Below Porceleindoll asked a question that drives to the heart of the matter: if there is no hell to be saved from then do people need Jesus to save them? The answer would have to be no, and if you don't think Jesus died to save you, then if you still have some kind of faith in him, it would be more downgraded to a good moral teacher who taught the sermon on the mount, but who is not any better and no different from Confucious, Buddha or Bahullah.
Someone can quote the reference if they know it but the Bible says that hell was not originally created for people but for rebellious angels who turned into demons. However it started out, this place of punishment ended up being opened for human occupation too. So if there's no hell, then there are no demons either, at least that's the simple way of doing the math here.
Many people interpret hell as a place of unending torment. Some think it's only for a time till the damned learn their lessons. Others think it's really not such a bad place, more like just the low-rent suburbs of heaven where the unsaved live out of fellowship with God for eternity -- which some athiests would be just fine with.
The Jews originally did not believe in a heaven and hell. They thought that the dead simply descended into the grave and were gone, period. Later they believed that the most that happened was that they lived some kind of dim half-life as shadows forever. The ancient Sumerians took it a step further saying that they ate dust for eternity.
But by the time Jesus came along, the Jews had a very developed theology about heaven and hell. Josephus talks about Gehenna and 'Abraham's bosom' and the unrighteous dead living on the edge of a great lake of fire, already feeling the heat and waiting the final order to get thrown in. So Jesus did not invent the concept of heaven and hell, but when he came, he definitely did talk about hell as a real place and said people needed to avoid going there, and he said he was the Way the Truth and the Life.
Talking about hell is not a popular topic but it seems to be at the core of the Christian message. Any thoughts?