Hell Is Symptomatic Of Mental Illness

I am greatly disturbed by the prospect of an eternal hell. Indeed, I have no wish to visit such a place, if it did in fact exist. Such a proposition does not sound terribly welcoming, what with all the fire and brimstone and sodomic demons with pitchforks.

However, I think it is a suspicious notion, especially one used in the context of God. Let's recap the assumptions: God is good and merciful, judgmental, perfect and all-knowing. Also bears rank of supreme creator. Sounds good so far. So that means, by creating humans, there was full knowledge of what'd become of them. Ergo, it's probably a given that some of God's creations will wind up in an eternal hell. Nasty.

But wait...there is a contradiction somewhere. If God were indeed good and merciful, nobody would end up in hell for eternity, because even those who fall short of acceptable standards of goodness would be forgiven eventually. But if it were eternal, it's very much akin to creating something knowing that the creation will not be very good at all, then repeatedly damaging the creation in sheer angst. That...does not sound very much like a perfect God. In fact, it implies that God is grossly inefficient, sadistic, insane, or a combination of the three. Why...that's blasphemy!

Being quite unwilling to be a blasphemer, I would have to choose between disbelieving in God, and disbelieving in an eternal hell. Now, both can be quite incredible, but I think the latter is by far more incredible. If I had to choose between the two, I'd say that an eternal hell simply does not exist, given the assumptions people make about God.