In the first chapter of his bestselling book “The Purpose Driven Life,” Rick Warren claimed that the purpose of life is not for ourselves, but for His purpose. God creates us and uses us to work for His purpose. In other words, only through submitting ourselves to God and starting our quest of lives from Him can we understand ourselves and live purpose driven lives.

However, Rick Warren deliberately skipped one critical question: what is the purpose of God? The rest of his book ignored this question. Instead, it went ahead ranting how one should act like a servant to God and follow the Bible.

Understandably, God creates human beings for his own fun. He does not expect us to serve him, as he is so mighty that he does not need any help. Yes, we worship him because God is the father of us all. But he creates so many of us not for the worships, but for his pleasure.

Then as Benjamin Franklin surmised, God must have neglected us for a long time. Much of our behavior is not that righteous and the human history is largely chaotic and bloody. Therefore, human beings as a family should live in harmony and take care of ourselves. Good will and good deeds come from our responsibilities to the society because all of us are members of the society.

But if I don’t believe in God (or any form of supernatural things), then what is my purpose of life?

When I first came to the US, I was greeted by my old classmate who recently turned himself to God. Naturally, I met several Christians. All of them are very nice. I attended several bible studies and was amazed by their firm beliefs in Bible. However, I was blessed that I have several close friends–my advisors—who taught me a different way of thinking about life and religion.

One of my advisors has a profound personal history. During his first 40 years, he devoted himself to the Christianity. Feeling a call from God, he came to the US for a PhD degree in religion in a prestigious university. He spent four years studying hard but his interest started to shift toward the humanity side of religion. Through a series of deep self revelation, he decided to quit the religion study. He quickly obtained a master degree in statistics and has worked in our university ever since. He also got married and had three kids. He still practices Christianity and leads a bible group in his church. He told me that religion is a way of life but not the purpose of life.

My another advisor is also from a religious family. His father is a priest. He can literally recite many bible paragraphs even now. However, when he grew up, he reoriented himself as an atheist. He realized that the existence of God wouldn’t help his life. In fact, his own experience suggested that life was independent of God. He urged me always to think about life concretely instead of spiritually through religion.

Their beliefs in the purpose of life are remarkably similar to what Benjamin Franklin advocated. We do science to benefit the society, thus also benefiting ourselves. That is, no matter whether you believe in God or not, the purpose of life is not to serve God, but to serve people—both ourselves and others.

I believe this view is held by most scientists who claim themselves Christians. For example, Francis Collins believes that his research is to help human beings better understand ourselves. Better lives are what God wants us to have. Donald Knuth also felt God’s calling to retire earlier in order to write his multi-volume computer books. In an interview with NPR, he wittily commented: “Yes I believe in God…… but I don’t think we can prove the existence of God. If we can prove it, I will just memorize the proof and then forget about it [the existence of God].” This is how real scientists separate God from science.

For many people, religion lives in their lives. However, quite some people mistakenly believe that religion is their lives. They failed to realize the purpose of their lives. The debate on the existence of God is not only nonsense scientifically but also profane because human beings are not supposed to speculate what God is. Sadly, people ignore the God’s calling, that is, to help each other.