35 Pages Posted: 20 Feb 2015

Date Written: February 1, 2009

Abstract

Christians typically view it as morally good for married persons to have children, although some believe that there are limits to how many children it is good to have. In this essay, I wish to argue from the standpoint of ordinary moral intuitions that if Christian exclusivism and the traditional doctrine of hell are true, then this view is mistaken. In particular, I argue that it is morally wrong, given these traditional Christian doctrines, to bring a child in the world when the odds that he or she will spend an eternal afterlife suffering the torments of hell are as significantly high as they would be if these two doctrines are true.