Power source.
Heaven, hell, purgatory, limbo - all of them are spiritual realms powered with human souls acting as batteries. Earth is the place where those batteries are fully charged. God, or rather gods are the beings who can create new batteries (souls), but in that form they are incomplete and unusable. As humans go through life, living and experiencing, they store up more and more spiritual power which upon their deaths is used to power the spiritual realm. Depending upon their beliefs and actions, they are deemed to be property of a particular agency (religion) and go on to power that particular spiritual realm.
Currently, the Abrahamic faction would have been considered almost a monopoly, but for that fact that it has internally divided itself into multiple factions - all claiming different parts of the spiritual realm. It seems that attempts to diversify by their god lead to creation of multiple gods (Judaic Yahweh, Christian God and the Islamic Allah), each of whom have claimed a separate agency. One of the underlings, Lucifer, decided strike out on his own and the idea of hell being a place of torment is a discrediting propaganda by Yahweh. Apart from that, he also seemed to have a problem his particular rules when first drawn up as they were too strict to provide souls to the scale he required - which was why the rules were later amended by using the "son died for your sins" loophole.
An interesting observation would be the first ever known use of the concept of recycling shown by the Eastern religion where, instead of discarding used souls, they are pumped back into the system for recharging. However, there is a risk here that the soul may achieve enlightenment on one of the trips and become unusable in perpetuity.
Currently, atheism posits the greatest threat to all the agencies, since, not believing in any of them, they cannot be claimed and therefore cannot be used. It is unknown what happens to atheist souls when they die, but currently they represent an unknown, untapped and potentially destructive power-source.
Heaven, hell, purgatory, limbo - all of them are spiritual realms powered with human souls acting as batteries. Earth is the place where those batteries are fully charged. God, or rather gods are the beings who can create new batteries (souls), but in that form they are incomplete and unusable. As humans go through life, living and experiencing, they store up more and more spiritual power which upon their deaths is used to power the spiritual realm. Depending upon their beliefs and actions, they are deemed to be property of a particular agency (religion) and go on to power that particular spiritual realm.
Currently, the Abrahamic faction would have been considered almost a monopoly, but for that fact that it has internally divided itself into multiple factions - all claiming different parts of the spiritual realm. It seems that attempts to diversify by their god lead to creation of multiple gods (Judaic Yahweh, Christian God and the Islamic Allah), each of whom have claimed a separate agency. One of the underlings, Lucifer, decided strike out on his own and the idea of hell being a place of torment is a discrediting propaganda by Yahweh. Apart from that, he also seemed to have a problem his particular rules when first drawn up as they were too strict to provide souls to the scale he required - which was why the rules were later amended by using the "son died for your sins" loophole.
An interesting observation would be the first ever known use of the concept of recycling shown by the Eastern religion where, instead of discarding used souls, they are pumped back into the system for recharging. However, there is a risk here that the soul may achieve enlightenment on one of the trips and become unusable in perpetuity.
Currently, atheism posits the greatest threat to all the agencies, since, not believing in any of them, they cannot be claimed and therefore cannot be used. It is unknown what happens to atheist souls when they die, but currently they represent an unknown, untapped and potentially destructive power-source.
