I don't disagree with Aristotle about that. But what Aristotle said there is a self-evident truth of reason.

There are lots of self-evident truths of reason. That this argument is valid, for instance:

1. If P, then Q
2. P
3. Therefore Q

is a self-evident truth of reason. I do not merely assume that it is valid. It seems to be valid - that is, my reason represents it to be. And I know that the reason of virtually everyone else does too. Which is excellent evidence - the best there could ever be - that it 'is' valid.

And you cannot understand any of the contents of the Quran or any other religious text until one applies one's reason to it.

So reason is the boss of bosses - the ultimate and only true answerer of questions.

Now, it is a self-evident truth of reason, is it not, that one should not make significant impositions on another without their prior consent, other things being equal?

Why is it wrong, for instance, to drug another person's drink without asking? Well, because that'd be to impose something significant - the effects of the drug - on the other person without their prior consent. We may be able to dream up extreme scenarios where such behaviour is overall justifiable (the drug is the only antidote to a poison they've just taken and there isn't time to explain this to them, for instance). But that's why there's an 'other things being equal' clause in there. The default is that it is wrong to do things that impose on others if their consent has not been gained.

Now, clearly you cannot consent to be born. Thus, other things being equal it is wrong to procreate.

Here, using an argument form that Aristotle liked:

1. If an act will make significant impositions on another without their prior consent, then it is wrong other things being equal.
2. Procreative acts make significant impositions on another without their prior consent
3. Therefore, procreative acts are wrong other things being equal

Plus, if there is a god - and I'm convinced there is - then I think it is the ones who procreate that the god punishes. First, you'll be punished with another life sentence for every child you knowingly force to live here (only fair, after all). Second, you'll be punished with misery. Your relationship with your partner will suffer. You'll have sex far less often. Your time will be consumed with tending to the useless, pathetic creature you both created and you'll now have to work to support it yet your income will be less than it was before you procreated. You'll have no free time to socialise. You will lose friends. You will become boring because your only topic of conversation will be your child, a person no-one else finds at all interesting. Your relationship with your partner will become increasingly business-like. Yet though you will probably fall out of love with your partner, you'll nevertheless stay in your increasingly miserable relationship for far too long 'for the sake of the children'.

The god is wise.

Yes, that's why most people think procreation is ethically fine. That doesn't show that it is, though. It just shows that the intuition is dodgy.

When it comes to ethics, our source of insight is our reason, not the Quran.

Good people don't want to be dictators - they don't want to have to control the lives of another. It is undignified to live under someone else's control and by someone else's rules, as virtually all people of moral sensibility recognise.

So a good person doesn't create a needy person, doesn't create a person who'll have to suffer the indignity of living by someone else's rules, so incapable are they of looking after themselves. A good person doesn't create a situation in which they are going to have to be that dictator. Yet parents do all these things. No half-way intelligent parent can seriously claim not to have realized that the child they create will be pathetically needy for at least 16 years (and then some) and won't have a clue how to navigate the world or survive in it by itself. So when they procreate they knowingly force another to live in indignity. Furthermore, they know fully well that they will have to assume the role of law-giver and controller (and often relish this).

What sort of a person behaves like that? What sort of a person knowingly creates a needy, pathetic creature who'll have to live in indignity for years and years? What sort of a person relishes the idea of exercising that control over another? What sort of a person thinks their life will lack meaning unless they can assume that role?

Let's think about love - love of the good, healthy kind - for a mo. Love of the healthy kind is based on another person's character, deeds and shared history. It may become unconditional over time, but it is only if it had its origins in the other person's character, deeds and shared history that it will be healthy. Consider my example of the love-pill. The pill will make whomever you give it to love you unconditionally. Now, that's a very dangerous pill and you are a reckless, irresponsible and bad person if you just pop it in the drink of the next person you meet. Indeed, I think you're probably all of those things if you pop it in anyone's drink at anytime. But you're certainly, unequivocally all of those things if you just put it in the next stranger you meet's drink (and without telling them too).

Now, if you have a child you know that the child you create will almost certainly come to love you unconditionally. It is biologically programmed in. You KNOW this. The child is not going to carefully assess you as a person and see if you're a good match. No, they're just going to love you - it's a chemical thing, not a rational thing. And that's not good - yes, I know most of you think it is. But guess what - that too is what you're programmed to think! It is not a good thing - it means that newly minted kids have an in-built love pill. You create a kid, and you know it'll unconditionally love you, due to the love-pill nature instilled in its brain.

That love is bad, unhealthy, crazy. We don't admire it in other contexts. We don't admire people who love other people who beat them, who treat them with disrespect, who hold objectionable views and so on. We think those people are mad - mad to love the people they do, and mad not to be responsible to their character. We think they're not really in love with the other person at all, for their love does not have the person's character as its object, so unresponsive is it to it.

Parents knowingly create that kind of love. They make another person - an innocent party -love them unconditionally. And furthermore, they're proud of thesmelves for having done so and think the love they've created is something worthy of admiration. They're so wrong it hurts! Parents are analogous to those suffering from Munchausen's syndrome by proxy - people who deliberately make others ill so that they can then tend to them.

There's nothing noble, healthy or wholesome about procreation. It is mainly the preserve of pathetic megalomaniacs.

Here's an argument for free will:

1. If my reason and the reason of virtually everyone else represents something to be the case, that is good evidence that it is the case other things being equal.
2. My reason and the reason of virtually everyone else represents free will to be a reality.
3. Therefore, we have good evidence - other things being equal - that free will is a reality.

Plato, I should add, believed we are necessarily existing things. So I am not alone in this view. It is also supported by other evidence.

For instance, my reason tells me that I cannot be divided. I can have half an apple and half a cake and half a car and half a house. But I can't have a half a mind. Minds are indivisible.
Yet only something that lacked parts would be indivisible. That is, only something simple - something that is made of nothing simpler than itself - would be incapable of being divided.

If I listen to my reason, then, I am being told that my mind is a simple thing.

Simple things, if they exist (and some must), exist of necessity. For they cannot be created (from what could one create one?) or destroyed (for into what could one deconstruct one?). Thus, they exist 'a se' or with 'aseity'.

So, in so many words my reason tells me that my mind is a necessarily existing thing. Which confirms what it told me about my free will - namely that I have it, and that I could only have it if I was a necessarily existing thing.

I wouldn't start out by defining free will, as exactly what free will involves is a matter of inquiry. So it is something I think I have good evidence I possess - my reason tells me I possess it - even if I do not know exactly what having it involves.

For an analogy: I have excellent evidence my computer is working - it appears to be working. But I haven't the first idea 'how' it is working. Likewise, I think I have excellent evidence that I have free will - my reason tells me I have it (and it tells other people the same thing, for free will is almost universally believed-in). But when it comes to what having free will involves- well, about that I am far less sure and I think we only get insight into it by listening to our reason.

Anyway, why do most people think causal determinism is incompatible with free will? Well, because they think that if determinism is true then everything they do will be wholly the product of external causes.

Does that follow, though? No. Imagine an object that has always existed. That is, it never came into being - it exists of necessity. Now imagine that determinism is true and imagine that object in the company of other objects. Those other objects causally interact with the necessarily existing object, and the necessarily existing object causes some events to occur. Were those events wholly the product of external causes? No, for there was another ingredient - the nature of the object itself. And that nature, whatever it may be, was not itself the product of prior causes, for this object was never created.

Thus, it does not follow from determinism being true, that everything a person does will trace to external causes, for the person themselves may not have been created - they may be a necessarily existing thing.

So far as I can see, that is the only way it is possible for a thought or desire or will of mine to be something other than caused by external causes or a matter of pure chance. That is, if I am a contingently existing object (an object that has come into being), then everything I do will indeed be either a product of external causes or pure chance. It is only if I am a necessarily existing object that this will not be true. Thus, I conclude - tentatively - that free will requires being a necessarily existing thing.

That's a conclusion that is quite hard to swallow, I admit. But that's just due to intellectual fashions.

And loving someone else unconditionally is also bad - it is a sickness.

You think you love your children, but you'd have loved any child you created. So your love is not personal at all. It is a sick, demented kind of love that mature, reasonable people want no part of. Needless to say, the world is in short supply of the latter (they don't tend to procreate for one thing!)

It's what megalomaniacs want. They want to be loved regardless of their character - regardless of what they do, regardless of what kinds of qualities they have. Someone like that is mad and bad.

I think something can exist by itself. Indeed, I think some things must be capable of this, otherwise nothing whatever could exist (and clearly some things exist).

Every object that exists is either complex or simple. That is, it is either made of simpler things (in which case it is complex) or it is made of nothing simpler than itself. Those exhaust the possibilities. Complex and simple - everything existent is one or the other.

Clearly not everything can be complex. For that would lead to an infinity of complex things and there cannot be an infinity of anything.

So, if there are some complex things, then there must be some simple things from which the complex things are constructed.

All extended things - so all objects that occupy space - are complex. For all objects possessing extension can be divided. Thus, no extended object is a simple object.

A simple thing, then, must lack extension. That is, it is must be something that does not occupy space (for if it occupied any space, it could be divided and that would demonstrate it to be complex).

The simple things - things that must exist if anything exists - therefore do not occupy any space.

Furthermore, simple things, by their very nature, exist. For a simple thing can neither be constructed - for there is nothing from which one can construct one, as they have no ingredients apart from themselves - not destroyed (for there is nothing into which one can deconstruct it). Thus simple things exist, and exist of necessity.

Complex things cannot exist absent simple things, but simple things can exist absent complex things.

So, can anything exist by itself - yes, a simple thing can.

Do such things exist - yes, demonstrably.

You don't get to determine what is and is not 'off topic'. My comments - all of them - are on topic. Now calm down, pull your trousers up, and start addressing the arguments rather than getting off lecturing others.

Why would the god be a coward? Maybe he hates us. I mean, that seems more plausible to me. The god doesn't want anything to do with us. Not cowardice, but contempt.

Just engage with the arguments and stop being so pedantic. Tell you what, I'll put some commas and apostrophes in the wrong places and then you can tell me about that and that'll make you happy.

If you want to be loved unconditionally, that's bad. You shouldn't want to be loved unconditionally.

Furthermore, if you had a pill that would make someone love you unconditionally, you'd be acting very badly indeed if you gave it to someone.

Many of those who procreate do so because they want to be loved unconditionally. That's a vice. And they create people who will almost invariably love them unconditionally. A child doesn't really have any choice in the matter - it is biologically programmed-in, as most parents know only too well.

So, by procreating most parents exhibit terrible vices - they are behaving in ways that, in other contexts, we all recognise to be seriously wrong.

The thread asks 'is it ethical to have children' not 'is it ethical to have children due exclusively to concerns about global warming'.

Well if - if - it is wrong-making to do things that will accelerate global warming then having kids is obviously an activity that has that wrong-making feature. You don't make the planet cooler by having kids.

You can reject antinatalism until the cows come home, that won't make it false.

On what rational basis do you reject my arguments? Do you deny that the world is dangerous or do you think it is fine to force innocent people to live in it?
Should prisoners be able to have kids in prison and rear them there - if not, why not?

I think there is free will. Those who think we do not have free will invariably arrive at this conclusion on the basis of this argument:

1. If everything we do is a product of external causes or indeterministic chance, then nothing we do is done freely. (If P, then Q)
2. Everything we do is a product of external causes or indeterministic chance (P)
3. Therefore nothing we do is done freely (therefore, Q)

The problem with it is that though premise 1 is well-supported by our rational intuitions, premise 2 is just a dogma. It may be true, but there isn't any evidence that it is.

Here is a stronger argument, because in this case both premises are well-supported by our rational intuitions (and demonstrably so):

1. If everything we do is a product of external causes or indeterministic chance, then nothing we do is done freely. (if P, then Q)
2. We do some things freely (not Q)
3. Therefore, not everything we do is a product of external causes or indeterministic chance.

Premise 1 is the same as in the previous argument and so enjoys powerful support from our rational intuitions, as even those who deny we have free will must admit.

Premise 2 is also well supported by our rational intuitions. For free will is something we learn about via our reason (we don't hear, touch, smell, taste or see free will - it is something our reason represents us to have). And clearly the reason of most people tells them that they have free will, for humans have believed in free will for as long as they have had powers of rational reflection.

Now, perhaps the intuitions that support 2 are false. But the burden of proof is on the person who makes this claim, for all arguments appeal to rational intuitions and so to just dismiss some because respecting them would lead to a conclusion you do not personally endorse is irrational. The only rational basis upon which one should reject widespread rational intuitions is conflict with other rational intuitions. And those that support 2 do not conflict with any others, so far as I can see. They just conflict with the dogma that eveything we do is the product of external causes or chance.

I think it is seriously wrong to have children.

Most of those who have kids have them either for no reason whatsoever (which is incredibly irresponsible and foolish) or for bad reasons (such as a desire to be unconditionally loved).

Plus, having children involves forcing someone to live in a dangerous world without first getting their permission.

If you find yourself living in a prison, surrounded by dangerous people, is it good to make some innocent children join you? No, that's a despicable thing to do. I mean, just terrible - so spoilt, so self-centred.

You're living in a dangerous world full of dangerous and evil people - if you want to be loved do your best to cultivate loving relationships with those who are already around, but don't summon into being vulnerable, innocent people so that you can be the centre of their attention.