In this universe, the rules of Mother Nature rule. These rules are survival for the fittest, dog eats dog, pain and suffering of sentient beings that will never end. We seem to all live in a cycle of fear, punishment and reword, all perpetuated by competition.
Most religions have a notion of hell as punishment and heaven as reword. Weather these believes are the truth of the universe or not may never matter because one day these notions will become true, because they are a will tried and tested methodology for social control. Let me explain.
A boss of a big corporation, is synonymous with the human collective. Needs to control his subordinates, he doesn�t want them to steal stationery, become lazy or have fights. One way to control workers is to spy on them using CCTV, but CCTV has not been invented yet, so the next best thing is to pretend you can see all, or better still, say God can see all and give out punishment appropriately and the nature of punishment is unimaginable.
One day CCTV cameras are invented. Now the bosses of the company can spy on bad subordinates, no need to make threats, just quick direct punishment. What has started out as a sociological control system has now been implemented as a machine that is much more effective.
One day in future the punishment of subordinate will not be in the form frets of going to hell, but of reality with machines that punish in ways not you could possibly envisage.
Hell and heaven will become real, because we as humans collectively want it so. We will build machines that are more effective because they are of reality. Much of what are common amongst most successful religions will also become true in reality.
George Orwell 1984 supports this theory, no?