"I tend I to believe that religious dogma is a consequence of evolution. Religious belief and the firm adherence to it—and the intense dislike of apostates, people who abandon it—has a very important biologic origin, probably through natural selection, namely the cohesion of the group and the persuasion of people to be more altruistic. So in my view, most dogmas concerning the creation are myths of creation and are not believable. They're just different from one religion to another," biologist E.O. Wilson, co-author of the new book The Superorganism, says in a Q&A with the St. Petersburg Times. "When the question comes up, 'If it's not true, why does practically everybody believe in God?' the answer is that it's true in a Darwinian sense. That is, it provides cohesion, it provides personal peace and rites of passage, and it promotes altruism, which are all invaluable and necessary for the survival of human societies." When it comes to whether he personally believes in God, Wilson says he's "willing to consider the possibility of an ultimate cause. But we haven't really come close to grasping what that might be."