If Not Hell then what?

[Ryantology]

I think a better way of phrasing the question is, why does God, supposedly capable of any feat imaginable or not, need to resort to a tactic as primitive, barbaric, and utterly human as threatening people with Hell to get them to obey? It would seriously call into question God's abilities, because it suggests very strongly that God lacks the imagination necessary to create something as amazing as the universe in which we live.

To best answer the question, though, I imagine that I have God's power and knowledge. For all my vinegar when I dispute someone, I'm actually a pretty nice guy and I don't enjoy mistreating people. If I had the power to create sentient living beings, it would be absolutely beneath me to torture them. If taking care of those beings required no real effort on my part, it would be beneath me to neglect them. I would never create a series of laws I knew, in advance, they could not live up to, and I would be immoral to punish them accordingly. I could never find it in myself to punish the misdeeds of individuals by killing everybody around them indiscriminately.

Put it short, I would make a better God than what the Christians worship. If people worshiped me, it would be because they thought I was good. according to their own standards, not because I declare myself to be good. If people wanted to know I was there, I would make it indisputably obvious. If I have the ability to demonstrate my own reality, I would not demand faith. When I ask people to have faith in me, it is because I am making a claim I am incapable of demonstrating on the spot. If I was omnicapable, faith would be a worthless thing if I wanted people to believe in me and give a shit about me. It would also be worthless if I didn't care whether people believed in me. But, I would never demand that people accept me, and my promises, on faith if I had the ability to prove myself immediately. The fact that Christians rely on faith in a being which does not require it is a powerful reason to disregard its claims.

You see, the reason that atheists can't believe what Christians believe can be summarized very simply: we have higher standards. We believe that an all-powerful being should be held to the highest possible standards and should satisfy the strongest scrutiny. Christians settle for much less than that, because wishful thinking is a powerful urge to overcome and a lot of people just can't.

I got off track some, and I apologize. Hell was invented to supplement pointy objects as a tool to get people to accept the infinite love of Jesus Christ. A truly omnipotent, omniscient and loving God could not possibly have a use for such a concept.