A Religious Argument For Antinatalism
If You Believe In ECT
Introduction
Some religious traditions uphold the doctrine of eternal conscious torment (ECT), which holds that, under certain conditions—such as committing grave moral wrongs or rejecting God—one will suffer eternally in the afterlife. As an atheist, I do not believe in God, and even if I did, I would not find ECT compatible with God. However, for those who do believe in ECT, this doctrine provides a compelling reason to refrain from procreation, as it seems clear that even a small risk of condemning someone to eternal torment would make procreation impermissible. While I already consider procreation likely to be morally wrong regardless of the truth of ECT , I believe that a theological commitment to ECT makes the case against it even stronger.
Risk-Based Argument for Antinatalism Given Theological Commitments to Eternal Conscious Torment (ECT)
Premise 1: It is impermissible to non-consensually impose a risk of infinite harm on others unless doing so is necessary to avoid harm of a similar or greater magnitude.
Premise 2: Bringing a child into existence entails non-consensually imposing a risk of infinite harm on that child (the possibility of eternal conscious torment in hell, as affirmed by certain theological traditions, e.g. within Christianity and Islam), without this being necessary to prevent harm of a similar or greater magnitude.
Conclusion: Therefore, it is impermissible to bring children into existence.
This argument builds on Erik Magnusson's risk-based reasoning but adapts it to account for the theological commitment to eternal conscious torment (ECT). By creating a child, one introduces the risk that the child could suffer infinite harm (eternal conscious torment). I think this strengthens the case for antinatalism within theological frameworks that affirm ECT.1
Does This Argument Also Apply For People Who Don’t Believe In ECT ?
Even for those who do not affirm theism and ECT, the probability of ECT being true is unlikely to be exactly zero. Given that even a small probability of ECT entails the risk of infinite harm, one could argue that this alone should be sufficient to deter procreation. However, this concern can be counterbalanced by similarly speculative possibilities—for instance, the idea that there are already souls suffering in ECT and that procreation is the only means by which they can be rescued. If one assigns roughly equal probabilities to both scenarios (like I do), their effects cancel each other out, leaving procreation unaffected by these considerations.
This article is a modified extract from my article “The Case For Antinatalism”
I am agnostic and became an antinatalist while I was still a theist, mainly because of this line of reasoning involving the “ETC.” However, there is a small detail I’d like to highlight regarding Muslims: there is a passage in the Qur’ān:
Sūra al‑A‘rāf 7:172‑173:
“And [remember] when your Lord took from the children of Adam—from their loins—their descendants and made them testify concerning themselves, [saying], ‘Am I not your Lord?’ They said, ‘Yes, we testify,’ lest you should say on the Day of Resurrection, ‘Indeed, we were of this unaware.’”
There are various interpretations of this passage, but the most common one among Muslims is that God, in some way, created all the people who would ever exist throughout human history at once. Thus, no matter what actions humans take, there is an unchangeable number of pre‑created humans who, one way or another, will be born. It seems to me that this renders any antinatalist effort to prevent the existential risk of going to hell pointless.
The souls would dwell in a place called ʿĀlam al‑Arwāḥ and then be brought by an angel into the woman’s womb.
One source: The Primordial Covenant and Human History in the Qur’ān https://www.aub.edu.lb/fas/jewett-chair/Documents/primordial-convenant-human-history-in-qur%27an-al-qadi.pdf)