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Originally Posted by davem
Yet Eru creates them knowing that some will take those paths. He doesn't make them take the 'paths' but he knows that some will take them (because he knows everything). So he gives them life knowing some of them will suffer (as a result of their own free choice of course). Was he right to do that? If a couple decide to have a child knowing that child will inherit a painful, crippling disease are they free of all responsibility for that child's suffering?
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It's miraculous you come to the same thoughts as I, davem - when I finished my last post and quitted the Downs for a while, I thought "oh, I could have used an example, like of parents deciding to have a child even though they know it will suffer". As you said, Eru (in difference to human parents) knew some of them would suffer - well, possibly all of them, but only in certain moments of their life, some more, some less. But I think you cannot say that it would be a child who would
only suffer. If you take Húrin, he was certainly happy at some moments of his life, before his capture by Morgoth, or even Túrin, the very personification of ill fate, he was happy with his friends, with Finduilas, even with Nienor... Another thing: If I reversed the question, it is fair not to create someone who would be happy? This might sound pretty selfish (from the point of view of the happier ones, though even they obviously suffer in their life, at least a little). I think that actually, the answer to your question depends on whether there would be any people who would say, at the end of their life (or in some after-death state where they'd have the possibility to ponder all their life without momentary emotions), "this was not worth living at all". Or, if even those who suffered, would say "no, my life was good, although it was mostly suffering". This is probably unanswerable question.