A book like this is published to meet many needs. However, three goals were dominant in the creation of this work: (1) to satisfy the reader’s curiosity about philosophy, religion, and morals; (2) to assist the reader who is developing his or her personal conclusions about the meaning of life and about the goals which he or she will strive toward; (3) to assist the reader in better understanding the values, religious ideas, and personal goals of other people.

Curiosity is a wonderful part of being a human. It is the force which makes us instinctive explorers. Just as peoples such as the Greeks and the Vikings explored their physical world, we explore our personal world by studying history, psychology, biology, political science, and physics. Just as Europeans were curious about finding an ocean route to India and China at the time of Columbus, we are explorers of ideas...