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"At first glace, it seemed right. However, it didn't quite do enough. It was missing something.


Sociobiology: The
New Synthesis by
E. O. Wilson

"E. O. Wilson explains in his 1975 book Sociobiology: The New Synthesis '…how belief in God, or belief in purpose to our lives, or belief in an afterlife could make people willing to sacrifice for themselves, for their kinfolk, thereby preserving their own genes, because our kinfolk share our genes.'

"What caught my attention here is not the comment about evolution, but the three belief systems:

  1. belief in God
  2. belief in purpose to our lives
  3. belief in an afterlife

"As I thought about these three, it seemed to me that this short list was an 'all-inclusive' list of possible beliefs. I could not come up with any others. With this in mind, certainly having a religion of "purpose" may not necessarily be theistic, but accurate. Based on this line of reasoning, I decided to add a prong to the chart called Purpose:

"By adding Purpose, I could now take all of the major religions, including Buddhism, and plug them into my graph.

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