Between Iron Skies and Copper Earth: Antinatalism and the Death of God

Paper by Jeroen Robbert Zandbergen, published on December 17, 2020 in Zygon

The proclamation of the death of God came at a pivotal time in the history of humankind. It far transcended the concerns of the religious faithful and dented the entire fabric of human existence. Left to its own devices, humans intended their consciousness to replace God's. This proved to be a terrible mistake that collapsed the entire modern project. One of the worldviews that emerged in the wake of this eruption was antinatalism, which refers to the conviction that human reproduction should be brought to an absolute halt. This is the most modern outgrowth of the death of God and represents the most radical face of secular humanism. In spite of the admittedly dark fumes that leak out from the term ‘antinatalism’, this philosophical position emerges quite naturally when we consider the depletion of our traditional sources of philosophical enquiry.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/zygo.12668
Zygon 56/2 (2021), 374–394