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Notes -
The Gnostics were anti-sex, in the sense that they believed that a celibate lifestyle was morally superior to the alternatives for everyone, with marriage being a second-best compromise. If taken seriously, this becomes anti-natalist in practice.
Paul spends a lot of effort in the Epistles trying to convince the early Church that marriage (and marital sex) were okay, suggesting that the uncorrected early Church tended to agree with the Gnostics on this point.
"Marital sex is part of a second-best compromise and it would be better if married couples had the bare minimum amount of sex for reproduction, like the Protestant couple in the Every Sperm is Sacred sketch" is a very common error that crops up in Christian thought over the centuries, to the point where I am not sure if it is an error.
The currently existing Gnostics the Yazidis and the Mandaeans are not particularly anit-natilist.
Paul's views were pretty complicated on marriage, he says this in Corinthians 1 chapter 7
Now while he does exhort the married to stay married this is hardly a full throated endorsement given than he says the unmarried should not become married and he wishes everyone be unmarried and childless. There have been plenty of anti-natalist Christian movements based on versus like this just as there have been plenty of anti-natalist gnostic movements. The Gnostic concept isn't inherently anymore anti-natalist then verses like this and the idea of original sin. All Abrahamic religions value the spirit over the flesh.
For anthropic reasons, they wouldn't be. I hope you can see why that doesn't disprove the historical argument.
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