Well, maybe it is that.  Fires do consume, and it is presumptive to believe that humans can be immortal on their own without help (and if Hell is something that is separation from God, then how does the mortal being remain sustained?).  The need for Hell to be a place of suffering forever comes out of Western Christian thought and what is seen as "just".  Beyond that though, I think there is a need to go through cognitively what is here.   God has every right to do any with He likes (I use He there, because we are talking Christian context here), because all belongs to God.  If it be suffering, or whatever, that is what it is.  One doesn't even have to know or understand this, it either is or is not.

By the way, not minding non-existence is worth pondering over.  Make the not-existing a reality in your mind and make it personal.  I am not sure that it is an "I wouldn't mind".  It might be preferable to suffering forever, but I don't really see it as an "I wouldn't mind" state either.

"God has every right to do any with He likes (I use He there, because we are talking Christian context here), because all belongs to God.  If it be suffering, or whatever, that is what it is.  One doesn't even have to know or understand this, it either is or is not."

And that is one my major issues with Christianity. As Hitchens would put it, its a celestial dictatorship of both the mind and the body. It makes sense in a way, that seperation from God could mean non-existence, and that as I said is no-where near as bad as eternal suffering in hellfire in the way some more malicious theologians have described it.

Of course I wont mind actually isn't an apt description because if one ceases to exist they wont have a mind any longer.

My other issue with religion is, that depending on where you were born you generally are born into another theology and since so many cultures are dominated by one theology it is in many ways difficult to say which one is and isn't right (or if any of them are) because if say an American Christian was instead born in India they'd be arguing that Hinduism is the proper faith etc.

EDIT, feel free to disregard my later paragraphs as I see I inadvertaintly went away from discussing Christianity as the OP wanted. I do no wish to derail this thread and make it just another atheism vs theism thread.

But ... this doesn't mesh at all with your earlier post: 

- Who says it was all or even mostly due to this one line?  Totally baseless claim that you now seem to be abandoning. 

- In your diatribe about religion being ostracized, and science being considered sacred and holy, its practitioners being "high priests", you depicted a much more systematic and severe situation than people mocking people they disagree with.  This amounts, in fact, to a complete change in your position, unless you were utterly misrepresenting your opinion earlier. 

- You also do not even attempt to defend your assertions that either alleged repression of religion, or people mocking other people, are the cause of widespread depression, drug abuse, neglectful government bureaucracy, etc. etc.  Not that it was defensible...

I find it really funny that some people are so misguided they take little snipits from verses to try and prove God is evil or that the Bible is false. I also find it funny that people think God had no right to kill off what he considered evil and give Israel things. Or punish kings and the Jews themselves when they slipped up.

Think of the earth as a little child. That child craps on your food and tells you to eat shit and go straight to hell. Do you put up with that or do you punish the child?

Why is it wrong for God to punish the child when you yourself would punish the child. Just because God loves everyone on earth doesn't mean we are free to do anything we please.

Think of it a second. If you created a universe and a planet then created intelligent life. You expect that intelligent life to serve you or at least respect your rules. Like your dog you expect your dog to go for a dump outside if the dog goes inside you rub his nose in it and punish him.You would also favour the creations who abided by your rules and who treated you well while you would disfavour the ingrates who mocked your laws and were plain ingrateful.

Fact is God is perfectly justified in doing what ever the heck he wants, no he did not directly contradict himself. He is God he created you and everything around you where do you get the balls to say "God you should behave this way because we think your laws are bad and well we think your unfair".

We are God's children and like our children when they misbehave they must be punished or set straight. If you never teach your child or punish them how would they ever do anything good? We are God's children and when we sin if God chooses to punish us it is his God given wait a sec thats sorta funny. He has every right to do as he pleases to any of us!

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Many people who were in many cases born in countries dominated by one theology all persist that theirs is the right theology over others. Add on top of that, all of the dead theologies that had people that thought just the same way in their time (and yet people laugh off thor for example now). Many theologies also existed long before monotheism (just being in the spirit of this thread) aswell.

I ask the question of religious people in this thread (who happen to be mainly Christian because thats what this thread is about), how do you reconcile that different cultures both dead and existing in many cases have/had different dominant religions and all of them think/thought that theirs is the correct faith at the time. I found that very difficult to reconcile intellectually when I was a Christian.

Of course I'd assume that faith, is the answer. But seemingly every different theist from every theology has just as much faith as the next and they all claim to have personal experiences with their God/Gods.

Does this huge number of active and dead religions weigh heavily on any of the Christians in this thread?

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Very good post.

The early history of Christianity is miraculous in itself and testifies of its divine origin.