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I hate the idea of a hell that is a physical place where you are sent to be physically tortured after failing to follow strict rules set by the religion, regardless of your ethical life outside the Church. This seems mostly to be a mechanism for social control that can be expolited by dishonest church leaders.
I prefer the idea of hell as a state of mind; where you are forced to actively and honestly engage with the ethical system on which your life was based.
I find Dante's first circle of hell interesting; there lives the philosophers from the Clasical tradition and other virtuous figures (Virgil, Homer, Euclid, Seneca, Orpheus, Hippocrates, Saladin, etc), whose only sin was to live a life without Baptism or Christianity.
In the first circle is a stately castle of seven walls, possibly representing the liberal virtues of prudence, justice, fortitude, temperance, wisdom, knowledge and understanding.
On one occasion, God offered a kind of "amnesty" to various unbaptized denizens of the first circle (Noah, David, Abraham, Israel, Rachel, Abel, Moses), made them blessed and brought them to Heaven.
The only punishment in the first circle is the pain of living in the knowledge and desire to see God but without the hope of ever seeing God.
No maggots, bees, flames, ice, lava or any of that other nonsense in the first circle.
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