This claim misses a very basic point regarding the creation of new life, and about existence and non-existence. For existence to be better than non-existence, it must be possible to experience non-existence and for it to be worse than existence even if existence itself is full of bad experiences. But there is no such possibility. It is impossible to be in non-existence or to be non-existent. Non-existence is, by definition, a situation in which there is no one and there are no experiences, therefore the claim that it is better to exist than not exist makes no sense at all. There aren’t two possibilities that can be compared in order to determine which is better, since no one can be in a state of non-existence. For the claim that it is better to exist to make sense and be logical, there needs to be an option to be non-existent and that option needs to be preferable for someone. But since there is nothing in non-existence and no one exists before being created, there is nothing to compare it with. Non-existence is neither better nor worse than existence because there is no one for whom this condition can be better or worse than existence. How can something be better than something that does not exist and is not an option? This does not mean that existence cannot be good or bad, but that it cannot be better or worse than non-existence.
The claim that a difficult life is better than no life at all implies that there is a possibility of non-existence, and that there are people out there who regret not existing and that their parents can decide whether to bring them into existence or not. But of course all this is fundamentally wrong and a complete contradiction to the definition of non-existence or the creation of people. Non-existence is not a state anyone can be in, no one waits to be created, and people who decide to reproduce do not bring their children into existence but decide to create people from nothing. Before they decided to create their children these people did not exist and as a result of their decision they were created. They hadn’t been there before in some form, in some waiting room, not to mention in a state worse than existence. People are created from nowhere, not brought from a worse place. Therefore, the claim that it is better to live a difficult life than not to live at all makes no sense. S/he who does not live at all does not live at all, s/he never existed and never will exist. There is no such person. It’s not that someone who doesn’t exist, actually lives a really bad life in the waiting room in the corridors of non-existence and therefore it’s better for her/him to exist, even if it’s hard. There is no such state and therefore the person for whom it was decided that s/he will exist has not had her/his situation improved in any way because in order for there to be logic in the claim that her/his situation has been improved or that something is better for her/him, there needs to be an alternative to her/his situation, and there is none. S/he has one option and that is existence, therefore it cannot be said that it is better for her/him because it is better than what? What alternative does anyone have but to exist?
As long as it wasn’t decided to create someone, that someone does not exist and not existing is by definition not being in any situation, not wanting anything, and not having any interest whatsoever since there is no one at all. Therefore it is not better for this someone to exist or to ‘remain non-existent’, rather it is simply irrelevant to talk about the interests or preferences of someone who does not exist. This claim is based on meaningless and irrelevant concepts. They would only be relevant if there was existence before existence and it was worse than existence. And then, by the way, it would be the duty of people to create as many people as possible in order to save them from the “horror of non-existence”. Why don’t people have an obligation to create as many people as possible if it is better to live even if life is hard than not to live at all? The reason there is no such moral obligation is that it makes no sense. There is no one who needs to be redeemed from non-existence.
Moreover, since existence is a precondition for anyone to experience anything, non-existence is precisely the place where no one can be harmed by anything and so not only is non-existence no worse than existence, it cannot be bad at all. It is true that it cannot be good either, since we will not experience anything there, but according to the argument discussed here, non-existence is presented as necessarily a worse possibility than existence, whereas not only is this not the case, and it cannot be the case, non-existence cannot be at all bad. And this is important because it seems that people are afraid of this possibility even though it is not threatening at all and precisely because there is no option of harm in non-existence.
The claim that a difficult life is better than no life at all makes no sense because there is no such state where there is no life at all and therefore it cannot be a bad state either. It is not an option for someone to not have a life at all so who is it bad for? Who is better off living than not living if the possibility of not living is not experienced by anyone because by definition there is no one?
In order to claim this people need to experience the state of ‘not living at all’ but this is an internal contradiction since in order for someone to experience something they must exist. There are no experiences in non-existence including the experience of not experiencing anything, the experience of not living. Therefore there is no logic in the claim that it is better to live even if life is hard, or even really bad, than not to live at all.
It would not be true to say that life is better even if someone’s life was not hard but wonderful, because it still has to be better than something and non-existence is not an option that someone can have, and because before someone was created s/he did not exist and therefore nothing was better for her/him, not even a seemingly wonderful life, because again, better than what? If no one had been created for this seemingly wonderful life, no one would have been in a worse or better situation, but in no situation, therefore no situation, bad or wonderful, could be better than not being created.
Since non-existence is not an option for anyone, and existence is the only option for everyone, but it is neither necessary nor in anyone’s interest to exist, there is no logic in preferring a bad existence to not existing at all.
Probably because non-existence is not something that people are able to perceive or imagine themselves in, they feel that existence, including a bad life, is a good and better option than anything else, and this despite the fact that there really is no alternative to existence. There is no ‘not to be’ option. The question ‘to be or not to be’ is not formulated correctly, the question is ‘to be or to cease to be’, because there is no possibility of not being. Not existing is not a state in which someone can exist. You can continue to be alive or stop living and then cease to exist, but there is no possibility of existing outside of life. Existing people only have their existence, so some cling to it even if it is terrible. And also because they don’t understand the meaning of never existing. They think in terms of whether it is better for me to suffer what I suffer from in my existence, or to die, or to be exiled to non-existence which is an option they mistakenly perceive as horrible, rather than as simply never having existed and therefore having no preferences including if to exist or not.
People who never existed do not experience not living at all, but simply there are no such people at all. The arguers using this excuse imagine life without experiences while living without experiences is in itself an experience, and in their opinion a negative one, and therefore they think it is worse than existence even if there are many hard experiences, but this is simply not the case. Refraining from creating life does not force existence without experiences on anyone. This is because you cannot force something on someone who does not exist, and also because there is no such thing as existence without experiences. Creating someone is a necessary condition for forcing something on someone. Refraining from creating a new life cannot be imposed on a person who was never created. In the prevention of human creation there is no moment in which someone existed and preferred a different option than the one chosen. This is only possible when you create someone, which indeed happens far too often, and can never happen when you avoid creating someone.
There is no reason to create anyone, certainly not someone who will live a hard life. The alternative is not worse for that person who is forced to live a hard life; the alternative is that s/he will never exist and therefore will never be forced to live a hard life, will never want to experience life even though it is hard, it will never be in her/his interest to exist even though her/his life will be hard, or anything like that. In the “dilemma” presented in this excuse, the person’s option is only to live a hard life. There is no other option for that person. If s/he wasn’t created, s/he would never exist, and as aforesaid, not being is not an option for a person. So this someone has only one option and that is a hard life. And since there is no other option, a hard life is not a better option for that person than anything else. Why force people to live hard lives when there is no harm if their lives are spared? Why cause someone suffering for no reason and without any cost to that person for their creation being prevented?
While it is immoral to cause unnecessary suffering to others, there is nothing morally wrong with not creating people.