It's like the 'You send yourself hell" argument. No sane person would choose hell, so there is no choice. Since when is Hell a default for not choosing God?? And Pascal's Wager...if there was a god, wouldn't he KNOW people were just choosing him out of fear?

That’s not true. I know a nurse that was Hindi and chose to be Christian.

Well, i suppose to consciously modify one's way of life and thought to be in accord with views previously not enacted is a choice for those who become Christian believers. I would argue that there are aspects to a religious life that offer benefit to people and communities in different ways. For many of my friends who do count themselves as such they see value in participating in practical ways communally ( and not exclusively with other Christians ).
Also, deliberate reflection and contemplation, call it prayer, meditation, both public and private is not an empty ritual or rote gesture devoid of meaning for many. As some one else posted, fear of the fires of hell is not center / foreground for most. Religious narratives have, to some extent, prior to our modern institutions of law been the vehicle for universal ideals such as justice and truth.
Indeed some will argue the Bible to be foundational. I would wrestle and chew on that bone somewhat but not here.
Yet the principal of punishment and reward is all pervasive still and i assume serves as sufficiently effective else something else would be at play.
Similarly for others who may have arrived at a reasoned choice to move away from a life shaped by religious faith. But it should not necessarily be a matter of throwing the baby out with the bath water.
Some of us simply cannot honestly subscribe to some core elements of doctrine and many religious organisations will not confirm or accept you in that condition. Hence the seemingly endless examples of argument, splintering and reformation among " defenders of the (various) faith (s) ".
I have religious friends with whom i have discussed differences. There is quite a wide spectrum of outcomes. I like to keep it civil and emphasise the positive.
To me, the heaven and hell format has always seemed a rather ancient transparently banal attempt at coercion. Carrot and stick.
The carrot / heaven is variously portrayed as a temporally ideal existence with bells on. An eternally youthful healthy body, no disease, discomfort or death. All needs met in abundance. The street paved with gold and littered with precious jewels, and the laws of nature paved over unrealistically with tales of carnivores eating grass. The lion will lie down with the lamb etc.
Similarly with hell, i.e. the stick or threat. A dark world of demons and goblins and unimaginable torment and suffering for an alleged eternity, conjured from minds already conditioned to superstitious speculation and entertaining fearful imaginings.
I haven't seen any reason to see it as anything other than that. A contrived fiction, albeit with a purpose, but something that perhaps we should only see flashes of in the rear view mirror occasionally when the fundies are getting uppity about something.

that most certainly is not true. christianity is not a default religion. no religion is a default religion. i was raised as a secular jew. i became an atheist at age 15 but still consider myself jewish. it would never occur to me to become a christian, and what is the alternative to christianity that's so scary? it's not even the only damned religion in the world! people are christians for a variety of reasons but the main one is that they were born into a christian family. that's not default, because plenty of families are not christian. in fact most families in the world are not christian.

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I don't think that's accurate. It's true that most evangelical Christians fear hell, and have been conditioned to regard alternative religions as minions of Satan.

However, there are plenty of liberal Christians who just like the community and belonging and ritual and tradition and DO choose it without fear. There are even still a handful of moderate evangelicals for whom hellthreat isn't particularly front-and-center.

The abstractions and memes that make up Christianity can be quite pleasant even for a strident fundamentalist who is secure in their own salvation -- because hellthreat doesn't apply to THEM.

Many Christians see way more advantage than disadvantage in their faith -- or they do until they are unlucky enough that their religious abstraction starts to leak because of some ghastly violation of their religiously mediated expectations vs lived experience.

I always say that people never change until the pain of change becomes less than the pain of staying the same. This is true even of people living uneasily with their personal fear of god's judgment. The pain of changing for them is the possibility that the church is right about god's voyeurism and crankiness; the prospect of losing the only community they've ever known, possibly including ostracism by close family members; the fact that they will have to go from being part of the majority in society to the status of Hated Other; and so forth. In order to motivate them to face and experience all of that ... their faith has to cause them at least that much pain or disappointment or cognitive dissonance. It also has to overcome their apologist's arguments -- which, though they are flimsy to us, seem pretty plausible to you when you're an ignorant, fearful sheep.