claim that the movement of concern discloses Being’s relational core isn’t an empirical generalization about what humans always do; it’s a phenomenological statement about what moral experience means when it occurs. The fact that many ignore or suppress this responsiveness doesn’t make it less primordial - it only shows that consciousness can close itself against its own depth. The possibility of cruelty presupposes the capacity for empathy, just as lying presupposes language. One can negate compassion only because one already stands within the sphere where the other’s vulnerability matters.

Culturally and biologically, both impulses - aggression and care - have evolutionary roots. But phenomenologically, only care reveals relation as relation: the recognition that the other’s being concerns mine. Violence objectifies and thereby conceals that relation; compassion exposes it. In that sense, cruelty is not another “core” but a rupture, a refusal of disclosure. It flattens the encounter back into ontology without ethics.

So when I say compassion is the more natural relational core, I don’t mean it is the statistically dominant behaviour, but that it reveals the more fundamental truth of coexistence. Empathy is what allows coexistence to appear as such; conquest denies that appearance. The ethical call is fragile, easily drowned by fear, ideology, or tribal conditioning - but its fragility is part of its meaning: Being’s openness is not enforced, only offered.

In this light, Compassionism isn’t the claim that humans are compassionate, but that compassion names the deepest possibility of what it means to be. The conqueror and the caregiver are both human, but only the latter manifests what humanity is capable of when it fully hears its own ontological vocation.

These are excellent questions - thank you for asking them.

Yes, I do intend the scope of the ethical call to include non-human animals, and indeed all sentient life. Levinas himself remained primarily anthropocentric - his face of the Other presupposes language and mutual address - but if we take the “face” not literally but as the phenomenon of vulnerability, then any being capable of suffering already presents that summons. The cry of a wounded animal, even without words, calls us to responsibility in precisely the sense Levinas describes: it demands a response before reflection or ontology. In that sense, ethics extends wherever suffering discloses itself. I am a vegan because I care about all sentient beings.

As for how ethics can “arise” in this way: I don’t mean that ethics emerges as a factual property within Being, but that in the event of encounter - when another’s vulnerability impinges on me - Being shows one of its fundamental modes: relational exposure. Ontology tells us what is; ethics tells us how being is with being. The claim that ethics is the “deepest disclosure” of Being is not empirical but phenomenological: it describes what experience reveals when we attend to its affective depth. We discover that to exist is already to be implicated in others’ existence. Ethics, then, is not an optional layer placed on top of ontology but the felt recognition that Being is never solitary substance but shared finitude.

To put it less abstractly: when we encounter pain - human or non-human - we do not first deduce an ethical rule; we are already moved. That movement of concern is the disclosure of Being’s relational core. Demonstration, in the logical sense, is replaced here by revelation through encounter: what Levinas calls the “saying” prior to the “said.” The ethical moment is not inferred from what-is but given with what-is; it’s how Being manifests its own openness.