If you want to encourage members of your community to be more cooperative and norm-following, you have a strong incentive to spread beliefs about supernatural punishment, especially if you inhabit a world lacking institutions and legal systems that enforce prosocial behaviour. Over time, these incentives, when coupled with people’s disposition to internalise beliefs they’re motivated to spread, give rise to religious belief systems that look designed to support systems of cooperation, which—probably not coincidentally—constitutes one of humanity’s central adaptive challenges.