This post is an amateur meditation on two delusions: Buddhist antinatalism, and anti-Buddhist charges of "annihilationism" and "death cult". These may seem quite disparate topics, but it will soon become clear that they spring from similar errors in thinking.
To explain the former: many Western Buddhists seem to take it for granted that, since reproduction continues the cycle of death and rebirth, the reverse must follow: that non-reproduction stymies the cycle of death and rebirth. This is the reason many Western Buddhists take up the antinatalist stance.
As for the latter: anti-Buddhists argue that, since "all life is suffering" (a very slipshod version of the First Noble Truth, dukkha-sacca), a good Buddhist may end suffering, and thus attain "nirvana", by simply committing suicide.
