Asymmetry and the Afterlife: A Christian Response to David Benatar

The National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 19 (3):377-389 (2019)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

According to David Benatar’s asymmetry argument, the transition from nonexistence to existence is always a harm, and procreation always a pro tanto wrong. This argument fails to reach its anti-natalist conclusion if we maintain the view that there is no temporal relationship between our worldly lives and our afterlives. On this view, since anyone who will be freely procreated has an existence in the afterlife that is atemporal with respect to worldly time, procreators do not move those they procreate from nonexistence to existence and so do not harm them. This view provides a reason to reject Benatar’s stringent “life worth starting” criterion for procreation.

Other Versions

No versions found

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 98,418

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Is it wrong to impose the Harms of human life? A reply to Benatar.David DeGrazia - 2010 - Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 31 (4):317-331.
Debating Procreation: Is It Wrong to Reproduce?David Benatar & David Wasserman (eds.) - 2015 - New York: Oxford University Press USA.
better no longer to be.R. Mcgregor & E. Sullivan-Bissett - 2012 - South African Journal of Philosophy 31 (1):55-68.
Is Having Children Always Wrong?Rivka Weinberg - 2012 - South African Journal of Philosophy 31 (1):26-37.
Hooray for babies.David Spurrett - 2011 - South African Journal of Philosophy 30 (2):197-206.
A Dilemma for Benatar’s Asymmetry Argument.Fumitake Yoshizawa - 2021 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 24 (2):529-544.

Analytics

Added to PP
2020-02-17

Downloads
31 (#595,578)

6 months
5 (#930,779)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Marcus Hunt
Tulane University (PhD)

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations

References found in this work

No references found.

Add more references