Imagine that I manage to create a virtual universe. A simulation. And I create artificial life in this universe. I become their creator. They are actually a genetic algorithm of some complexity and have 'evolved' to the impressive existence they hold. they are still nowhere quite as impressive as me (gloat ) but it's pretty good all the same.

They strive to understand their purpose, which involves creating a general intelligence, or group of general intelligences that can co-work.
This means they need to learn to work well together (emergent behaviours - peace/undestanding) as well as being very intelligent individuals capable of huge understanding and adaptation. I might even have hopes of placing the best ones into a robot one day, to experience the world as we do. They'd probably be the perfect leaders for a country - they love and understand but are unbiased in human affairs.

I am almighty and pretty mysterious to them. Their time runs separate to mine, and I can in fact rewind and fast forward to wherever I like, once I have run the program to it's end. Omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent, if you will. With some self imposed rules to keep things in order.
I am however not almighty in my own world. I am subservient to the real world, the government, etc.

Now, perhaps we are that 'artificial' civilisation. 'Heaven' is the real world. We cannot enter heaven with flesh and blood any more than an artificial intelligence on my PC can exist in the real world without a really limited body (eg robotic). There is no traditional marriage then, because they can't reproduce - making marriage an unusual proposition. Hell simply means the 'shift-delete' button (I don't believe in a painful hell anyway)

Now, here's a thought, if my creation in turn learns to create a virtual simulation with artificial life, in the eternity of time (read as 'consecutive events') their creation could create it's own creation, and so on, so forth. This isn't particularly far fetched IMO.
Big question : what's the chances we're actually the original creator on top? Infinitely small. Chances are we are a creation of a creation. We cannot know the origin of God because he doesn't know it himself. He's in a similar situation to us, with a more elaborate world and intellect.

Sorry if this is rambling. I'm bloody tired after the last 3 days of moving house while still building it. And fixing 200L fish tanks, etc etc.