At Eternity spent apart from God is a modern definition of
Hell in some protestant groups: Hell is not a place of
eternal torture, but simply a total lack of
God and all that he stands for. If you believe that
people are innately evil, and that
all good comes from God, then the worst place to be would be away from God!
I heard this story describing hell at a church:
Imagine a room of people seated around a table full of the most wonderful food imaginable. Everyone is dying of hunger, so they try to eat. But, the only utensil they have are 6 foot long
spoons, so can't manage to get anything into their mouth. This goes on forever, and that's hell - being tempted by wonderful food but never being able to get it.
Heaven, in contrast, is the same situation, except the people there are feeding each other.
The point is that the concept of
hell has changed from a burning wastland of torture into something slightly more acceptable to modern views - not
torture explicitly, but it works out the same way, because life is innately torture without
God.