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    The argument that having children is morally wrong is esp... — Carmelics
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    The argument that having children is morally wrong is especially forceful in the context of Augustinian theology.

    Afterlife & DeathEternal Conscious Torment
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    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
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    • 1.Augustinian theology implies that any child potential parents might produce could be one of the reprobate whom God has hated from the beginning and has destined from the beginning for eternal torment in hell.
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    • 2.For all any set of potential parents know, their child could be destined for eternal torment.
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
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    • 1.Within Augustinian theology, divine providence and sovereign election mean human reproductive choices cannot alter the fixed number of the elect.
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    • 2.If the set of souls destined for salvation or reprobation is determined entirely by divine decree antecedent to creation, then human procreative acts merely determine which predetermined souls are instantiated, not their eternal fate.
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    • 3.An agent cannot be morally culpable for a harm they are metaphysically incapable of causing or preventing, so parents bear no responsibility for a reprobation decreed before their action.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
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    • 1.Augustine explicitly held in 'The City of God' that membership in the elect constitutes an incomparably greater good than non-existence, meaning existence itself is a precondition for the supreme good of beatific union.
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    • 2.An action that is a necessary condition for the highest possible good for at least some individuals cannot be straightforwardly condemned as morally wrong, even under uncertainty about outcomes.
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    • 3.The asymmetry argument underpinning antinatalist reasoning, as articulated by Benatar, presupposes a secular hedonic calculus that is conceptually incommensurable with Augustinian theological value theory.
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    Afterlife & DeathEternal Conscious Torment

    Related

    An action that is a necessary condition for the highest possible good for at lea...An agent cannot be morally culpable for a harm they are metaphysically incapable...Augustine explicitly held in 'The City of God' that membership in the elect cons...Augustinian theology implies that any child potential parents might produce coul...
    +4 moreShow less
    For all any set of potential parents know, their child could be destined for ete...If the set of souls destined for salvation or reprobation is determined entirely...The asymmetry argument underpinning antinatalist reasoning, as articulated by Be...Within Augustinian theology, divine providence and sovereign election mean human...

    Similar

    It is morally wrong for anyone to have children, given Christian exclu...87%Some widespread moral intuitions, together with Christian exclusivism ...85%Augustinian theology implies that any child potential parents might pr...78%Human beings beget guilty, not innocent, children.72%

    Source

    AI-extracted
    SEP: heaven-hell
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    Second, virtually all retributivists, with the notable exception of the Augustinian theologians, reject as absurd the whole idea of inherited guilt. So why, one may ask, do so many Augustinians, despite their commitment to a retributive theory of punishment, insist that God could justly condemn even infants on account of their supposedly inherited guilt? Part of the explanation, according to Philip Quinn, may lie “in a homuncular view of human nature itself” (Quinn 1988, 99) or in what some philosophers might label as a simple category mistake. A good illustration of the homuncular view, as Qu...

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit