I wasn't arguing the opposite -- that people have some kind of
duty to have kids. I was simply pointing out that there exists a complete void in secular philosophy and culture when it comes to this aspect of human existence.
Many people turn to religion when they have kids for this reason. There's just nobody else in society and culture that acknowledges the importance of this aspect of human existence or provides any social framework for it.
Another hypothesis I have is that there exists some kind of deep cognitive link between the emotional basis of religion and the emotional basis of parenting and fertility. "God the father," etc. When I hear God spoken of it is generally as a kind of idealized parent. Most religions seem to have a strong fertility cult aspect.
Secular philosophy refuses to touch this. Maybe this comes from its general phobia of anything emotional, aesthetic, or "spooky." Secular philosophy has a similar reluctance to touch things like "consciousness," which gives us the bizarre spectacle of conscious beings experiencing themselves proclaiming that consciousness does not exist.
Of course religion has its own denialisms and refuses to look at certain things. When we decide that we believe in a philosophical framework, generally we start discarding anything that doesn't fit neatly into it. This IMHO humanity's greatest cognitive weakness. Finding a way to short circuit this would be a path to super-intelligence.
