Antinatalism and Theism
Why confident natalism requires theism
Antinatalism, the bleak view according to which it is morally wrong to have children, has been in the news again lately. In recent years, it’s become a popular view in some circles — particularly in certain left-wing circles in which deeply pessimistic views about the environment, the prospects for a good future, and humanity itself dominate. In such circles, these pessimistic views often rest upon specious empirical assumptions (e.g., that the earth cannot support billions of humans, that societies with fewer people will be better-functioning, that climate change will soon render the earth uninhabitable, etc.) or upon a straightforwardly antihuman ideology (e.g., one on which humans are conceived as a kind of cancer on “Mother Earth”). Because it rests upon such specious assumptions, this “pop antinatalism” is, by my lights, not very intellectually interesting — other than as a curious (and potentially quite consequential1) sociological phenomenon.
Far more intellectually interesting and worthy of attention is David Benatar’s antinatalism, according to which it is not only wrong to have children, but also to bring any sentient beings2 into existence.3 Benatar occasionally publishes essays in popular venues and, in 2008, wrote the book Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming Into Existence. In essence, Benatar thinks (a) that the bads of life outweigh the goods (for all sentient beings) and (b) that the absence of pain is objectively good, whereas the absence of pleasure is neither good nor bad (his Asymmetry Thesis). These commitments add up to two distinct arguments for the conclusion that the existence of sentient life is, all-things-considered, objectively bad.4 Though many balk at Benatar’s arguments, dismissing the South African philosopher as a contemptible misanthrope, those of us interested in the fundamental questions of existence ought to engage with his ideas.
Here, I first present and evaluate Benatar’s case. Ultimately, I argue that, while atheists can reasonably reject it, only theists can be justified in doing so confidently and decisively.
1. Benatar’s Case for Antinatalism
Benatar’s case for antinatalism rests upon two separate, but related, arguments. First, he offers an argument from
The Bleakness of Life: All sentient lives are net-negative: that is, they contain more bad than good-making features.
Second, he offers an argument from
The Asymmetry Thesis: The absence of pain is objectively good, whereas the absence of pleasure is not objectively bad.
I’ll reconstruct arguments for a conclusion which is more modest than what, I gather, Benatar himself wants to defend: namely, that it is only prima facie wrong to bring someone into existence. I’ll do this because it’s more difficult to contend with that conclusion than with one on which bringing someone into existence is always wrong (i.e., engaging with the more modest thesis makes my own task of offering a case for rejecting it more difficult). (Benatar himself doesn’t claim that there is no conceivable scenario in which bringing someone into existence might be permissible [e.g., provided sufficiently strong altruistic reasons], but his view is certainly not that it’s merely prima facie wrong to do so [at least given what prima facie wrongness ordinarily connotes in moral philosophy].)
1.1 The Argument from the Bleakness of Life
Benatar contends that all sentient lives — human and nonhuman, alike — are net-negative, containing more harm than good. He argues that life is a state of constant striving, where harms (pain, thirst, frustration) arise naturally, while goods require effort and are fleeting:
“Life is a state of continual striving. We must expend effort to ward off unpleasantness—for example, to prevent pain, assuage thirst, and minimize frustration. In the absence of our strivings, unpleasantness comes all too easily, for that is the default” (Benatar, 2017).
If life is so bleak, then why do people work so hard to avoid death? Benatar distinguishes between a life worth continuing and one worth beginning: It might, he suggests, be worth continuing a life, once started, even if it would have been best for that life never to have begun.
He also cites the “Pollyanna Principle,” a psychological bias toward optimism, supported by evidence that people recall pleasant experiences more readily, overestimate future outcomes, and believe they fare better than others (2008, pp. 64–66). This optimism, likely adaptive for early humans, obscures life’s true balance of goods relative to bads.
If all sentient lives are net-negative, being brought into existence is always a harm, making procreation morally wrong.
Even a more modest thesis,
The Bleakness of Life*: Many sentient lives are net-negative: that is, they contain more bad than good-making features
secures The Bleakness of Life Argument:
1. Many sentient lives net-negative.
2. Someone is seriously harmed by a net-negative existence, but no one S is harmed by S’s not being brought into existence (S is, by definition, not around to be harmed if S by anything if S does not exist).
3. Acts which risk imposing serious harms should not be performed when their nonperformance will harm no one.
So,
4. It’s prima facie wrong to bring anyone into existence, given the high probability that the one brought into existence will lead a net-negative life.
1.2 The Asymmetry Argument
If Benatar’s Asymmetry Thesis is true, then “existence has no advantage over, but does have disadvantages relative to, non-existence” (p. 30). The thought behind this thesis is that the absence of pain can be good even if there is no one to enjoy its absence, whereas the absence of pleasure can be bad only if there is someone “for whom this absence is a deprivation” (p. 30).
He thinks that the Asymmetry Thesis “has considerable explanatory power”, specifically, that it explains how four plausible moral judgments could be true (p. 31). The judgments are the following:
(a) We have a duty not to bring suffering people into being but no corresponding duty to bring happy people into being.
(b) That a child would be benefited is not a good reason for having a child, but that a child would be harmed is a good reason not to have a child.
(c) It makes no sense to lament the nonexistence of a possible happy person.
(d) The lack of happiness in the desolate regions of the universe is not bad (pp. 32-35).
The Asymmetry Thesis suggests The Asymmetry Argument
(1) The absence of pain (and other bad things)5 is objectively good, whereas the absence of pleasure (and other good things) is not objectively bad.
(2) Bringing someone into existence can make the world much worse, but not better.
So,
(3) There is no moral upside in bringing someone into existence, apart from benefits that person might bestow on others (which are rarely enough to justify imposing on someone the harms of existence).
So,
(4) It is prima facie wrong to bring someone into existence.
2. Evaluation
I think the Asymmetry Argument can be dispensed with quite easily. The Bleakness Argument, though, is far more formidable. Non-theists lack a compelling response to it; only theists have the resources to reject it decisively.
2.1 Dispensing With the Asymmetry Argument
I think the Asymmetry Argument fails outright because the Asymmetry Thesis is false. Every one of the moral beliefs Benatar cites as evidence for the Asymmetry Thesis is, by my lights, false.
To the extent that (a) is plausible, it’s only because of the invocation of “duty”. Perhaps there isn’t a duty to bring happy people into existence, but there’s very good reason to do so; all-else-being equal, one should, if one can. The existence of happy people — and creatures more generally — is a profoundly good thing.
That a child would be benefitted is a great reason to have a child (all-else-being-equal). Again: We should desire the existence of happy people. So, (b) is false.
Because we should desire the existence of happy people, I also deny (c): it does, in fact, make sense to lament the nonexistence of a possible happy person. That we are not generally prone to such lamentation does not entail that it is by its nature inapt, irrational, or unfitting.
And (d), I think, is clearly false: it is bad that the desolate regions of space contain no happiness. This badness partially explains, I would say the sense of foreboding and touch of melancholy that can be inspired by pondering the apparent lifeless desolation of space.
So, the we can reject the Asymmetry Argument insofar as it depends upon the Asymmetry Thesis — if, as I think, that thesis is implausible and unmotivated.
2.2 A Nontheistic Response to the Bleakness Argument
I think Benatar is likely right that the overall state of the world is significantly worse than is generally supposed. This is due in part to the optimism bias that he notes, as well as to the fact that much of the world’s misery is ignored because it is experienced by nonhuman animals — both in nature and in factory farms, which have become fixtures of the modern world.
Still, it’s open to a nontheist to argue that most sentient lives are, despite containing much misery, nevertheless net-positive. This is, ultimately, an open empirical question — though one which would require a lot of normative work on the front end.
More promising still might be to argue that the world is likely to become an extremely good place in the future — so good as to make its existence an obviously great good overall. The human predicament has, in recent years, in some ways improved insofar as modern medicine, technology, and institutions have made possible lives of material comfort and prosperity that would have been unimaginable to most humans of past generations. That progress might continue. As Derek Parfit says in the conclusion of the posthumously published third volume of his magnum opus, On What Matters:
“Life can be wonderful as well as terrible, and we shall increasingly have the power to make life good. Since human history may be only just beginning, we can expect that future humans, or supra-humans, may achieve some great goods that we cannot now even imagine. In Nietzsche’s words, there has never been such a new dawn and clear horizon, and such an open sea.If we are the only rational beings in the Universe, as some recent evidence suggests, it matters even more whether we shall have descendants or successors during the billions of years in which that would be possible. Some of our successors might live lives and create worlds that, though failing to justify past suffering, would give us all, including some of those who have suffered, reasons to be glad that the Universe exists.”
There is no reason to believe that such progress will occur if, as the antinatalists would have it, we bring about our own annihilation. So far as we know, we are the only beings in the universe with the power to morally improve it; to simply remove ourselves from the scene, as it were, would be to condemn the rest of sentient life to the evils that have been endemic to it from the beginning. There is a chasm between the present and an infinitely better future; our task is to build a bridge across it.
Still, this response is fairly tenuous. Perhaps most lives are net-negative, and perhaps it’s highly improbable that we’ll achieve the great heights that Parfit hope for. If so, then atheist should be antinatalists.
2.3 A Theistic Response To the Argument From the Bleakness of Life
What one really needs, if one wishes to confidently reject antinatalism, is reason to believe that all sentient lives are very likely to be net-positive. On atheism, there isn’t particularly strong reason to think this is so: empirically, many sentient beings’ lives are quite plausibly net-negative. Moreover, there is no plausible basis for positing an afterlife on atheism. Atheists should believe that life ends with bodily death.
On theism, the story is different: a perfect being would, very plausibly, desire the ultimate good of every sentient being — and, moreover, would have the ability to bring it about by ensuring an infinitely good afterlife for every sentient being. Given such an afterlife, every sentient being — including those whose earthly existence was quite terrible — would turn out to have been benefited by coming into existence.
Moreover, theism is really the only theory of reality which makes it at all likely that every sentient life is net-positive, given (a) that this requires the postulation of a good afterlife and (b) that a good afterlife is probable only on theism.
Since there is a lot of evidence for theism, there is good reason to think that antinatalism is false. But on atheism — as well as on theistic worldviews wedded to bleak theologies (e.g., ones on which many sentient beings end up annihilated or in eternal conscious torment) — antinatalism likely follows.
In short, my suggestion is that one who confidently rejects antinatalism should endorse The Theistic Argument Against Antinatalism:
(1) A high degree of confidence that antinatalism is false requires a high degree of confidence that every sentient being will have a net-positive existence.
(2) Only on theism are we justified in having a high degree of confidence that every sentient being will have a net-positive existence.
So,
(3) A high degree of confidence that antinatalism is false is justified only given a high degree of confidence that theism is true.
(4) A high degree of confidence that theism is true is justified.
So,
(5) A high degree of confidence that antinatalism is false is justified.
Conclusion
Ultimately, while I think people rightly reject antinatalism, many do so without justification (or at least with more confidence than they’re justified in having). Nontheists should be quite open to the possibility that many, if not most, lives are net-negative (given that they think life ends with bodily death) — as should those theists (and there are many) who deny that God ensures the ultimate good of each of his creatures. Thus, if (a) one is very confident that anti-natalism is false and (b) one thinks one’s confidence that anti-natalism is false is justified, then one has reason to think that all sentient lives are very likely to be net-positive — and to affirm theism as the only plausible account of how this could be so. Insofar as reflection on Benatar’s work reveals this, it is of immense philosophical value.
References
2017. Benatar, David. “Kids? Just Say No.” Ed. Sam Dresser. Aeon. https://aeon.co/essays/having-children-is-not-life-affirming-its-immoral. Accessed 10/27/2017.
2008. Benatar, David. Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming Into Existence. Oxford.
2017. Parfit, Derek. On What Matters: Volume Three. Oxford.
For example, it might contribute to the already declining the birthrate throughout much of the world, which will have serious (and potentially quite destabilizing) societal effects in the coming decades.
Sentient beings, as I understand them, are conscious beings who are capable of experiencing valuable and disvaluable states.
For the purposes of this essay, understand all subsequent references to “antinatalism” to refer to Benatar’s full thesis: It’s (practically always) wrong to have children because existence is a harm for all sentient beings.
It should be noted that Benatar denies that his antinatalism entails promortalism (the view that the death of sentient beings is desirable): His view is that death is a harm that compounds the reason not to bring sentient beings into existence in the first place (one of course cannot suffer the harm of death if one doesn’t exist).
I’m strengthening Benatar’s argument here by decoupling it from Hedonism, according to which pleasure is the one intrinsic good, and pain is the one intrinsic bad.