Buddhism Outperforming "the Abrahamics"?

There's a book review in the New York Times Sunday book review supplement that says something curious about Buddhism. The review, titled "No Smiting," is by Paul Bloom, a professor of psychology at Yale. The book is The Evolution of God by Robert Wright, which I have not read.

The book is about monotheism, which normally wouldn't be a topic of this blog, but bear with me on this. I take it that Wright explores how concepts of God grew and "mellowed" as human civilization came to value "goodness." I infer that Wright sees the evolution of human civilization and sensibilities as the driver of this process, not God. I infer also that Wright is not a God believer, and that he sees humans as creating God in our image. This God-creation process is ongoing.

Here's where Buddhism comes in. Book reviewer Bloom writes,

For Wright, the next evolutionary step is for practitioners of Abrahamic faiths to give up their claim to distinctiveness, and then renounce the specialness of monotheism altogether. In fact, when it comes to expanding the circle of moral consideration, he argues, religions like Buddhism have sometimes “outperformed the Abrahamics.” But this sounds like the death of God, not his evolution.

If something doesn't exist, how can it "die"? Anyway, this reminds me of Albert Einstein's famous essay on the evolution of religion, in which he argues that religion goes through three basic phases. The first is primitive, in which people evoke a god to save them from things they fear. The second involves a "social" or "moral" concept of a god who offers mankind guidance and support.

In the third stage, humans go beyond the need for gods and dogmas and toward what Einstein calls a "cosmic religious feeling." That description is pretty limp compared to Buddhist teachings on the nature of enlightenment, but English wasn't Einstein's first language. I take it Robert Wright is sorta kinda reaching in the same direction.

Whether the third stage is a "death" or an "evolution" of God seems to me a meaningless distinction. Reading the review further, I think reviewer Bloom doesn't grasp the potential of nontheistic religion.