What I see a lot of these days is that people want to water down the nasty parts of the bible, the parts that show that god is an abusive tyrant.
Now, apparently, if you reject the christian god, you just end up on your own, looking at the alternative of spending eternity with this tyrant, being alone seems like a very pleasant outcome.
This is the watered down version of hell, but it only works as a threat if the person is afraid of being alone.
lol, its all just conjecture anyway, the rules and punishments only apply to those that believe in this god anyway, and those rules and punishments are provided by themselves to themsleves, based on their own belief system.