This goes out to all of you posting pictures of your babies on social media: If you had a moral fiber in your body, you wouldn’t have a baby.
My reasoning is twofold. The first is the old anti-natalism of Sophocles, which is akin to the ideas in the book of Ecclesiastes and in Buddhism, i.e., much of life is suffering. The second is that humans are perhaps the most destructive animals on the planet; we are driving the sixth major global extinction.
I will spell it out in formal logic.
Premises:
1. People are posting pictures of babies.
2. If they were moral, they would not have babies.
3. If they did not have babies, they could not post pictures of their babies.
Conclusion:
Therefore, if people were moral they would not post pictures of their babies.
Premise 2 would of course include 2a (the anti-natalism of Sophocles following from human suffering) and 2b (the destructive nature of humanity). I say that bringing children into the world is immoral not because of a lack of pleasure. When I said “suffering”, I didn’t mean a lack of pleasure; what I meant was that bringing a person into the world is to bring real pain into the world. To cause a person to have pain is immoral if it can be prevented, which it can be in the case of human procreation. As for the annihilation of other species, consider this: if any other species were causing the havoc on the planet that humans are causing (its effects on the climate, directly wiping out other species, and even causing pain and death to other humans), then we would think that the right thing to do would be to at least slow its reproductive rate.
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