Gnu, I'd like to answer your question, but it is a bit too broad for me to answer without writing a tome. I believe that the reality of such things are based on point of view. I don't have the space or the time to answer your question in relation even to the points of view I am familiar with. Certainty a 74 year old Christian on his deathbed might see the concepts differently than a 17 year old entering a bus wearing a ball bearing bomb or a 33 year old Jewish Holy Man hanging from a Roman Cross.

I think everyone on this thread had equally valid things to say about Heaven and Hell, though Steve Shaw seems to have confused the concept of Heaven with that of pleasure and Hell with mild discomfort. But if you wanted his beliefs about those things you got it poetically and in spades. Steve seems to be a person who has intense feelings about mundane things and seems happy with that range of emotional experience. I see nothing wrong with that.

On the other hand I did have a "spiritual journey" that had me choose between religion and suicide. A friend of mine in the UK made the other choice. I do not know if he is in Hell now. But he surely was tormented by demons, so terrible I could barely imagine them, before he was found hanging in that closet in that hotel room in Scotland.

How much is Dante or any of our depictions of Hell metaphor for guilt, loneliness, terror or other mental torment? Maybe "Heaven" is simply relief for that, or simply, love, hope and clear thoughts. Is the real Heaven we are working for just all of us in a room with our brains constantly pumping endorphins? Is Hell a similar room where our brains experience nothing but fear and adrenaline? Certainly when we contemplate Heaven and Hell, thinking of how a society which did not have the psychological vocabulary we have today may have seen mental health is worth considering.