If those who die as infants go to Heaven, why doesn't God kill everyone in infancy in order to maximize the number of those in Heaven?

The question has a cold logic to it, which is why it deserves a real answer rather than a shrug: if heaven is infinitely good and infants go there, why would a good God not send them sooner? Because the question smuggles in a view of persons that Scripture rejects.

1. It treats people as means, not ends. Human beings are made in God's image (Genesis 1:27), which means they are never raw material for a total. The argument's structure is utilitarian: kill some to raise the number of saved. That is exactly the reasoning Scripture forbids, and it is the reasoning the objection is quietly using.

2. It assumes God maximizes states of affairs. The objection imports a consequentialist ethic in which right action means the best aggregate outcome. The biblical description is different: God is faithful, just, merciful, and true to his word. Those are claims about character, not about totals, and a being of that character does not murder to improve a statistic.

3. God forbids murder without exception. 'You shall not murder' (Exodus 20:13) is not a rule God may suspend when the arithmetic looks favorable. James says God cannot be tempted with evil and tempts no one (James 1:13), and Habakkuk describes eyes too pure to look at wrong. Whatever God permits, he does not do the thing the objection proposes.

4. God says he takes no pleasure in death. 'I have no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Lord GOD; so turn, and live' (Ezekiel 18:32). A God who pleads with people to repent is the opposite of the child-killer the objection imagines. The emotional force of the question depends on a picture of God that the text itself rejects.

5. Heaven is a gift, not a quota. 'By grace you have been saved through faith... it is the gift of God' (Ephesians 2:8-9). A gift can be given but not confiscated into existence; salvation received by force is not salvation. The objection treats heaven as a quantity to be maximized, which turns persons into units and grace into logistics.

6. Earthly life is not a waiting room. On the Christian view, this life is the arena of love, moral formation, and knowing God, and the resurrection of the body says the created order is destined for renewal rather than disposal. To treat life as worthless except as a ticket to heaven is to deny the goodness of creation, which is the first thing Genesis says about it.

7. The principle destroys the standard used against God. If killing the innocent to secure a better outcome is good, then every atrocity with a sufficiently good goal becomes good, and the moral outrage that powers the objection evaporates. The argument borrows an absolute prohibition on murder and then dissolves it. It cannot be used to judge God by a standard it has just abolished.

8. It also assumes certainty about the outcome. Scripture gives hope for those who die before accountability, not a mechanism with a chapter and verse. David grieves his dead child with 'I shall go to him' (2 Samuel 12:23), and Jesus welcomes children as belonging to the kingdom (Matthew 19:14). If you do not know that every infant is saved, the calculation never gets off the ground.

9. Christians genuinely differ on the mechanism. Some hold that covenant children are covered, some appeal to an age of accountability, some simply commend the matter to God's mercy without a rule. The hope is ancient and widespread; the explanation is not uniform. Honesty requires admitting that the objection is aimed at a doctrine with more than one form.

10. God's answer to innocent death is the cross. He does not stand at a distance from the slaughter of the innocent; he enters it, the righteous dying for the unrighteous (1 Peter 3:18). Whatever else that is, it is not the posture of a deity calculating which children to harvest.

The objection is a reductio of a cartoon: a God who runs the world by maximizing a headcount. The God of the Bible does not govern that way, which is why a clever question does not actually land on him.

Sources: Paul Copan, Is God a Moral Monster?; William Lane Craig; Norman Geisler, Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics.

Related challenges:
• My Grandma was a sincerely nice person who happened to NOT be a Christian. Let me get this right...your "all-loving" God is going to punish her in hell for eternity because she didn't "accept" Jesus?
• Can God make a rock so heavy that even HE can't lift it?
• Is it fair that a North Korean woman who never heard 'boo' about Jesus, let alone the Gospel, is going to burn in hell for eternity because she didn't choose the right set of parents, geographically?