Serious question here: what are the best arguments against anti-natalism?

>I'm pretty sure that you have to be exposed to these ideas early on to truly have a connection with them

You don't. I was raised in a non-religious home and considered myself an atheist. Converted to Christianity in my early twenties.

I actually feel like a religious upbringing can make more difficult to become religious later on, depending on how it was taught to you. I'm in the process of becoming a Christian again but for a long time I completely rejected it because I thought that the conservative protestantism I'd grown up with was all there was, and that other denominations were really only different in name and a few customs rather than fundamentally different beliefs, like nonbelief in hell, and that sort of thing.

>Prove minimization of suffering

When I say that I'm antinatalist I don't mean that lfie is worthless, but that the experience in the long run will inevitably be a negative one, especially if you don't believe in an afterlife.

The suffering that I would minimize in myself would not counterbalance the suffering that naturally arises from human existence. I don't want to create something that one day will be terrorized by death.

How can you justify such a change? Why should I trust the Bible? I have no reason to do so. It may sound simplistic, but since Faith is such a central theme in religion I don't see how could I bypass it.
I really don't believe in God, and to believe in the Bible seems just laughable to me. I've studied it extensively in my teenagehood (I did it to understand clearly my national classics), and not even once believing seemed reasonable to me. It sounds ridicolous to me. I wish I could believe in it, but I can't.

i'm an agnostic myself, but that's totally false, friend. plenty have converted from an ir- or even anti-religious background, and plenty have arrived at the existence of a higher power from intellectual inquiry. i don't know what the future holds for you or even myself, but there are also plenty of reasons other than religious piety to read something like the bible. even if you don't walk away a christian you still may find plenty of wisdom contained therein.

Not him, but how did you do that? I've always been jealous of religious people due to their belief in an afterlife. I'm curious about how you managed to change your viewpoints, like how did you force yourself to accept something that seems like an apparent fantasy to me as a truth? Also which relatively easy religion can I convert to that would let me into heaven despite fucking dudes?

all knowledge is ultimately contingent upon faith. it's merely a matter of degrees.

I was raised religious, went to Christian school, learned about religion and theology, knew in the back of my mind all this shit was stupid even when I believed in it, dropped it all abruptly in college, never looked back.

If there's a deity, I can't imagine it wants or deserves our worship.

How many degrees are there between "assume the andromeda galaxy has the same laws of physics as the milky way" and "an all-powerful dude created the universe and he's gonna get upset if you eat the wrong kinds of food"

>and plenty have arrived at the existence of a higher power from intellectual inquiry.
Being a deist is infinitely easier than picking a Holy Book at random and start believing in it. Why should I become a Christian and not a Jew, or a Buddhist? Believing in a generic God doesn't imply joining a specific religion.

>but there are also plenty of reasons other than religious piety
I know, that's why I mentioned the fact that I have studied the Bible extensively. That experience has been extremely interesting and single-handedly clarified a good chunk of Italian literature, yet I've never felt attracted by it.
To believe in such a book seems preposterous to me.

This probably isn't what you'd like to hear, but I reached a very low point in my life, and there was nothing else which I could turn to. I don't think it's an issue of argumentation or logic. That is not to say that I don't think it's true, but I don't think that converts anyone. I think you have to reach a point in your life when you become receptive, for whatever reason, and then take the step for yourself. Whether that will happen or not, I don't know.

>and to believe in the Bible seems just laughable to me. I've studied it extensively in my teenagehood (I did it to understand clearly my national classics), and not even once believing seemed reasonable to me. It sounds ridicolous to me.

You're putting the cart before the horse. As a nonbeliever you're right, there's no reason to trust it, really. If you believe then that tends to change.

>Also which relatively easy religion can I convert to that would let me into heaven despite fucking dudes?

None that is orthodox, as far as I know.

just pointing out that it's silly to think you need to be raised in a religious environment to become a believer. but if you've already studied the bible, there's really no point in further continuing this line of discussion.

I think you are saying life is worthless, though there may be issues of definitions obscuring that.

Why should I not have X kid? Because I think his net experience of happiness will be negative?

If happiness/unhappiness is the only thing that matters then I don't know how you hash this thinking out without declaring life is worthless.

And if life isn't worthless, there are obviously more components to "worth" than happiness and unhappiness, and therein lie your justifications for having kids, assuming you still feel this weird need to justify kids.

more than i can count. but to have faith in something ultimately unfalsifiable like a higher power doesn't seem as terribly far-removed from your former example. not saying it has to be the specific higher power of a specific book.

Muslims will outbreed us.

>This probably isn't what you'd like to hear, but I reached a very low point in my life
Then I don't think that this road is available to me. Even if my outlook on human existence is grim and pessimist, I'm living a tolerable life. I do what I like (I'm a cellist), I'm financially stable (but that's a given, I'm extremely frugal) and I'm not particularly alone. I can't see any devasting crisis in my future that could possibly bring me to religion, and I'm sure that this existential dread that is in me won't ever give rise to a traumatic experience.

>If you believe then that tends to change.
That's why I don't disparage believers. I'm an atheist, but not a militant one. I can see the dignity in true faith, and I can respect it too, yet it's completely detatched from the person I am.

Well, let me rephrase it. Given my upbringing, and given the person I've become, and given how sceptic of everything I am I already know that this road is not available to me. I know, deep down, that, I won't ever believe in the Bible. I could entertain the idea of being a deist, but that doesn't resolve any of the conflicts I've presented in my first post.

Thanks for the reply. Yeah, I can't see myself reasoning my way into faith, and at my lowest I tend to turn to other things. I guess I'm viewing religion as though it could be some easy 'fix' for my fears, but it's not exactly a simple thing to follow, I suppose. It's nice to hear that it helped you, though.

>None that is orthodox, as far as I know.

Any unorthodox ones? Lol. The close-minded nature of a lot of religions regarding things like sexuality/gender and drug use is a bit of a turn off for me as well.

>Then I don't think that this road is available to me.

Well, you never know. I didn't expect it. I don't think it necessarily has to be something bad or traumatic that occurs. I've read someone talk about having a similar type of experience after their first child was born.

>Any unorthodox ones? Lol.

Any mainline Christian denomination.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mainline_Protestant

>The close-minded nature of a lot of religions regarding things like sexuality/gender and drug use is a bit of a turn off for me as well.

Christians view sexuality the way that we do because we believe that our bodies have a teleological purpose, they have an end for which they were designed and are not just matter. The union of a man and a woman is the joining together of both into "one flesh," as they originally were, before Eve was created from Adam. It is the union between others, culminating in the creation of life. It is also a "type" or prefiguration of Christ's church, which is the mystical union of the believer (the "bride") with Christ (the "bridegroom") into one body, of which Christ is the head. The union of man and woman prefigures the union of God and man, made possible through the incarnation.

I'll give you another perspective for some food for thought. Have you ever read 'The Gift', by Derrida?

An extremely truncated summary would be as follows: "All forms of giving result in cycles of obligation, except for the giving of those things which we cannot predict or estimate their value."

A key factor in determining your wish to 'burden' a child with the stresses and responsibilities of existence - a worthy debate to have in any sense - should take into account the unpredictable nature of what a gift of life is.

Another thought is that, depending on your age, you may have an incomplete perspective on all the results of your life in its totality, and as such, you may yet be misjudging the potential value of a new one for another.

Also you could just read Spinoza's ethics and come to the conclusion that your nuts are under the supreme control of a determined existence laid out at the beginning of creation and be done with it.

>Veeky Forums is almost half a decade old

jesus I still consider it a new board

Veeky Forums is over a half a decade old bro. We launched shortly before Salinger died, 2010.