The theory of evolution by natural selection doesn't imply that all traits are best suited for survival (adaptive). There are non-adaptive traits: — Reformed Nihilist

Explain the treatment of homosexuality then.

Theorists are attempting to explain homosexuality as having adaptive advantage. They are not happy with it just being a spandrel.

"Another possibility is that homosexuality evolves and persists because it benefits groups or relatives, rather than individuals. In bonobos, homosexual behaviour might have benefits at a group level by promoting social cohesion. One study in Samoa found gay men devote more time to their nieces and nephews, suggesting it might be an example of kin selection (promoting your own genes in the bodies of others)."

https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13674-evolution-myths-natural-selection-cannot-explain-homosexuality/

You've already established that purpose is created, not inherent with your spoon analogy. Why is a spoons purpose ok when we create it, but creating purpose for ourselves not ok? — Reformed Nihilist

The spoon inherits a purpose but we don't. It doesn't randomly exist.


What purpose could we be said to have? In a trivial sense someone can claim watching paint dry is their purpose. But this kind of invented purpose lacks profundity and also it can be given a deflationary evolutionary explanation.

Do you want me to cite what evolutionary theorist have said about how our purposes are subservient to brute survival of genes and species.

Anyhow here I am talking about interpretations of evolution and what restrictions they put on claims if any. I am am examining statements such is "if evolution is true then X follows"

The problem with evolution on some interpretations is that it reduces or deflates human claims. For example you could help an elderly person cross the road with genuine kindness and altruism but that disposition is seen as primarily in service of the survival of the genes.

. If we can accept that life really is meaningless, we can shift our focus toward satisfying our instinctive biological needs and desires (food, water, shelter, family, community, procreation). — CasKev

Despite modern technology our life is still about brute survival. Everyday we are struggling to stay alive. It is easier to fulfil basic needs giving ample time to reflect on meaning.

I think religion etc may have sprung up in a response to fear and meaninglessness but now it has been undermined. I think the need for meaning now has been created by the destruction of wide spread superstitions. I am not an expert in anthropology but I have the impression that most humans societies have been superstitious and not atheistic and they had no scientific theories to justify atheism.

I don't makes reality less "magical" but it has been used in a deflationary and reductionist ways concerning human relations.

I don't understand what this means. I have no idea why evolution is destructive of purpose or meaning, unless you are suggesting that purpose and meaning can only come from a creator, and evolution makes the likelihood of a creator less. — Reformed Nihilist

Design makes purpose and meaning somewhat inevitable.

A spoon has a purpose and meaning for us.

If we are here solely by chance and with no intention we are here for no reason with no purpose. Any meaning is accidental.

Not entirely true. Quantum physics is being interpreted in such ways that basically say "magic is real" and then being used by con artists and hucksters to fleece people — Reformed Nihilist

This is not the equivalent to justify killing numerous people based on a notion of the survival of the fittest or justifying racism and forced sterilisation.

"In 1929 Hitler said at the Nazi Party Conference in Nuremberg, "that an average annual removal of 700,000-800,000 of the weakest of a million babies meant an increase in the power of the nation and not a weakening".[1] In doing so, he was able to draw upon scientific argument that transferred the Darwinian theory of natural selection to human beings and, through the concept of racial hygiene, formulated the "Utopia" of "human selection" as propounded by Alfred Ploetz, the founder of German racial hygiene."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_euthanasia_in_Nazi_Germany

As far as being in service to it, I' don't know what that means either, (..). — Reformed Nihilist

This is actually Richard Dawkins position especially in the selfish gene.

"They did not die out, for they are past masters of the survival arts. But do not look for them floating loose in the sea; they gave up that cavalier freedom long ago. Now they swarm in huge colonies, safe inside gigantic lumbering robots, sealed off from the outside world, communicating with it by tortuous indirect routes, manipulating it by remote control. "

This is What Richard Dawkins has claimed:

"The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute that it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive, many others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear, others are slowly being devoured from within by rasping parasites, thousands of all kinds are dying of starvation, thirst, and disease. It must be so. If there ever is a time of plenty, this very fact will automatically lead to an increase in the population until the natural state of starvation and misery is restored. In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.”

There are many planets that have no life on them and we still appreciate them. (We seem to be obsessed with Mars).

I think harm can be objective but not the good. People can be discontented with any aspect of existence. (Especially a lack of purpose and meaning). (Me for example)

Your view seems to depend entirely on the continuation of human consciousness. However life ends in death and our conscious experience are finite not inherited by our offspring.

The definition of a God is controversial but we are said to be made in his image in the Bible.

And as I am saying now through science and thought, we have more and more of the attributes attributed to God.

We could be eternal either if consciousness is like that or by keeping consciousness going via some kind of computational realisation etc.

But here I am interested in the supposed clash between science and the supernatural which seems not as true as it may have been especially considering discoveries in the quantum world such as a particle being in two different places at the same time.

if we can agree that the continuance of life in general is considered to be good. — CasKev

You can give a deflationary account of this view. In order to coerce us to reproduce we could be wired to see life as good.

It certainly isn't unmitigated good and the good can be highly subjective. Personally I value meaning and purpose.

Also I don't think the vast majority of species reproduce because life is good.

I think your view is a good argument for the continuation of humans and I think it is quite compelling however I think it will just lead to a one size fits all justification for human values.

Apparently we are said to be made in the image of God by some religions. That is a controversial statement because of what these godly attributes are supposed to be. I once toyed with the idea that we are all gods.

I am not seeing God here as a religious figure for worship but as an example of extraordinary abilities.

It depends what a person sees as the limitations of the human mind. I think our ability to easily reflect on infinities is extraordinary. I don't see the mind or our language and ensuing concepts as being in anyway a trivial attribute.

I think if something is produced by the brain that is not deflationary.

Yes it is odd to say that if something is in the brain then it has a marginal existence. The idea of "in the brain-ness" is fatal for materialism because it has led to us being perceived as having no direct access to an external reality which doesn't support materialism.

Clearly we can impact the "external world" with our minds because we create things and communicate within the world, So our desires and imaginings don't stay in the brain.

Also there are things like creating life and affecting the weather that have been mocked as attributes of gods yet now humans can prevent it from raining and intervene heavily with nature and clone animals and alter genes.

If God was a human of superior intelligence or some other superior species then his or her potential abilities are wide. I used to think gods communicating with everyone at once was highly implausible but now we have the internet there are paradigms of implausible mass communication over great distances.

It seems strange that popular science is being reductive and deflationary when science has actually exposed us to more possibilities.

Yes, and unpleasantness's negativity is subjective. — BlueBanana

That doesnt make sense. How could we have words like pain and unpleasant if there was no inherent negativity?

And when you see a starving child or someone else clearly in pain or suffering in what way is that subjective? Part of empathy and theory of mind is accurately imaging the experiences or intent underlying people's body language and statements.

So either you consider mental phenomena real or you do not. — Terrapin Station

Mental phenomena are all we have access to. Phenomena outside of the mind are described in shifting models by physics.

Consent is not an opinion but an observation that X appeared not to consent to Y.

Even if you are most staunchly "Pro-life" there is no coherent to way to say someone created themselves and or consented to be created. We discussed the pre soul scenario but even there it is hard to imagine how someone could be argued to have communicated a desire to a parent.

Yet a huge amount hinges on this lack of consent, for how we shape society and apportion blame, including the luck of birth.

Someone born into poverty or relative poverty is disadvantaged and a child of a millionaire etc has privileges but they may be disadvantaged in other ways by inheritance. Children are not to blame for their parents,their genes, their race and gender etc but these heavily impact them.

A child with caring and financially supportive, encouraging parents has done nothing to deserve that. The only person that can be held accountable for creating someones traits and circumstances is a parent.

Lack of consent and pain are real things not opinions.
— Andrew4Handel

Of course, but their negativity (or rather its negativity, but this is off-topic) is an opinion. — BlueBanana

As I said pain is defined by is unpleasantness. I didn't say it was defined by it's negativity.

If you go to the doctors or dentist they often say "Does that hurt?" or "where does it hurt?"
People rarely if ever go to the doctor saying "I have a lovely pain in my knee I would like you to treat it"

You seem to be saying that private experiences (which is all we have) are values when they are not.

Ok, let's talk within the assumption that generally pain is a negative thing. Then why is avoiding negative things and harming others objectively bad thing? Even doing something because one has motive to is rational only subjectively. — BlueBanana

It is not that pain is negative or bad, but that it is defined by its unpleasantness.

Lack of consent and pain are real things not opinions.

A morality will be incoherent if you don't distinguish between harm and the good or consent and lack of consent and because life is created without consent and entails harm then you cannot have a coherent morality demanding that people require consent and should not harm.

So the only option is moral nihilism which essentially undermines everyone and does not favour any action. Once you try and create a morality based on consent and harm you have already undermined that by reproducing.

If someone is dying of cancer then moral sentiment won't keep them alive. Moral sentiment is cheap and subservient to facts.

Actually it is not, and there are people who like pain although they are a minority. — BlueBanana

1. highly unpleasant physical sensation caused by illness or injury.
"she's in great pain"
synonyms: suffering, agony, affliction, torture, torment, discomfort, soreness More
2.
mental suffering or distress.
"the pain of loss"
synonyms: sorrow, grief, heartache, heartbreak, sadness, unhappiness, distress, desolation, misery, wretchedness, despair, desperation, mental suffering, emotional suffering, trauma; More

Masochism is a reinterpretation of pain. I doubt anyone likes every pain all the time but rather selective incidence in certain context. Mental distress can lead to self harm as a distraction but this is rather creating the lesser of two evils,

↪Andrew4Handel Yeah, who needs consent?

http://www.ourbodiesourselves.org/health-info/forced-sterilization/ — Sapientia

Creating a life that can go on for 80+ years of suffering is the greatest imposition.
Preventing people getting pregnant is stopping them victimising others.

I don't see where I said we should ask for consent to everything.

Should I ask a serial killer for his consent before imprisoning him to stop a killing spree?

The point I am making is that we did not consent to be here so nothing is consenting. I compare it strongly to kidnapping. Kidnapping someone then giving them choices is absurd because there whole time spent with you is against their consent. You can't be moral in that scenario.

You are as much a victim as anyone else because you were forced into existence here. You may feel independent and liberated but you were just forced here.

Who needs consent?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4650152/Turkish-boys-circumcised-no-anaesthetic.html

newer, younger, better suited designs — TheMadFool

That appears to be a teleological claim. Biological mechanisms are unconscious. Only conscious entities can be aware that they are surviving or have functions.

In my opinion consciousness is the only thing that gives anything value or meaning.

It doesn't make sense to me how someone could complain because I groped their arm on the bus or played music really loud near them but then is not allowed to complain about being forced to go through 80+ years of life including unavoidable work and enforced education.

I would much prefer to hear a neighbours loud music or be groped on the arm then spend 15 years in education with other peoples darling monsters.

We also need to discuss specific cases here like conscription in World One where millions of men were sent to their deaths in the dismal trenches, people are coerced into doing a lot of things that are not in their own interests based some screwed up ideologies. That is the norm.

I need only point out that this goes against your own earlier comment about having no qualms about putting a chemical in the water that would cause mass infertility. — Sapientia

No it doesn't because infertility prevents new people being born who didn't ask to be born, who didn't express a desire to be born and will be imposed on. Infertility only prevents someone else being created.

Reproduction is an act involving three people and only two of them have consented.

My infertility comment was made to express how serious I am on this issue.

I think it is a common mistake to think you can add up pleasure and pain in between groups of people.

Because pleasure and pain are private individual experiences. And experiences are had by one individual not collectively.

If someone is in pain they may take a pain killer. It won't help them if twenty other people take pain killers.

All we have is our own experiences and we are not part of a continuum so invoking majorities is dubious. And having children won't continue your own life.

So once again you've not provided a logical refutation

I think people have ignored most of what I said.

I gave the example of my preference for Bach and baroque. No one has said to me that because I derive pleasurable or profound experiences from Baroque music I should be allowed to force it on others.

There is no justification for imposing something on someone else based on your own preferences.

And as I said with the groping on a bus scenario most brief acts of unwanted contact or imposition are frowned upon.

I do like exposing people to Bach and Handel but I haven't a made any major converts. You can only have a child based on your own preferences so you can't claim to have done it in their interests.

What was the argument as to why the future potential to consent is irrelevant?

If a child you create has the potential to consent in the future and desires how would that not factor into creating them?

It is about making life not seem futile. unfortunately I got to the point where the gloss ran out of life and it seemed like a futile imposition.

There is a problem with conflicting meaning. Religious people believe there's intrinsic meaning and have children for that reason. I think making meaning gets unstable and chaotic with all these conflicting meanings. The reason our parents had children can emanate from all kinds of ideologies (many false)

But I think meaning is undermined if there is no justification given for having children. I am agnostic so I think making strong claims either way is suspect. Part of my meaning breakdown comes from having to reevaluate all my beliefs for truth value.

And why is pain a negative thing? That's a subjective opinion. — BlueBanana

Pain is defined by being an unpleasant sensation. That is not a moral claim. I find moral claims dubious but I think you can make valid harm claims.

I think moral nihilism offers no justification for anyone. On a nihilistic stance no one's behaviour is validated. I think pronatalism is quite nihilistic in that it usually does not demand much reason from its proponents. Nature allows people to have children it also allows people to try and prevent birth and allows famine and so on it doesn't usually resolve moral arguments.

I think moral nihilism or the lack of an enforceable morality(like the laws of nature say) makes it difficult to enact antinatalism. So you can have children using brute force and try and justify it after.

I think one defence against nihilism is logic and I think the world gets more nihilist the less reasonable beliefs are.

And it's up to you to assign a point or meaning to your life. — Terrapin Station

The problem is that we didn't consent to be here. When we were talking about suffering levels and making meaning we are talking about things imposed on someone. It is one thing to choose to find your own meaning or tolerate your own suffering another to be placed in this dilemma.

For example I love Bach and Handel and Baroque music in general but I don't actively force it on anyone.

I think making an individual find their own meaning is an existential burden. It is a task for scientists and philosophers to explore life not something everyone should have foisted on them.

I also think in reality peoples meaning comes naturally for instance I don't choose to like baroque music and people finding meaning from relationships. I don't think science or philosophy have proven there is no meaning so I don't think we should revel in this position or promote it. The problem is the existential burden when life loses its meaning and there are only different dogmas to choose from.

If science had really discovered life was futile and about mindless survival that would be good evidence to stop propagating it.

He has an agenda and is cherry picking, like you — Sapientia

There's enough suffering on earth to see why people might not consent to come here.

I doubt that insects and a range of other creatures feel pain but nevertheless Dawkins is not an antinatalist and he presents a grim picture of life (which he appears to revel in).

I take umbrage with him and others like him because seemingly in defence of atheism he presents life as terrible, to attack belief in God/s (see Stephen Fry for similar). But then says we should feel lucky to be alive.

Both the religious and key atheists have presented a grim view of life. Religious people say you can transcend life which would be nice if there was evidence for that. But when you realise the religion isn't true the comfort is gone and you are left with the nasty religious behaviour and irrationality.

I had to try and make meaning in my life after leaving religion through trauma. Initially it felt briefly liberating (although I was also depressed). But since I have followed debates between theists and atheists I have found the narrative horrible and some atheists are really pushing for life to be pointless and meaningless and taken a deflationary view of life. Yet both sides are having children whilst no real hope is being offered.

I think both religion and forms of atheism can be very nihilistic. Most human ideologies seem to neglect the individual. Antinatalists have the most sensitivity towards the value of the individual and they don't just seem them as a statistic or construct or tool etc.

Another ludicrous analogy. — Sapientia

This is Richard Dawkins take on life apparently.

“The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute that it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive, many others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear, others are slowly being devoured from within by rasping parasites, thousands of all kinds are dying of starvation, thirst, and disease. It must be so. If there ever is a time of plenty, this very fact will automatically lead to an increase in the population until the natural state of starvation and misery is restored. In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.”

I don't presume to speak for others; whereas you do, that is the difference. What you say about putting a chemical in water to cause infertility just shows me that you are another thoughtless idiot that wishes to dogmatically impose their views on everyone else. If you were to do what you suggest it would be an unspeakable criminal act. — John

You are endorsing the perpetual continuation of human suffering for no good reason. That is a bigger criminal act.

Preventing more suffering is an act of self dense.

You endorse bringing new people into a world with a history of war and genocide, ISIS, people starve every day, a million + suicides a year. Who is the reasonable one?

You need to realize that you are just one person; other people's lives are different from yours, and you have no rational warrant to pronounce on their value or lack of it. — John

The same can be said to you.

I think people who suffer and people who have to suffer have more credibility in casting value on life.

If there is one person drowning in lake and twenty people enjoying a picnic on the shore who do you pay attention to?

I don't expect other people to suffer so life can go on or be stoical about suffering so as not to upset other peoples idyll.

If I discovered a chemical that when put in the water would cause mass infertility I would have no qualms about doing so.

If you decide to take a job, for example, then whatever happens to in that job is only partially under your control. — John

You can walk out of a job. In most cases when you consent to something you can withdraw consent quite quickly.

Do you acknowledge that your thought that life is not worth living is nothing more than just that: your thought, your subjective opinion? — John

It's my experience.

As I think I said before I don't believe anyone would consent to growing up in abject poverty, or getting burnt alive or being bullied and so on.

Lack of consent is a source of unhappiness in itself. But this world has enough problems to make consent a major issue. It is pointless talking about a world we don't live in because that hypothetical can't be imposed on this world.

Based on your question you seem to be implying that if there was a perfect world we wouldn't need consent therefore we don't need consent now. But that is like saying because someone doesn't mind having lots of money putting in their bank without consent they shouldn't mind being beaten without consent.

Well, actually there are further possibilities: that souls pre-exist bodily life and are forced to be born. But if that is the case then we exist in a diabolical universe; an inherently evil universe. — John

What about the simple and so far only supported scenario that people choose to create children (when they don't need to and this creates more human suffering?)

You seem to be trying to treat parents as exceptionally helpless. The reverse was the case for me. because after being born I had a very restrictive, controlled childhood.

I wouldn't encourage people to see having children as inevitable. That can either lead to them asserting total authority or failing to prevent pregnancy. You can't drive whilst drunk (legally) but you can get pregnant when drunk (or get someone pregnant).

We don't say that drunken people should not by prosecuted for a car accident because they were "non compos mentis". Even when someone gets too drunk to act coherently we try and deter and restrict behaviour. Yet outside on China's one child policy creating children is one of the most unrestricted activities.

If there is a bush on fire you could pour water on it to put the fire out.

Or you could ignore it. Or you could add fuel to the fire.

I don't see an excuse for adding fuel to the fire.

The fact that no one chose to come here (exist) does not mean that you can justify continuing creating people. You didn't start the fire but you can try and put it out.

There has been so much human suffering that to view life as justifiable gift is implausible.

Of course it is. If you decide to do something your are permitting it to happen to you — John

It's not happening to you, you are making it happen.

but if they intend to have a child they consent to take what is given. — John

I don't see how intending to do something is an act of consent.

You could say what you said in a trivial way about every action such as if I kidnap a child I am consenting to take it. (Consenting with myself). If make a coffee I am consenting to make it.


What we are talking about here is a lack of consent. Someone could regret all their actions whilst having agreed within them self to do it.

I can see no scenario where someone from a prelife realm could force them self on a parent. (especially now with the prevalence of contraceptives and abortion.)

For a soul to be responsible for their embodiment they would have to equal or greater power than the parents in ensuring their embodiment (birth). There is currently no evidence for your scenario but lots of evidence of parents creating children through various means unconnected to disembodied souls.

I think the point of consent is to recognise someone else has desires. Therefore you act towards them as they would desire.

And if you have pet or child you often try to act in their best interest.If you are decent, you treat them in a way you feel they would like to be treated.

The problem for the unborn is you have no idea what their preferences will be so you can't create a person for their own benefit.

I don't think consent is necessarily a moral issue. I am a moral nihilist and I don't think labelling an action good or bad says much. But consent has an actual non value side which is the basic statement that someone didn't consent to be born and you can never make realistic (accountability) judgements if you believe otherwise.

Accountability doesn't have to be moral just a statement of causality such as "you caused this to happen" I think causality in personal affairs is seriously neglected. Accountability is more like a game and fiction and ideology.

We didn't cause ourselves to exist but our parents did.

If it is wrong to procreate, is it also wrong to allow others to procreate? — Srap Tasmaner

The main issue for me is consent followed closely by the issue of suffering. It is wrong to make something happen to someone else without their consent in my opinion.

I think it is an issue between parent and child though and that a person is only responsible for their decision to procreate.

I can't think of any justification for creating a child.

But we haven't even got near antinatalism because people can just have children as they please with minimal consequences and we don't discuss the ramifications (outside of this type of debate)