I don't think many religious people really take it seriously. I can't recall knowing anyone who expressed real pain over the thought that a loved one may be suffering constant, unending torment for not finding god's favor. Even among fundamentalists (although some of them strike me as the type of people who would emotionally shut away anyone who didn't meet their own zealous standards). Be it a lake of fire and constant agony, or the concept of "separation from god" and whatever agony that instills, few people seem concerned about it. I think it's too incomprehensible for people to take seriously.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
