If someone is going to be religious for the sole purpose of escaping Hell as a fate, then they totally fail the point of religion.
However it also works the other way around. Being religious has many emotional benefits that are potentially attractive to many people. "I don't believe in Hell" or "I don't like taking responsibility for my future" probably isn't much of a buffer from making people want to enter religion, considering these benefits. What makes more sense to me is that many people simply aren't interested in these benefits, or they fulfill these benefits with other means in their lives.
I hope this was an appropriate contribution to the OP question.
I am not at all anti-Christian but one of my main problems with the religion is its approach to consequences and the after-life. It really bothers me that heaven and hell are used as carrot and stick ethics. Christianity doesn't encourage people to do the right thing
because it is right, instead it exploits the fears and selfishness of human beings to twist their arms into behaving morally. It is also an attempt to place Church doctrine above the conscience of the individual, if not teaching people to ignore their conscience altogether. It glosses over and clouds the real issues at the heart of any moral matter, simply reducing things down to: "Don't do that because you will go to hell". To me this is like saying, "Don't kill people because you will go to jail", all the while missing the actual point that killing itself is wrong.
Not all Christian faiths are as bad as others in this regard but there's often a strong emphasis on the word 'sin'. And 'sin' is often implies "something that's wrong because we tell you it is", which of course is encouraging moral ignorance. The Church should be a moral guide, assisting you in learning what is right and how to act righteously, instead of simply bullying you into it.
The utter irony of this is that the carrot stick method of trying to do good to escape Hell is all-out "
works righteousness", which is
precisely what the same evangelical/fundamentalist movement preaches against, because Paul makes it clear that we cannot be saved by works. Some of them will even say if you are only behaving or believing in fear to escape Hell, you will still go there!
I until recently was of the evangelical persuasion, but there were so many problems and unanswered question regarding what God is really doing in the world today.
Basically, the New Testament describes
Law (which is what condemned man, and was represented by the Temple, where sacrifice was made for sin) and
Grace (where "God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself,
not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation". 2Cor 5:19).
The problem arises, because the New Testament also seems to put a
condition on this "grace". You've all heard it: "
Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved" (Acts 16:31). And the NT also preaches good behavior, to overcome those sins that put Christ on the Cross, and that grace is not "license".
All of this of course raises the question of what of those who have never even heard; what if you're not really convinced, why only one way, and we have to say all other religions are wrong and try to convert everyone, etc.
It has also raised a lot of confusion within the believing community, with the apparent contradiction between "grace", and the continued emphasis on doing good works, persevering vs "falling away", God's judgment on sin, and especially a
future judgment. So you have Baptists, who hold "Once Saved Always Saved", and the other groups insist you can "fall away". OSAS holds that having to persevere with works would compromise Faith/Grace Alone, and the anti-OSAS will come back with the scriptures on falling away, and the OSAS camp will explain them away.
Some argue that the spirit "changes" you and makes you do the good works. That's one way to reseolve the contradiction. You
are basically saved by good works, but it's God who does the works in you, so it is still Him, not you. From this, you get into "perfectionism", where if a person is sinning too much, people will judge that they must not really have received Christ and the Spirit, so are not really saved. Then, you have a paradoxical statement "not by [works], but not without". And on and on it goes.
And then, other groups, such as Catholics and various "sects" (Church of Christ, sabbathkeepers, Jehovah's Witnesses, etc) who insist that works
are necessary for salvation. And it is the Baptists themselves who have often preached against sin with an emphasis on hellfire, as if
in practice, sin vs good works
is what makes the difference between Heaven and Hell.
What seems to be the problem is that in the New Testament, the two covenants of Law and Grace were actually
overlapping. Christ came and paid for sins, but man still defaulted to being under the Law (and thus, its condemnation), and each person had to choose one to be freed from the other. This would only last until the temple was destroyed, in AD70. so we have a whole bunch of prophecies speaking of "the end" coming "
soon", in a time when
some of the people there would still be alive!
Because the Church after that time did not understand this, they futurized it, and "soon" eventually stretched into 2000 years and counting, and of course, the Church often manipulated this to scare people into obedience. So you would both be "judged" in this world by being "left behind" when all the end time terror begins, and still have to face an eternity in Hell.
And thus we are left with all of these contradictions, and unanswered questions, and a supposed "good news" that is more bad than anything else, and an institution that continues to live large from it all, even as they complain about the larger world revolting against them.
I'm going out on a limb adopting a radical idea like this (that "the end" was the end of the Old Covenent in AD70, and that
unconditional grace spread afterwards). I'm still trying to explain it to my wife (have to put together an outline on it today, all preious attempts were basically tl;dr); people will say "oh, you're leading everyone down to Hell by not scaring them away from it" (they won't put it this way, of course!), though it obviously isn't scaring anyone who doesn't already believe in it; is it?
But this is the only position that can explain why both works and grace would be taught and coexist simultaneously and not contradict each other, and it is also the only possible thing that can explain how an "end" would come "soon" 2000 years ago, and it is the only thing that can be truly "good news".
Of course, when tradition and control are at stake, things making sense is often discouraged. It's supposed to not make sense. But while that will sway some to just follow without question; it will also lead the majority to revolt, and you ultimately lose all the power you had, as many leaders complain when they try to get God into schools and public places and such.
Nicely said. This is what I meant but failed to explain. 
