I think you may have missed the point of the argument.

The desire to avoid death is explicitly dealt with. The way you have thus answered it is somewhat amusing. Yes, we know people do not want to die. This is obvious. The question is then why do we keep creating people who will die? If they were never created in the first place they wouldn't know the difference. But as soon as you create them, you condemn them to that ultimate end you just acknowledged people want to avoid. You should also probably acknowledge the nature of suicide. It seems to me the antinatalists understand this better than you. After all suicide is painful because humans do not want to die. It is the ultimate suffering, not merely an escape from life. The grief associated with suicide comes from the recognition that someone has done something to themselves that they didn't really want to do. Do you really think the agony of suicide is equal to never having been born? How could that be possible? Where is the unconceived person who has been subjected to such pain? They don't exist and never did. The point of the antinatalist argument is why would you create life in a world like this? This also makes your last point sort of irrelevant for a bonafide antinatalist, as the obvious rejoinder would be, so what? If we are moral agents and not evolutionary automatons then what point are you making? The question is a moral one. Why you think evolution would provide an answer here I am not sure.

As to your middle point, it's all good to just reverse the argument. But you didn't even make an effort to substantiate it. Why would creating life be a moral imperative? Because evolution? Is the act of creation not a more deliberate and significant act than the act of abstention from such activity? To what level should parents be responsible for their children? What symmetric responsibility would you impose on non parents? It would be hard to see how it could be symmetric at all unless you think parentage is largely irrelevant. Which would imply an acknowledgement of the relative significance of having a child vs not.

As for me, I also think your last sentence betrays something. No one can be sure their kid will have a great life. That should never be the standard because it cannot exist. I generally think however it is sensible to say if a person can only provide a hand wavey answer about why they think tomorrow will be better than yesterday, in 2026, and yet still chooses to have a child one might ask if that seems unethical. You don't need to delude yourself into offering some guarantees. But I personally think it is probably unethical to create life without some conviction that at the very least, on balance your child will face more good than bad. But parents aren't responsible for everything that happens. They're human beings, like their kids. No one expects perfection. Antinatalism isn't really a question for parents it's a question for those who have not yet conceived and offers a particular moral lens from which to evaluate the option. I just think it is a somewhat interesting one. Generally I just hope people having kids are being thoughtful about it and have conviction in the future.

Thanks for the back and forth.

I think the distinction is that you think a life is only worth living if it is a sufficiently enjoyable life, and I think life is worth living intrinsically.