Better Off Dead

[TBC: It is instructive to consider the company atheists keep. The following book has come along in the same wave.]

Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence
[Excerpts]
Reviewed by Christopher Belshaw, The Open University

The title is indeed odd. But it isn't intended merely to be catchy, another one of those volumes appealing on the cover but deadly dull within. [Author David] Benatar appears genuinely to believe that we are all harmed, and fairly seriously harmed, by being brought into existence and that it would really be better, and better for us, had we never been born.

There are two important and immediate objections: how can something that odd, that strange, possibly be true? And, if it is true, why don't we all, or at least those who believe it, go and put an end to things now? Why is Benatar still with us? Is he still with us? He is, and he thinks he has an answer to these objections.

There are seven chapters, with five of substance between an introduction and a conclusion. As Benatar acknowledges, most of the heavy work is done in the first two of these. So in Chapter 2, 'Why Coming into Existence is Always a Harm', he argues for the book's central claim. If you're not persuaded by the end of this chapter, you won't be along for the ride. Chapter 3 offers important supplements, and wants to show both that the harms here are considerable, and that our strategies for denying this uncomfortable truth are many and varied. The following chapters, 4-6, explore the consequences, many of them practical, of Benatar's claim. So he argues (in 4) that it is generally wrong to have children, (in 5) that if you've failed to grasp this, and you, or the woman you know, have already conceived, then it would be best to abort as soon as possible, and (in 6) that the ideal size of the human population is zero.

http://www.utilitarianism.com/benatar/index.html