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I believe that hell is a logically possible state, but that we don’t know that it is realized for any human being in eternity. Despite your quotation of Scriptures and the sayings of Jesus, the Catholic Church, of which I’m a member, holds that it is not possible to say during this life with any certainty that any human being is in hell or will be in hell. So it is eminently possible for a Catholic Christian to read the same Scriptures and interpret them not as predictions, but as parables.
The theist says that the notion of a ‘rational being’, all of whose states and actions are controlled by a cause external to itself, is a contradiction in terms. So if it's a good thing at all to create rational beings, then it's logically required that at least some of their actions and states not be controlled by a cause external to themselves. Rational beings have to have some moral autonomy. This logically implies the possibility of moral evil being done by rational agents.
A morally autonomous being might want to engage in torture, genocide, and so forth. Now, what is that desire, in its moral essence? It is the basic rejection of moral goodness, and especially the rejection of love. If realized, it produces 'hell on earth'. It is the satanic impulse to hate what is good, to destroy life and beauty and replace it with death and horrific ugliness. It is sin in all its hideous malice.
Now this is the crux of the debate, I think. The ethical monotheist says that it's logically impossible for God to prevent rational creatures from fundamentally rejecting God if the point of creating rational creatures is to give them the opportunity to love God. That's the key to this whole thing, imo. Why? (NB: Like most theists, I define omnipotence as the power to do what is logically possible to do.)
Because if a rational creature is systematically prevented from rejecting God, then the relationship of that rational creature to God could not be one of love. Consider the concepts of God, heaven, goodness, love, truth, beauty, etc---the intrinsic nature of these things is such that, if rational beings are to attain or enjoy them authentically, and not some ersatz or virtual reality versions of them, then they have to be freely pursued and freely chosen by rational creatures . A being with an autonomous spiritual nature (a free will and intellect) by definition can only love God (and thus choose things like goodness, love, truth, beauty, heaven, etc) if it is free to fundamentally reject God (and hence, goodness, love, truth, beauty, heaven, etc). Hell, therefore, must be a spiritual possibility, because if it's not, then no creature is truly an autonomous rational moral and spiritual being. So 'hell on earth' must be a possibility too. And if we are truly free to reject God, then this must always be the case. If we are not capable of autonomously rejecting God forever, then we are not capable of autonomously accepting God forever.
What is God? I've suggested that we should think of God as unlimited, transcendent, self-subsistent Reason and Goodness—hence, Reason and Goodness are ontologically and explanatorily ultimate realities, whose presence is detectable by creatures like ourselves who are designed to be able to detect reason and goodness. The mystery of being is ‘solved’ by the fact that transcendent Reason and Goodness understands and wills itself, both in Itself, and in creation.
We often detect this by contemplating situations where reason and goodness have been grossly violated---Auschwitz, Fallujah, Rwanda, etc. We see what unreason and ungoodness looks like, and we instinctively know that this is not the way things were meant to be. God shows us how horrible rejecting reason and goodness is---that is, he shows how horrible rejecting God is---that is, he shows us how horrible sin is. He has given us a knowledge of good and evil, because the capacity to have knowledge of good and evil is what defines us as rational beings, capable of love. This knowledge is something that non-rational beings cannot have.
But having that knowledge, and being autonomous, means that we can create hell for ourselves and others. To be genuinely autonomous and genuinely rational agents, we must be able not only to have hellish desires, but to act on them and bring them about to some significant degree.
Hell has to be possible in order for knowledge and love of God to be possible. For knowledge and love of God are only possible for beings who can choose to alienate themselves from that knowledge and decide not to love God. In earthly terms, that expresses itself as the moral horrors we're sadly all too familiar with. But hell's possibility, in one form or another, is implied in the creation of autonomous rational beings--a rational being can lie and hate and attempt to destroy everything good. But God puts a limit on how much of that can go on. This limit is called death, and it's often seen as the divine 'punishment'. But it is actually just a loving response to sin. God says, "Ok, you want to sin? You want to inflict pain and misery? I want you to be capable of love, so I have to make you autonomous. But not infinitely so. You've got about 70-80 years or so to do your worst, if that's what you choose to do. But that's it. No more evil-doing to others for you after you die, though you'll still be free to reject Me."
Christianity goes a bit further than Judaism and Islam, imo. As I read those religions, God presents humanity with the fundamental moral choice, and it's pretty much then left up to us to choose. We can follow the right path, obey the commandments, or we can sin till we're blue in the face. But Christianity says that God loves us so much, and
is so freaked out by sin that he takes the initiative in trying to save us from our sinfulness. God himself, in the Christian account, atones for our sins by making an infinite sacrifice, involving the 'kenosis' or self-emptying of his divinity, and taking on a human nature, living a human life, and undergoing violence and hate and abuse and death---and responding not with retaliatory violence, or hate for humanity, or the annihilation of humanity ---but rather, with mercy, and grace, and forgiving love and Resurrection and Eternal Life for repentant wrongdoers.
God in his wisdom shows us that evil is not conquered by destroying the evildoer, or even by preventing the evildoer from doing the evil---because that would not get at the essence of evil. That essence is the radically disordered will, desire, intellect, etc of the evildoer. That's what needs to be healed and converted and saved---even if the person is sitting in a jail and not harming a fly.
Evil is conquered by God's everlasting insistence on unconditional, saving love. The torment of hell is knowing that this love is there, that one is surrounded by it, that it can't be destroyed, that it is eternal, and then refusing to embrace it. But your rejection of God’s love cannot conquer it---except for yourself. But even in your own case, you cannot stop God loving you. If you embrace it fully, it's heaven. But rejecting God’s love and then finding that you’re still surrounded by it, that it’s indestructible, inescapable, and eternally so---is hell.
Hopefully, we'll all embrace it, one way or another. The Eastern Christian Fathers held that the ‘fire’ of hell is God’s love. The soul who embraces and accepts is filled with blissful joy. The soul who rejects it is tormented by willing the negation of that which cannot be negated. This is the meaning of the Cross, I think. You want to crucify God, torture God, kill God? Go ahead, says God---but you cannot destroy my love for you. A soul in hell is a soul willing the negation of God’s love for itself---and so it experiences God’s love for it as love’s negation.
There is a very deep mystery in all of this. We humans think that God should destroy the sinner, so that the sin won't happen. God thinks that he should love the sinner, and should show that love by himself atoning for the sinner's sin! The satanic impulse is to accuse and condemn and destroy humanity ("why doesn't God stop these bastards--they're scum"). The divine impulse is to forgive and embrace and save the sinner.
The figure of Satan is an interesting one. Some of the Eastern Fathers speculated that Satan's sin was to be sooooo contemptuous of humanity that he refused to accept the incarnation of the Son of God---that is, he refused to accept that humans should be loved by God that much. Satan wanted to punish and destroy humanity—“they're a bunch of bastards, they deserve to be annihilated.” God, instead, wanted to become human and reveal his merciful love for us. God doesn't love us because we're good and holy. God loves us because God is good and holy. The devil couldn't get his head around that. ('Satanas' means 'accuser'. For present purposes, I'm intending this as a parabolic insight into the mystery of sin, not as a necessarily literal description of historic supernatural goings-on).
Since the atheist doesn't believe in Christianity, then of course I wouldn't expect him to accept this understanding of evil, etc. One of the reasons I am a Christian is because I believe Christianity has better insights into this particular existential problem than any other religion or philosophy. By that I mean that I don't think the problem of evil can be adequately accounted for just using the resources of science or rational philosophy. I think there is a mystery to evil, whose full dimensions only become clear in the light of Christian revelation and theological reflection upon that revelation. In particular the question of why God would allow sin rather than prevent it has some important light shed on it by the Christian doctrines of Incarnation, Cross & Resurrection, and eternal Redemption. I've also found some of the writings of Christian mystics, such as Julian of Norwich's "Revelations of Divine Love" quite
helpful.
Maybe none of this helps you to gain any deeper insight. I feel that it has helped me to gain some, not just as a matter of theological speculation, but in terms of my encounters with people struggling with the whole shebang of sin and redemption from sin---myself included, of course.
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