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Just a couple of thoughts here. I can't believe in a hell as a place of physical torture. My logic here is simple. Your spirit, soul, etc. is what would pass to hell. The soul is metaphysical or exists in the land of no-thingness, which means it has no mass. Ok, if a soul has no physical mass, how can it be physically tortured? You could burn a soul all you want, and you aren't going to hurt it. I believe the idea of hell would be spiritual torture, and they described this torture with the most painful thing they could imagine at the time, Fire.
I believe in reincarnation, cycles to reach enlightenment and finally union with God. Hence going to heaven. Hell, in my opinion, would be never reaching it.
After reading tiberry's post (excuse me, I am going to try to think this out), the explanation of what the word hell really meant in alot of cases pit, grave, etc. makes sense to me. I have always thought that "ghost" are souls that after detaching from the body, for some reason, did not leave our world. Eastern philosohies teach Non-Attachment as a catalyst for achieving enlightenment. If something causes a spirit to "attach" to our realm and not move on, this could be spiritually tormenting, hence a hell. I believe, with reincarnation, you basically keep doing it until you learned what you needed to become one with God, so logically being "attached" and not moving on would be the opposite of Heaven, hence Hell.
This is just my rant, and I will have to think about it further. But it does tend to make sense to me.
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