Finally, and perhaps most important, to the extent that the bad things in life really are necessary, our lives are worse than they would be if the ba… - David Benatar

It would indeed be wonderful if there were a beneficent God who had created us for good reason and who cared for us as a loving parent would for his or her children. However, the way the world is provides us with plenty of evidence that this is not the case. Imagine you were to visit a country in which the evidence of repression is pervasive: There is no freedom of the press or expression; vast numbers of people live in squalor and suffer severe malnutrition; those attempting to flee the country are imprisoned; torture and executions are rampant; and fear is widespread. Yet your minder tells you that the country, the “Democratic People’s Republic of Korea,” is led by a “Great Leader” who is an omnibenevolent, infallible, and incorruptible being who rules for the benefit of the people. Other officials endorse this view with great enthusiasm. There are impressive rallies in which masses of people profess their love for the Great Leader and their gratitude for his magnificent beneficence. When you muster the courage to express skepticism, citing various disturbing facts, you are treated to elaborate rationalizations that things are not as they seem. You are told either that your facts are mistaken or that they are reconcilable with everything that is believed about the Great Leader. Perhaps your minder even gives a name to such intellectual exercises—“Kimdicy.” It would be wonderful if North Korea were led by an omnibenevolent, infallible, and incorruptible ruler, but if it had such a leader, North Korea would look very different from the way it does look. The fact that many people in North Korea would disagree with us can be explained by either their vested interests in the regime, by their having been indoctrinated, or by their fear of speaking out. The presence of disagreement between them and us is not really evidence that deciding the matter is complicated. Not all of earth is as bad as North Korea, but North Korea is part of “God’s earth”; so are Afghanistan, Burma, China, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Syria, and Zimbabwe, to name but a few appalling places for many to live. Even in the best parts of the world, terrible things happen. Assaults, rapes, and murders occur, injustices are perpetrated, and children are abused. Fortunately, the incidence of such evil in places like Western Europe is lower than in worse places on earth, but my point is that they all occur within the jurisdiction of a purportedly omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent God. Nor should we forget the horrific diseases from which people suffer around the globe, or the fact that every day, billions of animals are killed and eaten by other animals, including humans.

Disability rights advocates also correctly note that quality-of-life assessments differ quite markedly between those who have impairments and those who do not. Many of those without impairments tend to think that lives with impairments are not worth starting (and may even not be worth continuing) whereas many of those with impairments tend to think that lives with these impairments are worth starting (and certainly are worth continuing). There certainly does seem to be something self-serving about the dominant view. It conveniently sets the quality threshold for lives worth starting above that of the impaired but below normal human lives. But is there anything less self-serving about those with impairments setting the threshold just beneath the quality of their lives? Disability rights advocates argue that the threshold in most people’s judgements about what constitutes a minimally decent quality of life is set too high. However, the phenomenon of discrepant judgements is equally compatible with the claim that the ordinary threshold is set too low (in order that at least some of us should pass it). The view that it is set too low is exactly the judgement that we can imagine would be made by an extra-terrestrial with a charmed life, devoid of any suffering or hardship. It would look with pity on our species and see the disappointment, anguish, grief, pain, and suffering that marks every human life, and judge our existence, as we (humans without unusual impairments) judge the existence of bedridden quadriplegics, to be worse than the alternative of non-existence.

Some of the harm that humans cause to other humans and to animals is mediated by the destructive effect that humans have on the environment. For much of human history, the damage was local. Groups of humans fouled their immediate environment. In recent centuries the human impact has increased exponentially and the threat is now to the global environment. The increased threat is a product of two interacting factors–the exponential growth of the human population combined with significant increases in negative effects per capita. The latter is the result of industrialization and increased consumption.