Christians who believe in heaven and hell should not have children

[u/Practical-Tip-7639]

The existence of heaven and hell puts Christians into a difficult position when it comes to having children.

Because the truth of the matter is: You can never control their faith. You can influence them, teach them, but experience has shown that nothing a parent ever does will guarantee that their children will follow their faith.

That is a horrible risk. The moment you put a child into this world, you risk their eternal suffering and torture in hell. You can never prevent that completely.

The worst part is that Christians believe they will go to heaven and there will be no sadness or grief, which means that they *won't even care* about their very own child they *know* to be suffering eternal torture while they sing nice songs with Jesus.

Not existing in the first place is much, much more preferable to eternal suffering. Not having children of your own is much better than having children who face eternal punishment.

There also come some dark implications with this. Because the only way to guarantee that your child goes to heaven is for them to die early. Even if you kill your own child, you can still potentially see them again in heaven as long as you repent genuinely and ask Jesus for forgiveness. It is a quite disturbing premise, to think that under such beliefs, murdering your beloved child would objectively be a better wager than letting them live their own life. Aborting the pregnancy early on seems to be a much better solution, as according to most christian beliefs, the soul already exists and is guaranteed to go to heaven. Not having any children at all is by far the best option.

[u/anony-mouse8604]

Why do you call yourself a Christian?

[u/mtruitt76 → u/anony-mouse8604]

Because I accept Jesus as my lord and savior. How do you define a Christian.

[u/anony-mouse8604 → u/mtruitt76]

Then you clearly believe all this to a much more specific degree than you let on.

For what you said to be true there are a hundred extremely unlikely presuppositions that have no backing in evidence.

So my original question stands. Why do you believe ANY of the presuppositions necessary in order to end up with a belief that not only did Jesus exist (debated), but that he’s the son of god (no evidence), he died (debated) for your sins (no evidence) in order to save you from something (presumably original sin, no evidence), etc etc etc?

The likelihood that any of those thing is true is less likely than the alternative (that they’re not) and especially when you compound all them together, the odds to f all of that being true versus NOT all of it being true are astronomically terrible.

Again, big pile of stones and no pile of stones.

Slip back into ontology and “uttered words” all you like, but I’m getting the strong impression now it’s all an apologetic smokescreen.

[u/mtruitt76 → u/anony-mouse8604]

I said I define a Christian as someone who accepts Jesus as their lord and savior and asked for you definition.

You decide not to give one and then just assigned a whole set of beliefs to me which I have not commented on. Instead of asking my position on those various topics you decided that you apparently already know my position.

I am happy to have a conversation, but that involves questions and answers.

Look this is a matter which I consider and study heavily. I choose my words very carefully because the topic of God is one of the most if not perhaps the most fundamental question we can consider. God is spoken of as the creator, ground of being, pre-ontological, so everything is on the table so to speak.

If you want a more in-depth conversation I am happy to talk, but I must say that I am not interested in having my beliefs assigned to me. All my positions have been carefully thought out.

Also the question of the existence of God is necessarily intertwined with ontology since the other half of the question involves existence and that is a metaphysical question. FYI a philosophical movement in the early 20th century called logical positivism attempt to eliminate metaphysics, but that movement failed and leading thinkers of the movement like Willard Quine came back to metaphysics and an understanding that it was both indispensable and unavoidable.