A Simple Question

by Kenneth W. Hawthorne

The following is a comment that I made on a Church of Christ 
discussion group in 2011 (slightly edited):

The question I asked you: "If you wanted to have a child but you knew

before conceiving this child that if you conceived it and brought it

into the world that it would wind up suffering forever in hell, would

you go ahead and conceive that child and bring it into the world?" is

not a question like, "Are you still beating your wife?", which is an

example of a complex question fallacy. Such a fallacy is when a question

is asked that is composed of a presupposition that is false--you have

been beating your wife. It would be possible, though, that the question

could be a legitimate question if it was a known fact that the man being

asked the question had in fact been guilty of beating his wife.

The question that I asked you is not such a question. The question I

asked you is a simple, legitimate, hypothetical question. The question

that I asked you is comparable to, If you knew that you would die in a

car accident tomorrow if you drove to Little Rock, would you drive to

Little Rock tomorrow? The answer is so obviously "No", that the question

is ridiculously absurd. And I think I can safely say that you would

quickly answer that question with a "No", and laugh at the questioner

for asking such a question. But, in regard to my question about whether

you would conceive and bring a child into the world, knowing it would

wind up suffering for eternity in hell, which is even more absurd and

which calls for an even quicker response and even more obvious answer
of "No", you stammer and hesitate...and you won't answer the question.
Why? Because of your fanatical, credulous, unfounded, delusional
devotion to Yahweh. Your answer might make Yahweh look bad. Well,
he is bad. He's worse than bad. He's so fiendish and so infinitely horrible
that taking into consideration his alleged omni qualities--he is a
contradiction, an impossibility.

My question to you involves what we know the Bible teaches about
Yahweh and his eternal hell and is a legitimate question based on
what the Bible admits to. So why the hesitation to answer what should
be a very easy question for a devoted Yahwehist to answer? If Yahweh
has no problem in sending multiplied billions of his sentient, beloved(?)

humans to his eternal hell, having had this knowledge before he created

the first human, why would a Yahwehist who looks to him as our example

to follow, have a problem with allowing only one child to come into the

world, knowing that child will wind up in hell?