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Metaphor

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Hell is out of character with an All-Loving God. I guess that puts me on the metaphor side.

It is the "Omni" things of God that cause problems: all-loving, present, powerful, etc, etc. The problem comes with reconciling justice and mercy. If no one goes to Hell, some argue, then justice is not served, and God is just. If one person goes to Hell, the God's infinite mercy is not present.

It's a thorny question and really, we cannot comprehend how to balance the two, and because of our religious upbringing have been taught one or another thing and believe what we have been taught to be true. Religion is really an attempt to understand God and our relationship with God and to fully do so, we would have to fully understand God. This is categorically impossible because God is vastly superior to anything we can comprehend. So we muddle through and decide what we decide.

In my opinion, our differences in opinion will not upset God nearly as much as they upset us.

Now that you have read my opinion, a little more information.

How do different religions describe Hell, if at all?

Before an iteration of the beliefs about Hell, an anecdote: When I was kid, we lived in Alaska for a few years. There were missionaries in our church trying to convert the Inuit to Christianity. When they described Hell as a place of fire and brimstone, the Inuit wanted to go because fire is warm. In order for them to get the concept across, they had to change the description of Hell as a place of eternally impossibly cold place.

We get most of our images and beliefs about the nature of Hell from the world of art: literature and paintings. Dante Alighieri's The Divine Comedy, John Milton's Paradise Lost, may be the best known.

Christian Hell, like many Christian beliefs are derived from those of Judaism. At the time of Christ, not all Jews believed there was a life after death. For those who did so believe, all dead people went to Gehenna. This word was translated as "Hell" when it came into the King James Bible. The Apostle's Creed states "He descended into hell. The third day He arose again from the dead." This concept was not the Christian view of Hell originally, but the common place of the dead, where all awaited resurrection.

Translation from one language to another is problematic, across cultures may be almost impossible (the Inuit-Missionary anecdote from above).

Now a very incomplete summary of beliefs:

The Bah' Faith describes Hell as

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