Hell is also referred to as "sheol" (Hebrew word) in a number of places in the Bible. Sheol simply means "the grave".

People decide for themselves whether the various descriptions of hell in various Bible passages should be interpreted literally or metaphorically. I doubt that most of them were intended literally, and I also think that unless you can place yourself in the mindset of the social culture at the time the biblical passages were written, you will very often be misled as to the meaning of the words used.

We use common language now in all kinds of ways which someone 2,000 years from now would be very much misled by, and it has always been so.

So, a study of ancient writings in any tradition needs to be accompanied also by a study of that ancient culture and the common ideas of the time if one is to understand what one is reading.

Rob Naylor - Way up there in the posts you said something quite interesting: "If you were always in the same blissful state of joyful consciousness, how would you *know* that this was a "good" state unless you'd also had a taste of unhappiness or despair to calibrate against?"

Good point. We do gain perspective and understanding from experiencing all the various ups and downs in life...just as we develop character by encountering difficulties, and grow strong overcoming adversity. We (hopefully) gain compassion for others through experiencing pain ourselves. We appreciate plenty by experiencing scarcity. All of this is very useful on the path of evolution, the path of maturing, the path of gaining wisdom.

This can make a pretty good argument for why God wouldn't just swoop down one day and make everything perfect, doesn't it? If He/She/It did, we'd be deprived of the opportunity to find our own wings, deprived of the chance to learn through experience, deprived of the chance to reach our true potential through using our mental and moral muscles.

If you do that for a child...simply remove every obstacle and provide a surfeit of every desirable circumstance...what happens? The child gets spoiled, bored, and does not mature. Challenges are good. Without them, how would we learn to become our own best selves?