Firstly, I think it is unfair to assume your values on someone else.
Funny since that is exactly what happens when people bring a child into this world: they unilaterally decide life is worth living (whatever may come), i.e. it's worth all the pain and suffering and being subjected to death. How is this not imposing values on someone-else?
If someone wanted to have children and enjoy having children - that's their business not yours.
No. Given that decision has serious consequences for another human-being it is a moral issue. When a decision only involves consequences for yourself you certainly can claim it is your business and yours alone. Yet here it is not the case: it's not just about you and your egotistical wants and needs. Might as well claim you have the right to abuse someone-else for your pleasure since apparantly wanting something equals having the right to do it.
I am happy I had children and have never regretted the decision.
Again it's not about you. Whether or not an action is morally right does not depend on the satisfaction (or lack thereof) the actor experiences.
By your own admission you live a miserable life (you do have my sympathy as I can relate) yet you're somehow convinced such a fate will not befall your children. While I sincerely hope that will be the case and your children (will) live happy, healthy lives you cannot possible know this so what it amounts to is gambling with another's future hoping for the best. Purely because one hopes to gain from it...
To be clear I have no intention of attacking you personally and I'm only concerned with the arguments presented. Still I will not be silent on this matter out of misplaced piety towards the convictions of others when I firmly believe (and can rationally argue) it's wrong to bring life into this world. There's more than enough misery as it is, no need to keep adding to it.
That argument makes no sense though, how realistically can somebody ask to be born.
It's your faulty interpretation of my argument that makes no sense as did your original argument which I refuted. I quoted your original argument and it was clearly a response to said argument. I never claimed consent could be given by the relevant party so your inquiry is moot. .
Whether or not consent could be give given in the case of procreation is completely irrelevant: you implied that critiquing procreation is somehow wrong because it supposedly only involves two consenting adults.
Sorry but most of you are pro choice when it comes to suicide but yet you want to control what two consenting adults do with their bodies.
I clearly showed that this is simply not the case as that decision has serious consequences for the child who'll be born yet cannot give consent. Since you reasoned no-one else should concern themselves with a decision that only involves two consenting adults and this is clearly not the case here my counter-argument was correct and you argued beside the point.
it's a very very safe gamble
No it's not. Severe suffering is fairly common (almost all of us will get seriously ill at one point and almost no deaths happen suddenly without protracted suffering preceeding it and this is only one source of severe suffering) not to mention that simple fact that all life ends in death and it's what all living things instinctively fear. Unless you can prove death or rather dying isnt a bad thing it's most definitely a very foolish gamble.
It's very simple really: if you don't exist you neither suffer nor experience any good things. Not having to experience pain and death is infinitely better than having to experience them (this is simple human nature: the very definition of pain means it's something unpleasant we want to avoid) especially since after death you'll (very likely) again be nothing so you'll be in exactly the same position your started in, metaphorically speaking. In other words the whole game was completely futile.
As far as I'm concerned everyone should be free to play the game aslong as they like but I refuse to accept merely being alive, having working sex organs and a burning desire to become a parent is enough grounds to justify forcing another to play the game when they'll have a very real and very high stake in it and it might end very, very badly for them.
Would any of us mind death if we had 70 years of good life because I wouldn't
Since you clearly haven't experienced death and presumably aren't dying now I don't put much stock in your claim. Wait untill you have some skin in the game before making such grandiose claims but even then it's fairly irrelevant since a) you can't speak for everyone and b) there is no guarantee anyone's offspring will feel the same way. There simply is no logical connection between thinking life is swell and well worth living and having the moral right to impose that rosy, sunny view on others.
It still surprises me to find it's apparantly possible to be suicidal and an optimist. You'd think those would be mutually exclusive.
Optimism is a self-defeating ideology: if life is so great surely it must be quite bad when it ends.
