American’s belief in Heaven and Hell

A few days ago I wrote about a Gallup poll which asked about the American peoples' belief in the theory of evolution. On today's daily briefing yet another interesting poll was presented. This time Gallup had asked whether people believe in God as well as other deities. Depending on how the question was phrased 86-76% of the American people say that they believe in God (you get the lower figure if you distinguish between God and "A universal spirit".

A perhaps more interesting result appeared when people were asked whether they believe in God, Heaven, Angles, the Devil, and Hell. You can see the results of this question in the figure above. Apparently, more people believe in Heaven than in Hell. I would like to ask any Christians out there how this result can be explained. If good people go to Heaven when they die, shouldn't bad people (or atheists like my self) logically go to hell? How can you believe in one and not the other? Don't get me wrong though, I think it is good that people pick the nicer parts of religion, it just seems odd.

Another question that I ask myself is what people think hell is like? Do they really believe in a hell where the devil is forever tormenting you (like in south park), or is it something of a more metaphysical nature? Do they believe in it just as an abstraction (whatever that means)? It is probably superfluous of me to state my opinion here, but I will do so anyway. I think that the idea of hell is extremely unlikely and really quite ridiculous. Enough so that I am never afraid of what is going to happen to me after I die. But if any of you hell believers out there are right, I guess it will please you to know that my afterlife will consist of eternal torture…