On Sept 24 2023, my mother, an infernalist, says growing up she didn’t have birthdays, that they weren’t celebrated since they were poor. She didn’t even remember it was her birthdate. She says she wouldn’t really complain about it.

I love her, so hearing this fills me with grief. Yet, under infernalism, why do we celebrate birthdays? Why rejoice when a person is born? Because when they enter that infernal world, there is a nonzero possibility that they will be tortured forever. Antinatalism then becomes a way of life, where a negative value is assigned to birth. As long as even one person is tortured forever, that negative value will continue to exist.

\`\`\`Genesis 1:28 NRSVue God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.” \`\`\`

Yet, of course we know that giving birth to children is not inherently sinful. Otherwise why would God have promoted our reproduction, give us the ability to multiply Strong’s 7235: וּרְב֛וּ (ū·rə·ḇū) as a species God must have assigned a positive value to birth because otherwise, why would He have created us in the first place?

Therefore, I remain confident that Christian Universalism must be true. That all shall believe in Jesus and be permanently saved. That Jesus’ birth was of positive value, even though He died, even though He was buried, because He resurrected bodily 3 days later. His suffering. And I rest assured knowing that I will be able to provide my mother with the birthday parties that she never had in Heaven.