Posted: Mar 27, 2012 11:36 pm
OlivierK wrote:Chrisw wrote:I'm not sure I understand the premise of this thread at all. Even if we accept that life inevitably involves suffering and distress doesn't it also involve pleasure and satisfaction? It is not at all obvious that any life you bring into the world will on balance be so miserable that it would be better that it never existed.
A sense of perspective doesn't seem to be Andrew's strong point.
His argument only works if there is a universal consensus that there is no reason for living, which there is not. Even at Auschwitz, where we might say that suffering reigned supreme, most of the inmates wanted to carry on living. Clearly, even when suffering reaches such extremes, humanity has reasons for wanting to live. If hope and purpose can survive such an ordeal, then there really cannot be any suffering sufficient to deny the possibility of future human experience.