Alex O'Connor on The problem of hell
O'Connor treats the problem of hell as the sharpest version of the problem of evil and one of Christianity's most difficult doctrines to defend.
Alex O'Connor has argued in multiple videos and debates that the problem of hell is, in effect, the problem of evil on steroids. If theodicies for earthly suffering rest on the idea that suffering serves some greater good — character formation, free will, soul-making — then eternal conscious torment is uniquely resistant to those theodicies, because by definition the damned undergo no growth, make no further choices, and bring about no greater good.
He has been particularly careful in conversations with Christian philosophers and apologists to distinguish the different models on offer. The retributive model, on which the damned suffer because they deserve to, collides with proportionality; the separation model, on which the damned choose to be apart from God, collides with the infinity of the choice; the annihilationist model rescues God's character at the cost of departing from the majority tradition. O'Connor argues that each escape route carries a serious cost, and that most believers do not realise how much they concede by taking them.
O'Connor has also pointed out the evidential asymmetry of the doctrine. Belief in hell motivates evangelism, shapes political behaviour, and produces measurable psychological harm; yet the evidence for hell is significantly thinner than the evidence for God. He treats the willingness to act decisively on such thin evidence as itself a marker of the epistemic unhealthiness of the doctrine.
“The problem of hell is the problem of evil with the volume turned up. All the usual theodicies stop working the moment the suffering becomes eternal and serves no further purpose.”