The believer

What do you say to those evolutionists -- people like E.O. Wilson and Dan Dennett -- who look to evolutionary reasons for why human beings have come to believe in religion. They say religion is clearly a very powerful bonding force. It unites people. And even moral values like altruism have a genetic component. It may have evolved to help people related to you because there's a shared genetic interest.

I have trouble with the argument that altruism can be completely explained on evolutionary grounds. Evolutionists now universally agree -- I think Dawkins and Wilson and Dennett would all agree -- that evolution does not operate on the species. It operates on the individual. If that's the case, then it does seem that in any given circumstance, the individual's evolutionary drive should be to preserve their ability to reproduce at all costs. They're simply -- as Dawkins has described them -- a way of propagating DNA. That's what we are. But that's not what I see in my own heart. And it's not what I see in those around me. I see Oskar Schindler, who sacrifices his own potential for long- term survival by saving Jews -- not even people of his own faith. When I see Mother Teresa dedicating herself to help others, not even of her own tribe, we admire that. What is that all about? If I'm walking down the banks of a river and I hear someone who's drowning calling for help -- even if I'm not a good swimmer -- I feel this urge that I should try to help, even at the risk of my own life. Where is that coming from?

But you and I have grown up with certain moral lessons. We've been told that we should help people. This is the right thing to do. Couldn't you argue that doing good and helping people is just part of cultural evolution?

You could argue that, but if it was just a cultural tradition, you ought to be able to find some cultures where it is not present. If you read the appendix of C.S. Lewis' wonderful book "The Abolition of Man," he comes to the conclusion that there is this wonderful, monotonous repetition of morals across the world and across history. You are to reach out to those who are less fortunate. You are to aid the widow, you are to help the orphan. All of these altruistic things seem to be a universal feature of human beings. And yet, they're a scandal to evolutionary biology because they motivate people to do things that are exactly the opposite of what evolution would require.

The subtitle of your book refers to "evidence for belief." What do you find to be the most compelling evidence that there is, in fact, a Supreme Being?

First of all, we have this very solid conclusion that the universe had an origin, the Big Bang. Fifteen billion years ago, the universe began with an unimaginably bright flash of energy from an infinitesimally small point. That implies that before that, there was nothing. I can't imagine how nature, in this case the universe, could have created itself. And the very fact that the universe had a beginning implies that someone was able to begin it. And it seems to me that had to be outside of nature. And that sounds like God.

A second argument: When you look from the perspective of a scientist at the universe, it looks as if it knew we were coming. There are 15 constants -- the gravitational constant, various constants about the strong and weak nuclear force, etc. -- that have precise values. If any one of those constants was off by even one part in a million, or in some cases, by one part in a million million, the universe could not have actually come to the point where we see it. Matter would not have been able to coalesce, there would have been no galaxy, stars, planets or people. That's a phenomenally surprising observation. It seems almost impossible that we're here. And that does make you wonder -- gosh, who was setting those constants anyway? Scientists have not been able to figure that out.

What I find interesting about your argument is that, in many ways, it lines up with the deist position -- that God created everything to begin with, set in motion the laws of nature and didn't intervene after that. And yet, I don't think thats your position.

No, it's not.

You are talking about a God who intervenes in the world -- the presence of a personal God.

Right. I haven't quite finished my list of evidences. I started with the deist ones --which are the Big Bang and the Anthropic Principle -- very strong arguments, by the way. But that doesn't get you to a personal God. The argument that gets me is the one I read in those first few pages of "Mere Christianity," which is the existence of the Moral Law, something good and holy, that in our hearts has somehow written that same law about what is good and what is evil and what we should do. That doesn't sound like a God that wandered off once the universe got started and is now doing something else. That sounds like a God who really cares about us and wishes somehow to have a relationship with us.

But you've also said that God exists outside of nature, outside of space and time. So how can God intervene in our lives? How can God come into our hearts?

By saying that He's outside of space and time, I didn't mean that there is some wall around the natural that God is not also part of. I guess I should have said that God is not limited by space and time. So I have no trouble with that concept at all -- that God both knows the future and yet can hear my prayer as I'm seeking to find out what I should do in a given situation.

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