Discussion is procreation good or bad or neutral

[Darkover]

Procreation is not neutral because it involves an active choice that imposes life, with all its inherent risks, suffering, and eventual death, on someone who has no ability to consent to being brought into existence. Here are several reasons why procreation carries ethical weight and cannot be considered neutral:

Every person born will experience some degree of suffering—physical pain, emotional distress, loss, or existential dread. Even in the best possible life, suffering is unavoidable.
While some may experience joy, it is not assured, and even lives filled with happiness are often punctuated by significant hardship.
By procreating, parents expose a being to suffering that did not need to exist in the first place. This imposition of harm makes procreation an ethically loaded act.

A non-existent being does not suffer from the absence of pleasure or happiness. There is no deprivation in not existing.
When someone is born, they are exposed to harm, and even small amounts of suffering are ethically significant because they impact an actual being.
Therefore, creating a life is not neutral because it transitions from a harm-free state (non-existence) to a state where harm is inevitable.

Procreation is ethically worse than murder

Both involve the same highly unethical act of deciding over life or death for someone else without their consent, deciding for someone else whether they should exist or not, whether they should be an existing consciousness in this world or not. But at least the consequence of murder is the sweet release of death, while the consequence of birth is everything that death is a sweet release from.

non-existence is preferable to existence because non-existence avoids suffering altogether. Procreation, then, can be seen as imposing harm by bringing a person into a world where suffering is unavoidable. Murder, by contrast, does not impose suffering but rather removes the capacity to experience it.

 

[Praestat_Mori]

Generally speaking, procreation is neutral bc it's just a natural process that happens in the universe. Whether it's "good" or "bad" is sth to be discussed depending on the life circumstances and the "intelligence" of humans. Basic instincts can rarely be eliminated by intelligence at least not for now.

 

[Darkover]

Generally speaking, procreation is neutral bc it's just a natural process that happens in the universe. Whether it's "good" or "bad" is sth to be discussed depending on the life circumstances and the "intelligence" of humans. Basic instincts can rarely be eliminated by intelligence at least not for now.

Why does suffering exist? Why aren't there enough resources for everyone? Why have conscious beings have physical need to eat other conscious beings and if they don't they will experience huge amounts of pain and then die? If there is a god or something/somewhat that is responsible for creating this universe, then they fucked up very badly. Imagine if you would have the power to create a universe with conscious beings and you would be able to understand what that means. So you would know that conscious beings are able to experience different kind of feelings and emotions that can feel good, bad or something in between. If you are god and you would have some moral standards or you would care even a little bit for this conscious beings, then you would create the universe in a way that no suffering exists. Suffering would just be something that is physically not possible. The laws of nature just wouldn't allow it. All there would be to experience for this conscious beings would be happiness, joy, love, satisfaction, confidence and so on. And everything would be perfect. Yet if something is responsible for this mess he created it in a way that suffering exists and conscious beings can experience crazy amounts of pain that have no meaning.

The brutality of the animal kingdom raises challenging questions about nature itself. In the natural world, suffering seems to be woven into the fabric of life: animals endure painful deaths, predation, diseases, and even behaviors that could be seen as cruel, like infants being abandoned or killed by their own species.
Animals don't make moral choices—they follow instincts that have evolved over time, leading to behaviors that are often violent and unrelenting. For them, there's no apparent reward or higher purpose to justify this suffering. These instincts aren't about choice but survival in a system where pain and struggle are inevitable.
Being neutral in a hostile environment does seem especially challenging to justify. If a deity exists and chooses neutrality in a world full of suffering, it can feel like an active choice to allow harm to persist without intervention. In a setting where pain, struggle, and survival dominate, the choice not to alleviate suffering—or even prevent it—seems like a passive endorsement of that suffering.
In a neutral world where creatures didn't have to kill to survive, neutrality might look more benign, But when suffering is unavoidable, a deity allowing this without intervention could feel indifferent at best, or even malevolent at worst, to many people.

 

[astr4]

my question is why do people insist on reproduction over adoption?

if you can't afford adoption, then i suspect you might not be able to afford to provide a good home to a child either.

in an ideal classless society money would be a non issue but, yknow, We Live In A Society and all that, so unfortunately if you can't provide for a child you probably shouldn't be having one.

but yes, can someone morally justify reproduction to me when adoption is an option? and i don't mean people who don't have access to abortion, or victims of sexual assault, etc, so don't even get into that with me.

i can't help but view it as a very selfish desire. you want to have a kid that's related to you by blood so instead of taking the opportunity to reduce suffering, you're going to potentially increase it! wow! and you're going to share those shitty values with your kid too! even better!

 

[Praestat_Mori]

Why does suffering exist? Why aren't there enough resources for everyone? Why have conscious beings have physical need to eat other conscious beings and if they don't they will experience huge amounts of pain and then die? If there is a god or something/somewhat that is responsible for creating this universe, then they fucked up very badly. Imagine if you would have the power to create a universe with conscious beings and you would be able to understand what that means. So you would know that conscious beings are able to experience different kind of feelings and emotions that can feel good, bad or something in between. If you are god and you would have some moral standards or you would care even a little bit for this conscious beings, then you would create the universe in a way that no suffering exists. Suffering would just be something that is physically not possible. The laws of nature just wouldn't allow it. All there would be to experience for this conscious beings would be happiness, joy, love, satisfaction, confidence and so on. And everything would be perfect. Yet if something is responsible for this mess he created it in a way that suffering exists and conscious beings can experience crazy amounts of pain that have no meaning.

The brutality of the animal kingdom raises challenging questions about nature itself. In the natural world, suffering seems to be woven into the fabric of life: animals endure painful deaths, predation, diseases, and even behaviors that could be seen as cruel, like infants being abandoned or killed by their own species.
Animals don't make moral choices—they follow instincts that have evolved over time, leading to behaviors that are often violent and unrelenting. For them, there's no apparent reward or higher purpose to justify this suffering. These instincts aren't about choice but survival in a system where pain and struggle are inevitable.
Being neutral in a hostile environment does seem especially challenging to justify. If a deity exists and chooses neutrality in a world full of suffering, it can feel like an active choice to allow harm to persist without intervention. In a setting where pain, struggle, and survival dominate, the choice not to alleviate suffering—or even prevent it—seems like a passive endorsement of that suffering.
In a neutral world where creatures didn't have to kill to survive, neutrality might look more benign, But when suffering is unavoidable, a deity allowing this without intervention could feel indifferent at best, or even malevolent at worst, to many people.

We humans "overthink" too much yet we cannot resist natural urges (like procreation). Nobody knows y this has happened. We also cannot ask animals how they experience "suffering". Evolution happens once there is a slight imbalance of certain conditions - that's obviously a rule in this universe.

If there was a god he would certainly have created a perfect world - whatever that is - but it's probably only wishful thinking of human brains rather than reality where everything is a result of coincidence.

"Suffering" is also subjective in our society. We cannot project this onto natural life/animals bc since we started creating an artificial environment for us - especially in the past 30 years - that is definitely far from natural behavior. It'll take generations to adapt to this environment.

Without modern medicine a lot of us would have died long before we were teens - but modern medicine also contributes to the problem of overpopulation - bc we have not adapted to the new situation and hardly any new-borns die anymore.

Whether we suffer or not this is still a subjective experience.

my question is why do people insist on reproduction over adoption?

if you can't afford adoption, then i suspect you might not be able to afford to provide a good home to a child either.

in an ideal classless society money would be a non issue but, yknow, We Live In A Society and all that, so unfortunately if you can't provide for a child you probably shouldn't be having one.

but yes, can someone morally justify reproduction to me when adoption is an option? and i don't mean people who don't have access to abortion, or victims of sexual assault, etc, so don't even get into that with me.

i can't help but view it as a very selfish desire. you want to have a kid that's related to you by blood so instead of taking the opportunity to reduce suffering, you're going to potentially increase it! wow! and you're going to share those shitty values with your kid too! even better!

It's a selfish desire if "money" and the "artificial environment" we live in is considered. People in the so called " developed nations" have realized this and their birthrates are low however, it will take many more generations until this happens among all humans - that's evolution. It's too slow compares to how fast we develop our own artificial environment / habitat.

 

[Darkover]

We humans "overthink" too much yet we cannot resist natural urges (like procreation). Nobody knows y this has happened. We also cannot ask animals how they experience "suffering". Evolution happens once there is a slight imbalance of certain conditions - that's obviously a rule in this universe.

If there was a god he would certainly have created a perfect world - whatever that is - but it's probably only wishful thinking of human brains rather than reality where everything is a result of coincidence.

"Suffering" is also subjective in our society. We cannot project this onto natural life/animals bc since we started creating an artificial environment for us - especially in the past 30 years - that is definitely far from natural behavior. It'll take generations to adapt to this environment.

Without modern medicine a lot of us would have died long before we were teens - but modern medicine also contributes to the problem of overpopulation - bc we have not adapted to the new situation and hardly any new-borns die anymore.

Whether we suffer or not this is still a subjective experience.

procreation isn't neutral centers around the inevitability of suffering. Procreation brings a new conscious being into existence, and with that existence comes the certainty of suffering—emotional, physical, existential, or otherwise. Given that suffering is an inherent part of life, one could argue that bringing a new being into the world, knowing that they will inevitably experience pain, hardship, or death, makes procreation a morally problematic act.

From an antinatalist perspective, the argument is that life, by its very nature, involves suffering that cannot be avoided or fully mitigated. Since we cannot guarantee that the new being will have a life free of pain, and since we cannot prevent them from experiencing the suffering that is part of existence, procreation cannot be seen as a neutral act. It's an act that intentionally exposes a new individual to the suffering inherent in life, often without their consent, which raises ethical concerns.

In this view, procreation is not neutral because it consciously introduces a being into a world where suffering is inevitable, making it an inherently harmful decision. While life may also include positive experiences, the certainty of suffering—especially extreme or unavoidable suffering—is seen as outweighing any potential joys or benefits. Thus, procreation can be seen as a moral choice that causes harm rather than leaving things neutral or indifferent.

 

[Praestat_Mori]

"Moral" is also an invention of human beings. There's a gap between natural instincts, moral and social norms and what would logically be the best to do. Logically it would be best to eliminate us all and therefore human suffering would come to an end bc there wouldn't be any newborns to experience this anymore. But that isn't gonna happen either. The basics of nature can't be eliminated whether we like it or not. Each one of us can make a personal decision and this can be a small step towards the "right direction" but it will be a long and slow process and probably none of us will ever see the results.

 

[Dr Iron Arc]

I watched the movie Idiocracy for the first time and I don't exactly agree with this point but it seems like the movie is actually anti-anti-natalist in its message. The introduction kind of explains it all where the actual intelligent and worthy people are actually procreating less and less precisely because they want to minimize suffering. Meanwhile, the people out there who have no such concerns end up being the only procreators at all and cause the world to become an even worse place as a result. It seems to me like the movie was trying to say that those who actually are fit to rear children both through nature and nurture have a moral obligation to do so otherwise they'll just be literally naturally selecting themselves out of the gene pool. This movie which most people just see as satire or an excuse to hate on whatever thing they don't like in the media is actually more about eugenics than anything else. Of course I don't know if that really is the best way to think about it. It's just something I thought might be relevant but maybe it isn't…