We Should Live - Ben Bateman

I try not to link to everything that Mark Steyn writes, but this article is exceptional:

Just for a moment, let us take it as read, as Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins and the other bestselling atheists insist, that what happened in Bethlehem two millennia is a lot of mumbo-jumbo. As I wrote a year ago, consider it not as an event but as a narrative: You want to launch a big new global movement from scratch. So what do you use?

The birth of a child. On the one hand, what could be more powerless than a newborn babe? On the other, without a newborn babe, man is ultimately powerless. For, without new life, there can be no civilization, no society, no nothing. Even if it’s superstitious mumbo-jumbo, the decision to root Christ’s divinity in the miracle of His birth expresses a profound — and rational — truth about “eternal life” here on earth.

From there he makes some points on Europe’s upcoming demographic collapse. It’s familiar territory for Steyn fans, though I was interested to note that British news sources expect the various spellings of ‘Mohammed’ taken together to overtake ‘Jack’ and ‘Thomas’ as the most common name given to baby boys in the United Kingdom in 2008.

Then Steyn pushes on to his main point, which is the Christmas focus on the birth of a baby contrasted with a burgeoning Western culture of self-hatred and death. Two of my points should already be familiar to my regular readers: Last May the UK-based Optimum Population Trust urged Britons to have fewer children for the planet’s sake. And just last month the Daily Mail ran a very positive story about young women choosing abortions and sterilization to help save the planet.

Now an Australian obstetrician has upped the ante by proposing that the government levy a tax on people who have more than two children, and financially reward people who choose sterilization. It won’t be long before someone in the fever swamps of environmentalism declares that mere financial incentives are not enough, and the state needs to start mandatory sterilizations and abortions. That may sound like hyperbole, but consider, the above three news stories appearing in mainstream news publications would have been inconceivable ten years ago.

The trends are similar in environmentalist theology. Steyn points to the recent book A World Without Us, in which the author loving contemplates what would happen to the Earth if all humanity were to suddenly disappear. He might also have mentioned the recent movie I Am Legend, starring Will Smith and doing very well at the box office, has a similar theme of massive human extinction that is—of course—our own fault.

But the real cutting edge of environmental theology is Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence, by David Benatar of the University of Cape Town. In what seems to be a bid to become the new Peter Singer, Mr. Benatar’s thesis is that creating a child seriously harms the child by its mere existence, and that human existence itself is bad. Lest you think I exaggerate, consider this passage from page six, which you can read for yourself via Amazon:

Nor is the harm produced by the creation of a child usually restricted to the creation of that child. The child soon finds itself motivated to procreate, producing children who, in turn, develop the same desire. Thus any pair of procreators can view themselves as occupying the tip of a generational iceberg of suffering.

Most people are taken aback when I tell them my blog’s name. We should live? Who would be crazy enough to say that we shouldn’t? Lots of people, as it turns out, and not all of them Muslims.

Steyn closes his article:

It’s hard not to conclude a form of mental illness has gripped the world’s elites. If you’re one of that dwindling band of westerners who’ll be celebrating the birth of a child . . . next week, make the most of it. A year or two on, and the eco-professors will propose banning nativity scenes because they set a bad example.