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What prompted you to become a Christian?

My parents sent me to church basically to learn music. I didn't learn much about Christianity. I tuned that out. When I got to college, others around me quickly dismantled whatever little bits of faith I had by asking penetrating questions that I didn't have answers for. So I slipped away from any sense of religious persuasion into agnosticism and ultimately, as a graduate student in chemistry, I was a pretty obnoxious atheist.

What changed you?

I went to medical school. I watched people in terrible medical circumstances who were engaged in battles for survival, which many of them lost. I watched how some people leaned on their faith and saw what strength it gave them. I was both uneasy and curious, realizing that my decision to walk away from faith had not been founded on rationality. Instead, it had been a response to what I perceived to be the majority view around me, and I hadn't really considered the evidence. But as a scientist, I wasn't supposed to make conclusions without considering the data. Based on that uneasiness, I began to try to learn more about various faiths. I spoke with a Methodist minister, who pointed me to the writings of C.S. Lewis. I read his Mere Christianity, and my arguments about the irrationality of faith lay in ruins. It left me feeling very uneasy about the whole thing. After a year of battling with myself, reading the Bible to understand Christianity, and comparing it to other faiths, I concluded that this really did make a lot of sense. I developed a very strong sense of wanting to give my life to Christ and that set of principles. I did so at the age of 27.

Was your love for God written in your genes?

No. I reject the notion that spirituality is something that will be explained by the study of the genome. The study of the genome will tell us a lot about our biological nature, about the parts of us that are mechanical, but I don't believe it will tell us why almost every human being has a sense of longing for God. I don't believe studying DNA will tell us where the sense of right and wrong we share comes from. I don't believe it will explain why we have this shared urge to do the right thing, even to the extent of putting our own lives in danger to save another, which would be exactly the opposite of what evolution would suggest we should do. All those aspects of humanity are some of the best evidence that there is more to us than chemicals and DNA, that there is a spiritual part to our nature.

Do you believe in evolution?

I think evolution is a very compelling explanation for the relatedness of living things on this planet. You can't study DNA without noting the relatedness of the sequences between us and other animals, bacteria, and plants. But I don't have any problem with putting that together with my belief in God as the Creator of life and in God as one who desires fellowship with humankind. If God decided to use the mechanism of evolution to create human beings, who are we to say that was a bad way to do it? In that regard, I would be called a theistic evolutionist, as are many people who work in biology and who also believe in God.

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October 1 2001, Vol. 45, No. 12