is it there or not?

This is supremely illuminating about the public's way of thinking. People have spent extended periods of time debating how and why there is a Christianity without Hell, only to abruptly shift to the opinion that a specific "truly awful" dead person must be in Hell.

Arguments about the very existence of something cannot be murky or half-resolved. The answer is "yes" or "no", "aye" or "nay", "true" or "false", "reality" or "fantasy", "fiction" or "nonfiction". There can certainly be discussion about the precise nature and characteristics of the disputed thing, but those are separate prior questions.

I could assert or retract innumerable rhetorical claims about the absence of my hairbrush. But the fact is that it's sitting right over there in another room, with volume and mass quite independent of my imaginings to the contrary. I could do the same about the presence of my rowboat in my backyard. But the fact is that no rowboat is in my backyard.

Hell is the same way. People can think and say whatever they like, but if they constantly contradict their own statements, it's difficult to figure out how their beliefs, ill-defined guesses that shift around like the tide, could ever be confirmed or violated. If someone isn't taking a position either way, or taking opposite positions simultaneously, it's more honest to just express one's total lack of clarity than to give away one's lack of intellectual commitment by spewing out half-considered sentiments on a deeply important topic.