Having children risks harming someone. So it has a negative value.

So obviously don’t have children. Simple. You are being willfully blind to the fact that the argument makes logical sense. — khaled

I would know. My brother has a mutation and can’t do much at 12 except walk and eat. Your arguments seem to be getting more and more personal only to fall even harder on their face. — khaled

Maybe my child would have turned out to be another hitler despite my best efforts. — khaled

You actually truly believe that? So again I ask

You have 3 starving people and 2 solutions
A: feed them
B: materialize 100 satiated people such that you create more pleasure than in A

Would you seriously pick B? — khaled

Also let me ask you another question: do you think someone is ever morally obliged to have children? — khaled

That is wise when dealing with other people you don’t know. The default is to do the action that doesn’t risk harm. Would you appreciate it if someone destroyed your house in an attempt to add a room to it when you didn’t ask him to do so. — khaled

Who is harmed by me not having children? Where is this failure? — khaled

The way I parse that is God wants us to be innocent more than he wants us to understand Him. — TheMadFool

if I could show your next 10 children would be as you described there would you have a moral obligation to have them? — khaled

A potential human is never a human and never will be. — NOS4A2

You are not talking about beings at all. — NOS4A2

Overdosing is the end of productive imbalance: death puts a stop to the controlled disequilibrium that is a living body, and puts an end to the asymmetric distinction of life from the inanimate that surrounds it. — StreetlightX

Balance is the harbinger of death, and it's only in breaking balance, throwing it out of whack, that anything at all exists. — StreetlightX

Actually, telescopes came after it was theorized that the earth revolved around the sun, and not vise versa, so understanding the heliocentric nature of the solar system was not the result of telescopes. The idea was floated around 2500 years ago, but the planets were given perfect circular orbits according to the principles of Aristotelian metaphysics. The assumption of perfect circles resulted in inconsistencies which could not be reconciled until Copernicus. The point though, is that metaphysical theory preceded the fine tuning observations which were required to adjust the theory. — Metaphysician Undercover

Walking gives more energy than it takes;
It’s as easy as falling forward makes.
Thoughts ‘come clear, cares fade, alertness tingles;
Life’s spirit whispers one along, wide awake. — PoeticUniverse

how do I delete comments? — rlclauer

The problem with empathy is that it does not multiply. Our sense of empathy can deal with maybe a handful of individuals at once. More than that just get thrown out. Worse, really big catastrophes are so unimaginable in the amount of suffering they produce that empathy simply shuts down.

So empathy is ultimately not a good solution for making the world a better place. — Echarmion

Freedom lies in awareness, and has nothing to do with choice. — unenlightened

Who is accessing this mental content and from where? — Andrew4Handel

Who? Where? You talking to someone else? — Artemis

Well, have fun with that. Your personal guessing and musing about the metaphysics of the universe are only interesting insofar as they contain something more than your imagination. — Artemis

Of course, once you believe in an impossible and irrational idea like God, then you pave the way for all manner of silly and contradictory things and ideas. — Artemis

Brian states have electrochemical properties. — Terrapin Station

Death. Hmmmmmm — TheMadFool

The mind must be active — TheMadFool