No, if God is just everyone would go to hell. If God is merciful then everyone gets a reprieve of some sort.

Disclaimer: I am religious, but I don't believe in this mythological place called Hell, nor the mythological individual called Satan/Shaitan/The Devil. That's all just superstitious, infantile misinterpretation of the Holy Bible.

I don't care if anyone is religious, spiritual, atheist, or otherwise.

Anyone who honestly thinks that they know the ONLY truth, and that others who don't share their views are "going to hell", need their fuckin' head checked.

I think there are good things about every religion. However the scriptures DO teach us that there can ONLY be ONE true church. One Lord One Faith One Baptism. Christ established a church on the earth when he was here. You can read that in Matthew. He called apostles and gave them authority to cast out devils. We can read all throughout the scriptures that this Authority was ONLY given through the Laying on of Hands (not through the scriptures or through the Holy Ghost) and that inorder to be saved or exalted a man must be baptized by someone holding that Authority.

SO it therefore remains for us to find out where the Authority lies. For only after proper baptism can we receive all the blessings of God. Now the hard question is where is the authority? And how can we know who has it?

I could of swore a key tenant of Lutherian theology was that god's forgiveness was extended to EVERYBODY, and not just the faithful.

Maybe i'm thinking of methodists?

Does it really seem likely that there is a god who will provide so little evidence to his true identity and religious code yet would condemn someone to an eternity of suffering for giving the wrong answer no matter how good of a life they try to lead?

And just to clarify I am an agnostic atheist.

I'm a Christian (non-catholic). I have a very strong disdain for the traditionalist, judgemental, hateful, "my-beliefs-are-better-than-yours" views of many Christians. There are things in Catholicism that differ from "Protestantism", some of which I personally disagree with; but, who am I to judge them? Disagree? Yes; condemn? Absolutely not. Besides, I could find probably just as many faults or things I disagree with in the Protestant church.

In the end, both of us believe in God, as well as Jesus. If anyone wishes to cast harsh judgements, they need to remind themself how imperfect they are.

I think throwing around the phrase "going to hell" is one of the major things that gives Christians their bad name. It sounds horribly judgemental and hateful. I wish I never had to hear it again; it makes me cringe. No one has any right to even pretend they can make such a judgement.

The one impression I got from the "some reason found on the internet"-part from the original posting was that this seems to have been written by someone who is deeply afraid of death & going to hell, and who thus needs to ensure himself that the spiritual ticket he bought for himself is not going to take him on the wrong train, the one with all the other misled souls going to hell.

I'm a catholic, at least on paper. And while I was born into a very catholic family and had to attend church every sunday for about 15 years and in my youth was even part of several church groups, I cannot remember that anyone ever taught any bizarre stuff like that written in the original posting.

For example, I cannot remember that anyone ever tried to convice me to actually believe heaven and hell as the reality of afterlife. Instead, I felt that the priests actually suggested that every human is ultimatively going to be worm-food anyway. There was a saying like "remember, human, that you are dust and will return to be dust again" that I remember rather well.

If it helps, you're free to believe that I am going to rot in hell. I rather believe that I am going to rot in the ground, and sooner or later you and everyone else is coming to join that rather boring party.

Already said that.  It was all about how it was translated.  Not sure why you are so defensive about it, just odd that I never heard that from any part of the Lutheran Church.

We were taught to say "Holy Catholic Church" (We used the Capital Catholic to mean the "First Church".  Others definitely use the lower case catholic (my grandparents church) to mean universal church )

"Also, if you are Christian - any Christian - you should believe that no group, even non-Christian goups, are doomed to hell. You should believe that any good person will have eternal life. If you don't, read the good Summaritan story."

This.  I was raised catholic.

"There's lots wrong with the Catholic church." 

This too, ha.