There's a growing movement to extinguish hell, or at least the traditional concept of hell. It’s called annihilationism. There are biblical arguments against annihilation. I don’t find annihilationism compelling, and think the biblical text indicates that, unfortunately, hell is eternal conscious torment. Let's set aside the biblical case for second so I can offer another argument against annihilationism, a philosophical argument.

It parallels our case for the pro-life position. We believe the unborn is an intrinsically valuable human being. Because the unborn child is a human being with inherent worth, we say that it's wrong to kill that being for some reason like quality of life. So, if a child is going to be born into poverty, we don’t say that gives us justification to kill the child. There's inherent worth and dignity in that child, and a low quality of life doesn't give us justification to kill the unborn child.

There's a parallel here with annihilationism, the view that God is going to extinguish the person who is unrighteous so they will go out of existence. They'll be gone forever. They will have no ontological status. Here is my philosophical argument against that view: If human beings are intrinsically valuable, we are made in the image of God, then someone's low-quality of existence being in eternal conscious torment in hell is not justification for God to extinguish their existence. I think this would be treating human beings as a means to an end rather than an end in themselves.

Human beings are intrinsically valuable, and therefore it doesn't seem consistent for God to extinguish them. God has dignified us with human freedom such that He respects our choices, and He respects the inherent worth we have as human beings. I don't think it’s justified to think that He would then extinguish human beings made in His image because of a low quality of existence. That would be one philosophical argument against the annihilationist position.