Comfort is a good word. Did you ever look at religion as a parent figure? It has it all: rewards for doing good, punishments for doing bad, the father figure who's always around, absolute guarantees and truth (read: security). Religion and God give you everything.

(For the record, I should probably also say that I'm agnostic, despite my efforts.)

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I also don't think writing materials were all that common 2000 years ago. Nor was the ability to write.

Now this is just my opinion... But Hell seems like a very good scare tactic to make people do what you want them to do. That may have come out wrong, let me explain myself a bit.

I have been told that God loves all his children (I also heard this from a priest) so why would he send anyone to Hell? Especially since you can be a perfectly good person and you get sent to an eternity of suffering and damnation just because you didn't believe in Him/believed in the wrong Him/were born before there even was a Him?

I'm not starting anything, I'm saying this from a "God exists" perspective and am only curious on what you Christians think about Hell. (for example, Neil doesn't believe in a Hell, which to me is more logical than there being one)

The books of the New Testament were written between somewhere around the late 30s AD to the 90s AD (these are the earliest and latest reasonable dates, respectively, that I've heard of). The earliest Gospel was either Matthew or Mark (I can't remember off the top of my head, although your link says Mark) which was probably written in the early 50s. The Gospels are Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, by the way. They are not the entire New Testament. Although the New Testament may be referred to as "the Gospel" since gospel simply means "good news". Many of the letters predate the Gospels, some of them possibly even by a decade or more.

Your link's information seems to be a little out of date. It puts the earliest letters at 48 AD, much too late. And it puts the Gospel of John at 85 AD when it was more likely written in the 90s.

With those dates, why should we assume it wasn't the original guys that wrote them? Jesus began his ministry around 30 AD. If the men he picked as apostles were fairly young (say, 20ish), then they would only be 40 in the year 50 AD. Of course, this would make John 80 when the Gospel of John was written, which is ancient but not impossible. Or the Gospel of John could have been written by someone younger who was close to John.

They had scribes. Paul was pretty open about the fact that he used scribes to write his letters (Paul could write, but he had poor eyesight which made writing difficult for him). If one of the men who personally knew the guy you've founded your religion on wants to write something down, you'd probably be willing to go fetch someone that can write.

Ack, giant block of text is giant. But I love this subject. It's so fascinating.

EDIT:

Saw this after I posted:

I've heard many ideas of what hell is. From the fire-and-brimstone eternity of torture, to a place that only demons go to, to a mere separation from God, to hell doesn't exist in any of those ways. Personally, I'm just not sure at this point. And I really don't much care. As much as people like to call hell a good scare tactic, I've never really been concerned about it.

EDIT 2:

Which is why finding early copies is always so fantastic. Also, there are methods of deriving an accurate picture of the original text by looking at numerous variations from different areas, but early copies is still the best way.

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Pretty much how I feel about the scientific method...

What if it's that sort of attitude that has led the world to become what it has become?

When specifically did I give you the impression that I thought you were?

Stop feeding him!

Odd criteria, but hey, man makes God in his own image, amirite?

That's because the willful leader gets them to do whatever he wants. If the leader was equally brain dead, they wouldn't be any worse than stamp collectors.

"Gone" is in the past tense, implying it has already happened. The good dead Christians have to wait for the Rapture or Second Coming or something.

She's threatening to tattle to your mom?

Well, a "good" Christian would respond with "it depends on if they were a believer."

But regarding that verse, the context is clearly that no man is qualified to speak about heaven because they've never been there. Jesus' point had nothing to do with whether or not a dead man had ever been in "heaven" (whatever that is).

It's not good to build doctrines based on comments made in passing, particularly considering it was a one-on-one conversation with somebody. Jesus quite possibly was even speaking from that man's perspective.

People do that a lot with the Bible. I don't really think it says as much as people try to read into it.