> I realised that anyone who actually did this would have to be utterly morally bankrupt. To get from micro-organisms to intelligent life this way would involve

> I realised that anyone who actually did this would have to be utterly morally bankrupt. To get from micro-organisms to intelligent life this way would involve an immense amount of suffering, with billions of sentient creatures living, struggling and dying along the way. Yes, this happened to our own ancestors, but that doesn’t give us the right to inflict the same kind of suffering on anyone else. But by this logic, it's better not to have children, because they will inevitably experience some suffering, and if they have children, so will they, and so on. It's not that the logic is necessarily invalid from its own premises, but that it's self-extinguishing logic because entities that act based on it will stop propagating. There are also things that we can find worthwhile in living and creating new life. Not that that excuses any creation regardless of suffering, but it puts it in a gray zone where it's important to weigh the specificities of various suffering vs various joys as they come.