Omnicide

For two reasons, I’m going to comment on some comments at an antinatalist blog:

http://antinatalism.blogspot.com/2010/06/ill-conceived-arguments-against.html?showComment=1299017742799

i) It may well be the case that antinatalism will never catch on. But that’s hard to predict. Liberals wield have political influence out of all proportion to their numbers. Even though their ideas are often unpopular, them impose them by force of law. And liberals are often swept away by the latest fad. Some idealistic-sounding cause.

So we shouldn’t write off antinatalism as too nutty and extreme to infiltrate public policy.

ii) Even if it goes nowhere, it nicely illustrates the outlook of atheism, when taken to a logical extreme. In one sense it’s almost funny to read these comments. They read like a parody of Ingmar Bergman movie. Antinatalism is candid about the existential consequences of living in a godless universe.

Even if what you say is true, the ultimate, longest term truth is that we'll inevitably die off one day anyway. This isn't an astrophysics blog, so I won't go into detail here. Suffice to say that one day the universe itself will be unable to support life. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Five_Ages_of_the_Universe for a brief outline of our far future). Therefore, every living thing loses in the end. Ten to the 50th power years from now, it won't matter! To claim that your descendants would still be successful would be like claiming the dinosaurs were successful: Successful within a deep long-term situation, but not THE deepest one (We can't stop the heat death of the universe any more than the Dinosaurs could stop a big asteroid).

Conclusion: I see no point in procreation. Why invest time and energy into producing a part of something not guaranteed to last literally forever? The most rational, realistic thing to do is to live your own life as you see fit without harming others - plus find whatever happiness you can in life.

i) From an atheistic standpoint, there’s a logical connection between the premise and the conclusion. If nothing lasts, then life is futile. Human aspiration is futile. Memory is futile.

If there is no afterlife, then the moment of death doesn’t merely terminate your future, but it simultaneously terminates your past. For the entire continuum of your conscious existence instantly ceases to be.

ii) But from a Christian standpoint, human beings are eternal. That can be a blessing or a curse. But what we do can never eternal consequences.

And even if planet earth is destroyed at the day of judgment, Scripture has a restoration motif. The new Eden. The new Jerusalem. In some sense, the best of the past will carry over into the future­–better than ever.

iii) It’s also excessive to say nothing is worthwhile unless it lasts forever. Is a sunset worthless unless it lasts forever? Is a flower worthless unless it lasts forever? Is a song worthless unless it lasts forever? Is childhood worthless unless it lasts forever?

There’s a value in having a temporary experience. Something we can take in for a few minutes or a few hours. Where we can experience the beginning, middle, and end. Part of the satisfaction in many types of experience is seeing the cycle run its course.

The problem is not that a particular pleasure comes to an end. Rather, if you couldn’t remember any experience, if you couldn’t repeat any experience, then that would be pointless.

Some types of experience are precious because they’re unrepeatable. But we can remember them. W

Other types of experience are enjoyable because they’re cyclical or repeatable. We can’t have the same exact experience, but we can have the same kind of experience. And the variations keep it from becoming monotonous.  

Still more deeply, you have to ask "Arguments about suffering aside, what possible point is there to creating another human being in the first place?" All reasons I've seen have to do with either fear, exploitation or..ultimately..egotism (seeing a little me, a trophy kid, backslapping approval from the community's "All-American" in-crowd, being a 'member of the community in good standing', blah blah blah.

i) Suppose, for the sake of argument, that parents have kids for the wrong reason? So what? Even if the motives were wrong, the kids still benefit.

ii) So what if parents see “a little me” in their children? What’s wrong with creating a person who’s truly a part of you? In whom you see a part of yourself, your spouse, your mother or father? Isn’t there something wonderful about that unique inner bond? Family resemblance?

iii) But is it that simple? Fathers may see a “little me” in their sons, while mothers may see a “little me” in their daughters, but do fathers see a “little me” in their daughters, or mothers a “little me” in their sons? Surely parents can love children who are not carbon copies of themselves.

And, indeed, part of the fascination of parenting is the combination of similarity and dissimilarity between parent and child. Children are not clones of their parents. They share some character traits in common, some physical traits in common, yet they are unique.

iv) One reason parents have children is to share the love, share the joy. Share the gift of life. Share the wonder of existence. In that respect, human parenting is an emblem of divine election. Just as God, out of sheer generosity, makes beings who can participate in his beatitude, parents are subcreators who something analogous. And earthly token of God’s exemplary goodness.  

Sorry, but I have too much respect for potential people I could have (in theory)

To the contrary, because he hates his own life, all he’s doing is to project his hatred onto his innocent posterity. As long as he is miserable, then no one’s entitled to be happy.

If we continue into the future, all the way to the inevitable death of the universe, then what are we continuing forward for? If to show that we can accomplish increasingly greater things, then this smacks of egotism at best and sheer vanity at worst. If to give life to those who will exist in the future, then we’re back to all the other issues surrounding bringing new people into this world (or universe), with their accompanying moral and ethical issues. In either case, Huang's counter ultimately amounts to claiming "humans need to continue existing in order to keep existing in the future"- a claim ultimately faith-based (in the non-religious sense) at best and mere tautological at worst.

However, continuing the human species is a need only to the extent that we feel it is a need. What need, then, does the human species have for existing, aside from our mere programming by our DNA and brain architecture telling us “we have to exist”? The practically maniacal desire for humanity to desire its continued existence reveals more about how easily our rational, sober side can be overthrown by our DNA and its accompanying blueprints for our brain architecture than it does the actual truth-value of the statement “humanity must continue to exist”. This enough is sufficient to intelligently suggest (but not prove) that procreation might well be an ultimately pointless act.

The notion of people benefiting from existence is ultimately self-referential. Sentient beings are pre-designed by DNA (which itself is pre-designed by the laws chemistry [obviously] and, ultimately, physics). Subsequent variations of DNA also acted on by the laws of mathematics – namely probability. That DNA was acted upon by natural selection over the billions of years. DNA variants that pre-designed creatures to possess a survival instinct/will to live were more likely to survive and reproduce; those that didn’t have it, didn’t survive. Given all this, the survival instinct is present in practically all conscious living creatures. Therefore, to say people benefit from existence is to say that a phenomenon (life) that is pre-determined (by evolution) to be maintained that phenomenon (life) in any way possible (the survival instinct) is to say that a thing is correct because it was pre-determined by a process to be such that it can’t help but do anything to maintain that phenomenon (life). In simpler language, to say life is beneficial is merely loading the dice to get the result you are looking for.

i) Once again, that’s a logical conclusion, given the premise. If the survival instinct was implanted by a blind process, and we know that, then the survival instinct is a pointless tautology. Why survive for the sake of survival? Especially when you’re just postponing the inevitable?

ii) By definition, to be the beneficiary is a “self-referential” experience. So what? If I enjoy a chocolate ice cream cone, that’s a self-referential experience. And what, exactly, is wrong with the self-referentiality of that experience?