If god were real...

[Tonus]

I'm not so sure its a "punishment/reward" system.

I understand what you're saying, but there is a punishment and a reward. And they're quite extreme, and I am confident that most theists find it to be a fair system. When I was a believer, my beliefs were that loyalty would be rewarded with life in heaven or on an Earth transformed into a paradise world, and that disloyalty was punished by death. No eternal suffering or after-life of any kind, just non-existence. This seemed fair to me. But there's no question that the reward was incredibly tantalizing. Why offer something so incredibly desirable if it wasn't the point of the whole exercise?

To put it another way-- let's pretend that there is no difference in the final outcome for people. Let's pretend that god says "it is sufficient that I created you and gave you life; this alone is reason for you to follow my guidelines and worship me in the manner I describe. Therefore, whether you do or not, you will all eventually die and cease to exist." Many people would consider that a fair proposition. But would everyone who serves god today continue to do so under those circumstances, or would many of them turn away from god if they felt it was to their personal gain? And can god identify those people now, and will he punish them because they would have been disloyal without a reward? Or is the effort sufficient?