‘Be fruitful and multiply’

Perhaps the most obvious basis for pronatalism in Judaism and Christianity is the divine injunction to ‘be fruitful and multiply, to fill the earth and conquer it’ (Genesis 1:28).Footnote ⁵ This may seem like an unequivocally pronatalist commandment, one that settles the question of where religious Jews and Christians, at least, should settle on the question of procreation.

However, one should be cautious about leaping to this conclusion. One general reason for this is that there is often a gap between the literal reading of a text and a religion’s actual view. This is not true of fundamentalists, who do (claim to) adopt a literal interpretation. However, whenever religions allow scope for textual interpretation, we cannot determine a religion’s views from a literal interpretation of its sacred texts.

As it happens, not all the Abrahamic religions accept an explicit duty to procreate, even when they are broadly pronatalist. Catholicism, for example, has been more concerned with sexual ethics than with procreation per se (Swaner Reference Swaner and Davis2024, 136). The Catholic view on sexual ethics includes conditions, such as the prohibition on contraception, that have strong pronatalist implications. However, sex is permitted only within marriage, and there is no duty to get married. One way in which Christians can reconcile the absence of a duty to procreate with the explicit commandment to be ‘fruitful and multiply’ is by claiming that the procreative command applied at the earlier, pre-Christian, time but ceased to apply later. This is the view explicitly advanced by John Chrysostom (Chrysostom Reference Chrysostom1983, 23–27). In Islam too, there is no explicit duty to procreate, and contraception is permitted (Mu‘īnīfar Reference Mu‘īnīfar2022, 221–233).

Of the Abrahamic religions, Judaism is arguably the most pronatalist.Footnote ⁶ It does recognize the injunction to ‘be fruitful and multiply’ as an explicit positive commandment.Footnote ⁷ However, even Judaism regards this commandment as incumbent only on males, and not also on females.Footnote ⁸ This is despite the (Hebrew) plural formulation of the commandment.Footnote ⁹

One rationale for thinking that the commandment applies only to males is that because procreation can be life-threatening to females, women cannot be obligated to reproduce. Moreover, the wording of the Jewish marriage contract, the Ketubah, explicitly states the husband has a duty to satisfy his wife’s conjugal needs, but no reciprocal duty by a wife towards her husband is stated. Even when they do choose to have sex with their husbands, they are permitted to use contraception.

Thus, wives have neither a duty to reproduce nor a duty to have sex with their husbands. This puts the fulfilment of males’ purported religious duty to reproduce within the control of female discretion (given that rape, whether marital or otherwise, is prohibited). Males require willing females to fulfil their obligation. In other words, the commandment to be fruitful and multiply applies to only half of the fertile adult population, and not to the other half, without whom there can be no reproduction.

In Catholicism, priests and monastics are required to be celibate.Footnote ¹⁰ When this is combined, as it is in Catholicism, with a prohibition on those forms of assisted reproduction that separate reproduction from marital sex, the consequence is a prohibition on the clergy reproducing. In other words, priests, monks, and nuns are not merely released from an obligation to reproduce. They are prohibited from reproducing. For them, the scriptural commandment is turned on its head.

Of course, there is a difference between a restricted antinatalism, which applies only to the clergy, and a generalized antinatalism that applies to everybody. Nevertheless, it is significant that some strands of Christianity are suspicious of human sexuality, and view abstinence and celibacy as an ideal (Swaner Reference Swaner and Davis2024, 137). For those Christians, universalized non-procreation is the ideal, even if not strictly required of everybody.Footnote ¹¹

There have been Christian denominations that have extended the scope of celibacy even to the laity. The Shakers are a notable example. The very first principle of their faith was ‘Abstinence from all carnal and sensual passions, and a strict life of virgin purity …’ (Green and Wells Reference Green and Wells1830, 4). There is a logical difference between being opposed to sex and being opposed to reproduction. However, Shakers have not shied away from recognizing the implications of their view for procreation. Nor have they been oblivious to the ‘consequences of living continent lives if universally adopted’ (Pelham Reference Pelham1874, 1). Their response is that they ‘fail to see that bringing an end of this wicked world would be “a great wrong”’ (Pelham Reference Pelham1874, 2). This is a thoroughgoing antinatalism of a religious group that accepts the scripture in which humans are enjoined to be fruitful and multiply.

Even those religious people who accept the commandment to procreate cannot cite that commandment to justify the human breeding of animals. Such breeding, I noted in the introduction, is inconsistent with antinatalism. Yet it clearly does not fall within the scope of a duty for humans to reproduce. Some might suggest that it does fall within the scope of conquering the earth, which is a continuation of the verse requiring human procreation. However, that is far from a straightforward interpretation of ‘conquest’.

Imitatio Dei

Human breeding of animals might more plausibly be thought to follow from another religious consideration against antinatalism, namely the concept of Imitatio Dei, the imitation of God. If God created both humans and non-human animals, then Imitatio Dei might be thought to support not only human reproduction but also human breeding of animals.

However, the concept of imitating God is far less transparent than the explicit injunction to be fruitful and multiply. If a direct commandment is as liable to various interpretations as we have seen, then there is even more scope for interpretation about what constitutes imitating the divine, and what constitutes impersonating the deity – ‘playing God’.

The Bible itself suggests that God considerably reversed his own creation of sentient life by wiping most of it out in the flood, sparing only a remnant of both humans and non-human animals on Noah’s ark. However, in the immediate post-diluvian period, God, in an apparent triumph of hope over experience, reaffirms the instruction to humans to be fruitful and multiply (Genesis 9:1). He also offers the projection that animals will (rather than that they ought to) be fruitful and multiply (Genesis 8:17).Footnote ¹²

While most religions would not take the deluge as something for humans to imitate, it is not inconceivable that a religious tradition could see the world as having returned to an immediately pre-diluvian state of violence, warranting human extinction through non-procreation. Indeed, one Shaker noted that most Christians believe that the wicked world will end in ‘a much less merciful way’ (Pelham Reference Pelham1874, 2) than the extinction through non-procreation that is the implication of universal adherence to non-procreation.

A particularly Christian version of Imitatio Dei, namely Imitatio Christi, would suggest an antinatalist conclusion. Jesus neither married nor had children. By contrast, the Islamic principle of imitating the Prophet’s example implies pronatalism, given that Muhammad is thought to have had as many as seven children.

Preservation of the religious community

Another potential religious impulse towards pronatalism is the preservation of the religious community. Islam, for example, sees continuation of the ummah – the worldwide Islamic community – as one basis for its pronatalism.Footnote ¹³

There are religions and religious denominations with hundreds of millions or even a billion members, and are currently in no danger of extinction, but which see strength in numbers. Other religious groupings are the human equivalent of endangered species. Shakers have been indifferent to their own extreme endangered status. According to a recent reckoning, there are only two remaining Shakers (Kisner Reference Kisner2024). However, other religious groups that have historically placed a positive value on procreation are more alarmed by their declining numbers.

Jews, for example, as a result of centuries of persecution, forced conversions to other faiths, and strong pressures to assimilate, constitute only about 0.19% of the world’s human population (World Population Review, n.d.). Although the numbers have been increasing since the end of the Second World War, the global Jewish population has not yet returned to the pre-Holocaust number of approximately eighteen million. Many Jews have felt a special duty to compensate for the Nazi-inflicted genocide by ensuring that they have Jewish progeny. Emil Fackenheim went so far as to suggest that after the Holocaust, there is a 614th commandment,Footnote ¹⁴ namely not to hand Hitler a posthumous victory (Fackenheim Reference Fackenheim1978).

The situation is even worse for Zoroastrians, of whom there are no more than about 128 000 globally. They too have been subject to centuries of persecution, and continue to be persecuted in Iran,Footnote ¹⁵ which still has the second-largest Zoroastrian population of any country. Zoroastrian numbers have also dwindled because of high rates of intermarriage and low fertility rates, despite Zoroastrianism putting a high value on reproduction.

The psychological force of these concerns is entirely understandable.Footnote ¹⁶ However, there is another possible response to histories of persecution that result in religious groups being endangered by dwindling numbers. This response, instead of denying a victory to past persecutors, is to deny potential victims to future ones. The continuity of perpetually persecuted groups, like the continuity of humanity more generally, comes at massive cost to those who are created to do the continuing (Benatar Reference Benatar2018).

This will not be satisfying to existing people who want to see their religious traditions continue. Such continuation is certainly in their interests. It can contribute some meaning to their lives – at least according to many conceptions of meaning in life.Footnote ¹⁷ The question, however, is whether those benefits can justify the harms done to new generations by creating them.

Biblical

In the Jewish Bible – the Old Testament for Christians – Job rues his birth:

Jeremiah is another who regrets his existence:

There is, of course, a difference between a single individual lamenting his having come into existence, and a more general opposition to human procreation. While Job was responding only to his personal predicament, Jeremiah regrets his own existence, and also responds to the plight of his people following the destruction of the first Temple in the sixth century BCE. He reports that:

These are strong antinatalist sentiments that go well beyond a personal preference. However, it is not a universalized antinatalism. Such antinatalism can be found in the book of Ecclesiastes, where its author says:

Nor are such sentiments restricted to the Hebrew Bible. The Apostle Paul says:

Later in the same chapter, he says ‘Let those who have wives live as though they had none’ (1 Corinthians 7:29).

Early Christian antinatalism

The quotations above from Paul are illustrative of a central theme rather than a mere strand in Christian thinking. This theme was more robust in Christianity’s early history, even though a strong residue of it persists in those branches of Christianity today that still see ‘permanent sexual renunciation’ (Brown Reference Brown1988, xiii) as the ideal. Many of the Church Fathers expressed virginity as an ideal.

It might be objected that the Church Fathers, like many later Christians and unlike Ecclesiastes, were fundamentally suspicious of sex rather than of procreation. Although sexual abstinence, combined with an opposition to non-sexual methods of reproducing, has anti-procreative implications, the latter are merely implications rather than the aim. There is an element of truth to this. However, it is also the case that antinatalist concerns are interwoven with the ideal of celibacy.

John Chrysostom, for example, argued that there was no need for marriage, sex, or reproduction before Adam and Eve disobeyed God (Chrysostom Reference Chrysostom1983, 19–23). He said that as long as Adam and Eve ‘were uncorrupted by the devil and stood in awe of their master, virginity abided with them …. However when they shed the princely raiment of virginity … they accepted the decay of death, ruin, pain, and a toilsome life’ (Chrysostom Reference Chrysostom1983, 21–22). Of marriage he said that it ‘springs from disobedience, from a curse, from death’ (Chrysostom Reference Chrysostom1983, 22).

Here we see a recognition of the (postlapsarian) human condition as corrupted, replete with hardship, and culminating in death. Reflecting on the consequences for the human population of a universal virginity, John Chrysostom asks rhetorically:

It is true that here John Chrysostom allows the possibility that God could have created new generations of humans without the Fall. However, the human condition would then have been very different from the way it is following the Fall. It would, quite literally, have remained paradisiacal. Even antinatalists are not logically bound to oppose the creation of beings in a guaranteed paradise (which the biblical paradise, later developments show, was not). To the extent that a Christian embraces non-reproduction on account of the suffering of (postlapsarian) humans, he or she has moved beyond an opposition to sex into antinatalist sentiments – even if sex explains why humans suffer.

Augustine expresses similar ideas. He too sees marriage, sex, and procreation as arising only after the Fall, saying that it ‘was only then that their bodies by sinning deserved to undergo the fate of death, and sexual intercourse can take place only between mortal bodies’ (Augustine Reference Walsh2001, 3).

Like John Chrysostom, he considers the implications for the human population in the universal absence of procreation, although his response is different:

This seems to be an even more antinatalist sentiment than John Chrysostom’s. In embracing ‘the end of the world’ as we know it, it reaches extinctionist proportions. Indeed, the eschatological milieu within which Christianity was born and which influenced it also lends itself to antinatalist conclusions. If the end is (or could be) nigh, one will have less reason to invest in the future, and thus to create the children who would inhabit it.

A Talmudic debate

The Talmud (Eruvin 13b)Footnote ²¹ briefly refers to a fascinating debate between the House of Hillel and the House of Shammai, two famous rabbinic schools. We are told that these two houses spent two and a half years debating whether it would have been preferable for humans to have been created or not to have been created. The Talmud relates that it was eventually concluded, in support of the House of Shammai, that it would have been better for humans if they had not been created.Footnote ²²

This conclusion is unusual in that the House of Hillel usually prevails over the House of Shammai. Religious pronatalists might have thought that the rabbis would have been even more likely to agree with the House of Hillel in this case, given that the view of the House of Shammai seems like a criticism of God for creating humans.

Although such criticism of God may seem heretical, there is a long Jewish tradition of challenging God. For example, Abraham (unsuccessfully) challenged God’s decision to destroy the city of Sodom (Genesis 18: 16–33). Jacob, after wrestling with an angel, was renamed Israel, which means ‘struggles with God’ (Genesis 32: 29). The Talmud relates that in response to various miracles and finally a heavenly voice supporting Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus’ minority opinion about an obscure legal matter, Rabbi Joshua said that the Torah ‘is not in heaven!’ – a position that the Talmudic narrative endorses (Bava Metzia 59b). Another Talmudic story acknowledges that Rabbinic interpretations of the Torah deviated so far from the way it was presented to Moses that Moses himself would not understand them (Menachot 29b).

Islam

Although Judaism is more pronatalist than Islam in recognizing a commandment to procreate, Islam is more lacking in antinatalist threads than is Judaism. Like Judaism, it is also more ‘sex-positive’ than the Church Fathers were, with the consequence that antinatalism has not made its way into Islam via an antipathy to sex. Of course, both Judaism and Islam impose many restrictions on sex. Neither of these two religions is sexually libertine. Nevertheless, they embrace human sexuality and do not see lifelong sexual abstinence as an ideal.

At most, there are some wisps of antinatalist-adjacent thought in Islam. For example, there is a recognition of the world as a place of hardship (Quran 90:4). There were some early Sufis who, dwelling on this fact, adopted ascetic lifestyles, including sexual abstinence. However, this kind of practice is aberrational in Islam, as it is in Judaism, and it never gained the kind of currency that it did in Christianity.

The Muslim world has produced antinatalists, but these have typically been people who have eschewed Islam and religion more generally. Abu al-Ala al-Ma’arri, the tenth to eleventh century pessimistic Arab philosopher, may be the most notable example.

Buddhism and other Eastern religions

Antinatalism has featured much more strongly in Eastern religions than it has in the Abrahamic ones. While the Abrahamic religions recognize life’s suffering, some Eastern religions put this fact at the centre of their worldview. This is true of Jainism, Hinduism, and Buddhism, but I shall focus on the last of these as an exemplary case.Footnote ²³ In doing so, I set aside the question whether (some versions of) Buddhism really should be understood as a religion. To facilitate this bracketing, my focus is not on Zen Buddhism but on Buddhism more generally.

The first of the Four Noble Truths in Buddhism is that dukkha – suffering, pain, unease, unhappiness, or unsatisfactoriness – is an essential feature of existence. Buddhist pessimism is, in one way, deeper than that of naturalist (as distinct from supernaturalist) antinatalists. This is because, for Buddhists, the suffering does not end with death. Because of repeated reincarnations – samsara – the suffering continues over multiple embodiments.

The second Noble Truth is that the underlying cause of dukkha is desire. The third Noble Truth is that the way to escape dukkha is to extinguish desire. The fourth Noble Truth is that there is an eightfold path to extinguishing desire, and thus to the escape from suffering. The final goal is nirvana, a state of liberation from desire which blocks further rebirth and prevents any further suffering.Footnote ²⁴

This worldview lays a very sturdy foundation for antinatalism. However, it is not equivalent to antinatalism. This is because there is a difference between recognizing that suffering is an intrinsic feature of existence and claiming that bringing new sentient beings into existence is morally wrong.

It is true that extinguishing one kind of desire – sexual desire, and more specifically heterosexual desire – results in non-procreation. That is, unless one procreates via non-sexual means. However, if one extinguishes a second desire, namely the desire to rear children who are genetically one’s offspring, then the non-procreative implication returns. Buddhism does require sexual abstinence for its monks. There is no such requirement for the Buddhist laity, and thus Buddhism does not advocate antinatalism – a universalized prohibition against procreation.

Ending suffering

For example, one might plausibly argue that all religions believe in reducing or ending suffering (whether or not they conform to this in practice). Buddhism, in particular, given its foundational principles, ought to be antinatalist, and not only for its monastic members. If existence is as laden with suffering as Buddhism acknowledges, it should not be perpetuated through new incarnations.

However, here we quickly run into a fundamental difficulty for any argument that a religion that does not accept antinatalism ought to accept it. This is that it is in the nature of religious argumentation that it is open to the insertion of endless unproven claims or hypotheses that, if accepted, would block the logical inference.

For example, Masahiro Morioka, while not denying that Buddhism lends itself to an antinatalist interpretation, notes that ‘we can also interpret ancient Buddhism as saying that being born into this human world is affirmed because there is a possibility of reaching nirvana here’ (Morioka Reference Morioka2024, 10), in which case we cannot say that it ought to be antinatalist. In other words, if one assumes that dukkha persists between incarnations, and that attaining nirvana is only possible while incarnated, then in procreating, we are allowing those who are (re-)incarnated the possibility of attaining relief.

It may well be the case that some religious denominations – or religious interpretations that precede engagement with antinatalism – provide reasons to reject antinatalism. However, even in such cases there is a difference between core beliefs and more peripheral ones. When a core belief leads in a particular direction, then, all things being equal, the less store adherents of the relevant religion should put on a peripheral one that blocks an implication of the core belief.Footnote ²⁵

In other words, the internal logic of the religion might provide a reason to alter or reject peripheral beliefs when those are at odds with a core belief. This kind of religious reinterpretation is not uncommon. As noted earlier, it explains why many contemporary adherents of the Abrahamic religions – unlike some earlier adherents of these religions – do not approve of slavery, executing Sabbath violators, and child marriage.

In other cases, the peripheral belief does not precede engagement with antinatalism, and is introduced specifically in order to ward off the antinatalist conclusion. The problem with this kind of move to save a religious view from antinatalist conclusions, is that it involves wild assertions, and one could at least as easily assert the opposite. In response, it might be objected that this is an odd objection to advance against a religious view, given that religious views are frequently articles of faith rather than demonstrable claims. Once we enter the realm of religious argument, we can hardly complain if one indemonstrable claim is added to another.

There is some truth to this response. However, not all religious claims are created equal. Some are more demonstrable than others. There is very good reason for accepting the claims made by the first and second noble truths – the inextricability of existence and suffering, and postulating desire as the cause of suffering.Footnote ²⁶ Other claims, such as those about reincarnation and the possibility, while still alive, of fully expunging all desire, are far more dubious.Footnote ²⁷ The claim about dukkha continuing in the periods between purported incarnations is another highly dubious claim. We ought to put much more store on demonstrable claims than on indemonstrable ones.

That is true not only of those introducing beliefs to block antinatalist conclusions, but also of beliefs that precede engagement with antinatalism. It is not uncommon for religions, over time, to reject or alter beliefs, at least partly on the basis of their implausibility. For example, the Catholic Church once regarded the view that the earth moves around the sun as heretical. That is no longer the case.

Original sin

Buddhism is not the only religion with a core belief that should incline adherents towards antinatalism. Consider, for example, a number of doctrines that appear in Christianity. The first of these, aptly, is ‘original sin’, the state of sinfulness, perhaps inherited from Adam and Eve, and in which all humans find themselves. There are many interpretations of original sin, what possible impact it might have on free will, and what effect, if any, baptism might have. However, original sin is clearly not a desirable state, and thus to the extent that everybody, or even most people, are brought into an existence thus characterized, there is reason not to bring people into such an existence. How strong the reason is would depend on how bad a condition original sin is, and how easily and extensively it can be ameliorated. This is especially so if one thinks that there is no divine commandment to procreate that could serve as a counterweight to the reason that original sin provides against procreation.

Once again, it is possible to add assumptions to sidestep the antinatalist implications. For example, one could claim that procreation does not involve bringing somebody into a state of original sin, perhaps because the soul already exists in an unembodied state of original sin. I am not suggesting that any Christians would seek to avoid antinatalism in this way, but only that it is a possible line of argument. However, as with the Buddhist example, this would rescue Christianity from antinatalism at the cost of adding a highly implausible claim to the claim about original sin.

In its metaphysical form, the concept of original sin is open to many challenges. However, there is a naturalistic interpretation of it that is highly compelling. So interpreted, it refers to the fundamentally morally flawed nature of humanity. We come into existence as deeply defective beings and then do plenty of damage. This fact about humans lies at the heart of what I have called misanthropic arguments for antinatalism (Benatar Reference Benatar, Hannan, Brennan and Vernon2015). There is plenty of evidence for the harm that humans do (Benatar Reference Benatar, Hannan, Brennan and Vernon2015). Original sin, thus interpreted, is highly plausible. Disembodied souls existing in a state of original sin (or even merely in a state of moral corruption) is the opposite – highly implausible or, at the very least, indemonstrable.

Hell

Another religious concept that lends significant support to antinatalism is hell. If a child whom one creates will go to hell – or will merely stand a (non-trivial)Footnote ²⁸ chance of doing so – then the philanthropic arguments for antinatalism receive a massive booster effect. For example, in determining whether to create a child, we would need to factor in not only all the suffering that that child will experience, and will be at risk of experiencing, during his or her life, but also all the suffering that this person will experience, or risk experiencing, in hell.

How much further religious support hell provides for antinatalism depends on (a) the magnitude of the risk of going to hell; (b) how bad the suffering in hell is; and (c) how long it endures. Given how bad many religious people take hell to be, even finite sojourns would add significant weight to antinatalism. If damnation is, or could be, eternal, then the additional weight is off the charts.

The magnitude of the risk of going to hell depends on how wide-reaching the sufficient conditions are for being sent to hell. Religions and religious denominations differ on this. Some have more relaxed ‘admission criteria’ than others. So-called exclusivist religions – those with the view that only believers of that religion will be spared the torments of hell – believe that everybody else will be consigned to hell.

Those who hold such a view should think, at the very least, that adherents of all the other religions – along with the atheists – should desist from procreation because any children those people create very likely will not adhere to the religion that (purportedly) prevents them from going to hell. We might call this ‘antinatalism for the hell-bent’.

The believers in an exclusivist religion might think this is not a bar to their own procreation. This, they might reason, is because their own children, given the way they will be raised, are very likely to follow the parental religion and be spared an eternity in hell. However, there are at least two problems with this line of thinking.

First, the chances of a child abandoning the religion of their parents are not negligible. Children can and do reject their parents’ religion, sometimes by adopting another religion, but perhaps more commonly by simply discarding religion entirely. The chances of this do vary, and are lower in more insular religious communities, but even then it sometimes happens.

Second, some exclusivist religions maintain that even some or many of their own adherents will also go to hell. In other words, not being a member of the approved religion is sufficient for admission to hell, but being a member of the religion is not sufficient to keep one out of hell. Either way, there are billions of people who, according to these religions, are headed for hell.

It is very difficult to fathom how one could possibly be justified in creating a child who would run such a risk of enduring such suffering. This is not to deny that there are possible religious arguments that might be employed to ward off the antinatalist conclusion. However, they are inadequate.

For example, it might be argued that hell is avoidable through choices that the created person will make. If they fail to make the right choices, then they are morally responsible for that, and thus (purportedly) deserving of the fate that awaits them.

Such an argument would not be open to those who believe in predestination, or at least to those conceptions of predestination that either make free will impossible or that relegate some people to damnation irrespective of their free choices. However, the argument is problematic even for those religious people who reject predestination thus understood. This is, in part, because it exhibits a kind of moral callousness. Are there really no limits on how much somebody can deserve to suffer for even the most heinous moral crimes, let alone non-heinous ones such as happening to have the wrong beliefs? If there are not, why is placing somebody at the risk of such sin and such punishment not itself a great sin? One’s offspring may be responsible for their damnable sin(s), but one is responsible for creating the damned sinner, which amounts to an enabling of damning sin.

Moreover, the desert argument loses sight of key antinatalist insights. Even if one thinks that some of the harms somebody will experience are those that they will deserve, it is still the case that if one does not create that person, they will neither exist nor deserve to suffer enormously. That is much better for that person than coming into existence and deserving to suffer.