Well summarized. Some surprising-to-me data points I researched last night while working on a longer response to bad_user I decided not to post: 1) Apparently

Well summarized. Some surprising-to-me data points I researched last night while working on a longer response to bad_user I decided not to post: 1) Apparently (based on a couple of surveys) at least 25% of American Christians don't believe in hell at all. 2) Based on an admittedly quick survey, the four gospels seem to strongly emphasize the positive benefits of believing in Jesus. When they do speak of hell, like the Sermon on the Mount, it's all in terms of what will happen to you if you're not a good person: "Whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire." 3) The strongest phrase I was able to find in the gospels was "...but whoever does not believe [in Jesus] is condemned already..." In that context (John 3), it seems to "be condemned" is to not have eternal life -- and then it immediately softens it up three verses later with "But whoever does what is true comes to the light..." All in all, I found a lot less Biblical support for "If you don't believe in Jesus, you will go to hell" than I thought I was going to. Perhaps I just wasn't looking in the right places...