BOB ABERNETHY, host: The nation’s Roman Catholic bishops gathered in Seattle this week for their annual spring meeting. A key part of the agenda was reviewing sex abuse prevention policies they adopted in 2002. The bishops passed minor revisions but said overall the guidelines have “served the church well.” Still, there are lingering questions about compliance and accountability.

Joining me now is Kim Lawton, managing editor of this program. Kim, are the bishops really following those 2002 guidelines?

KIM LAWTON, managing editor: Well, they say the majority of bishops are following the guidelines, but there are a couple who are not, and that has lead to some pretty high-profile scandals—one in Philadelphia, another one most recently that, last couple weeks in Missouri, where the local bishop had to apologize for a priest that was arrested on child pornography charges.

ABERNETHY: And whether a bishop has to follow those 2002 guidelines is up to the bishop. There’s no way that the other bishops can make him do that, right?

LAWTON: Well, they are nonbinding, and the bishops say that they don’t have the authority to discipline or impose penalties, that only the pope can discipline a bishop. So therefore they say this has to be part of the “fraternal correction,” and it is sort of voluntary.

ABERNETHY: The Southern Baptists, Southern Baptist Convention, also gathered this week in Phoenix and took steps to make their denomination more diverse, more ethnic diversity. It elected an African American from New Orleans as a first vice-president, on track to become perhaps the president of the Southern Baptist Convention in a year.

LAWTON: Perhaps.

ABERNETHY: Perhaps. So there’s something going on there.

LAWTON: Well, they are trying to reach out, I think. There has been some apologies for racism in the past. But they are trying to reach out as well. There was some concern that they have been declining in baptisms and even a slight decline in membership. They’re still the largest Protestant denomination, of course.

ABERNETHY: Sixteen million, is it?

LAWTON: Sixteen million.

ABERNETHY: I was thinking about this Libya thing and the Congress putting pressure on the president. There’s a relationship, isn’t there, to a religious tradition?

LAWTON: Well, the political debate is whether or not the president has the authority to authorize and continue the military effort in Libya without congressional authorization, and the just war tradition also says that in order for military action to be just it has to have the sanction of the proper authorities, and so there is that moral connection that the political debate is also sort of tied to, and there’s been another debate in the religious community I’ve been watching as well. I’m seeing increasing numbers of religious conservatives raising concerns about the Libya action. Many of them had been supportive in other military efforts, but on this one raising concerns on moral issues, economic moral issues, raising questions about whether or not it’s moral to spend that much money—over $700 million dollars—on this effort.

ABERNETHY: Kim, many thanks.

KIM LAWTON, correspondent: About 20 minutes outside New Orleans, worshippers gather at First Baptist Church in Chalmette, the largest city in St. Bernard Parish. It’s a pretty typical Southern Baptist Sunday morning service.

REV JOHN DEE JEFFRIES (Preaching at First Baptist Church, Chalmette, Louisiana): Lord, what’s going on? Lord, why?

LAWTON: But that belies the incredible journey this congregation has made since Hurricane Katrina. More than half of the churches in St. Bernard Parish still haven’t come back, and most of them probably never will. First Baptist is not only back, but reinventing itself to help a community still struggling to recover.

REV. JOHN DEE JEFFRIES (First Baptist Church, Chalmette, LA): The church is up. She’s not yet standing on her own two feet, if I can say it that way, but the church is here, and the church now has a hope and a future.

LAWTON: Hours before Katrina hit, Pastor John Dee Jeffries and his wife, Genny, evacuated to their daughter’s home near Baton Rouge. They expected to be gone a couple of days.

JEFFRIES: The hurricane had passed through, all seemed to be well—the initial reports, and then suddenly everything turned topsy-turvy.

LAWTON: The levees were breached, and within a half-hour St. Bernard Parish was inundated with water. The damage was incomprehensible, and First Baptist Church didn’t escape the destruction.

JEFFRIES: The church—the church was a heartbreak. It was as if everything that had substance, value, meaning, purpose, the things that form the backdrop of your life suddenly ripped apart, shredded before your very eyes.

LAWTON: The Jeffries’ home was also among the thousands destroyed.

GENNY JEFFRIES: That’s when I cried. I only cried one time, and that was when I saw my home.

LAWTON: They ended up living in a FEMA trailer near their daughter, 85 miles away from Chalmette. Jeffries started thinking about rebuilding.

GENNY JEFFRIES: Wasn’t a real long time before he decided he was going to come back.

LAWTON: Did you think he was crazy?

GENNY JEFFRIES: Mm-hmm. I mean, the church was devastated. We were devastated. Every house, everything in Chalmette was destroyed. Everything.

JEFFRIES: I certainly have no negative feelings about ministers who felt that they could not come back. But there was something inside of me that could not accept that as my future.

LAWTON: And slowly a plan started coming into focus. Then Jeffries connected with a faith-based ministry called Builders for Christ.

JEFFRIES: And the sound of them, their leaders standing and saying, “We have decided to build your church.” I can still feel that in here.

LAWTON: It was a huge project that still isn’t completely finished. More than 3,000 volunteers from 34 states and the District of Columbia helped out. Flags at the back of their new sanctuary serve as a constant reminder.

JEFFRIES: Every denomination imaginable including Jewish people have come and worked on our project—Assembly of God, Baptists, Presbyterian, Methodists, Catholics. They’ve all been here.

LAWTON: The outpouring was a huge inspiration to longtime members like Michael “Slim” Gillette, who’s the chairman of the deacons.

MICHAEL GILLETTE: The more the church was built, the more healing took place for me.

LAWTON: They held their first service in the new church in September 2009, four years after Katrina hit. Before the storm, about 400 people attended on a regular basis. Now they’re averaging about 150, but the numbers are steadily rising, with more than 90 new baptisms in the past year. Ninety-seven percent of the people who came to First Baptist prior to Katrina haven’t returned. There’s a new cultural diversity, with growing numbers of African Americans and Hispanics attending, and many of the new people didn’t previously attend church at all.

GILLETTE: We don’t have a church congregation now like we used to have. They don’t know the hymns. They don’t know the difference between Mass and worship service. We’re learning together what their needs are, and they’re learning what we have to give.

LAWTON: One of the new members is Leola Thomas, who, like most people here, lost everything in Katrina.

LEOLA THOMAS: When I came in and saw and heard, you know, how he teaches about Jesus and his love, and the love they showed to me, I said this is the place that I want to be in.

JEFFRIES: There’s something happening inside of the hearts and minds of people that has brought us all together, and it’s strange to see how God is making us the one body of Christ. There are challenges in that, but it’s happening.

LAWTON: And it’s happening in a community that still hasn’t fully recovered from Katrina. This neighborhood used to be a pretty typical middle-class subdivision with lots of houses close together. Now there are a lot of empty lots where houses have been torn down. Some homeowners have returned, but a lot of houses are still standing unrepaired and empty.

The financial stresses of Katrina, along with the recession and now the Gulf oil spill, have generated a severe economic crisis across St. Bernard Parish. About 40 percent of the First Baptist congregation is unemployed. First Baptist partnered with the nonprofit group Second Harvest to create a food pantry which distributes almost 20,000 pounds of food every month.

JEFFRIES: I’m absolutely astounded at how powerful this ministry is with so few people manning it.

LAWTON: First Baptist has set up a daycare center and after-school program to help working parents, and there’s also a Christian addiction recovery ministry, which is close to the heart of Tina Rivera. After Katrina, she, like so many, sought to numb the pain.

TINA RIVERA: A lot of people, we just started drinking, doing drugs. The pain was just too overwhelming, and for me, I got in a car accident, a head-on collision, and two people got killed.

LAWTON: She ended up in jail and rehab and turned her life around. Now she’s helping First Baptist organize ministries for other troubled women.

RIVERA: I talked to my church family and said, look, these are mothers and aunts and grandmas that are in our community, come from good families, and we just have to stay on top of them. We’ve got to get them back to where they were before the storm.

LAWTON: Another goal of First Baptist is to help repair the sense of community that was broken by the storm. A women’s group called the “Domino Divas” meets every week for lunch, Bible study, and yes, some aggressive domino playing. These women were all displaced from their homes, and not all of them have been able to rebuild. They talked to me about the storm with a touch of humor.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Katrina wasn’t totally bad, because she moved us and we didn’t have to pack. We didn’t have to pack a thing. We just threw it out of the window.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: I told my kids they ought to be thankful for the storm, and they said, “Mom, are you crazy?” I said, “Well, now when I die you don’t have all that junk to go through.”

LAWTON: But they’re all too aware of the pain that still lingers.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Your house is gone, you didn’t get money for your life, all your stuff is gone, all your people are gone. It’s hard.

LAWTON: Genny Jeffries, who is a family therapist, says the emotional and spiritual trauma from the storm is deep-seated.

GENNY JEFFRIES: Katrina will always be in the back of our hearts, but we’re getting a little bit past it. But still there’s a lot of people, and a lot of circumstances that are there that really cannot, we can’t put it away, just can’t put it away yet.

LAWTON: First Baptist is doing what it can, but there is a shortage of established members who can lead the ministries, and because of the economic situation there’s also a shortage of tithes and offerings.

JEFFRIES: In the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the great challenge was to survive. We have survived. The church is here and will continue to be here. Five years later, the great challenge is to sustain ourselves.

LAWTON: The Jeffries have had personal stresses as well. Their home also had to be rebuilt through donations and volunteers, and shortly after Katrina, Genny suffered a brain aneurysm and then a post-surgical stroke.

JEFFRIES: God and I had some rather serious conversations about that. It seemed that in the midst of losing everything else I pleaded with the Lord. I pleaded for him to spare my wife.

LAWTON: Genny did recover, but Jeffries admits he wasn’t always as strong as he wanted to be in the midst of the crisis.

JEFFRIES: I also know what it’s like to lay in a dark FEMA trailer, hugging your pillow, your wife next to you, terribly ill, recovering from traumatic surgery, not knowing if she’s going to fully recover, and just ask those questions of God that have no answer: Why? Why? Why?

LAWTON: He may not have received answers, but he says he did receive assurances about his belief that God is there no matter what.

JEFFRIES: The real focus has been that the things that I’ve preached and that I’ve taught all of those years are true. You can count on it.

LAWTON: He says he’ll keep counting on it as First Baptist faces all the challenges still ahead.

I’m Kim Lawton in Chalmette, Louisiana.

Click here to watch this week’s story on Haiti Relief Workers.

BOB ABERNETHY, host: Kim, welcome back. What about those 10 Americans, Southern Baptists, who were charged with kidnapping? What were they doing?

KIM LAWTON, correspondent: Well, according to information from the churches that the majority of them are from in Idaho, they were trying to go down there to set up what they called a refuge for orphan children. This was apparently something that had been in the works for some time before the earthquake, and it appears that this group was, you know, seizing the opportunity or, you know, worried about the situation for these children, and so they put together a group of volunteers to go down and try to, in their words, rescue children who were victims from the earthquake.

ABERNETHY: Presumably, did they know a lot about Haiti when they went down there?

LAWTON: Well, it’s really unclear. There have been a lot of conflicting reports in terms of what they knew about the process and paperwork, what kind of paperwork and permissions they may or may not have had, both from Haitian authorities and from the Dominican authorities, and that’s part of the problem. It’s a huge, complicated situation. You’re dealing with two sovereign nations, and the whole situation is difficult.

ABERNETHY: But you’re also dealing with great sensibilities among the Haitians about somebody coming in and taking children.

LAWTON: Well, this, of course, around the world the issue of US adoptions of foreign children has raised issues of cultural sensitivities in many places. Certainly in the current environment in Haiti there’s a lot of sensitivities. There are rumors that Americans are coming down and stealing kids. There are rumors that people are taking kids for organ donations. That’s all swirling down there in the region, and, of course, there is a big sex trafficking problem down there. That existed before the earthquake, and people are worried that it’s been exacerbated by the confusion down there. There are Haitian children, Dominican children that are used in the sex tourism industry, so how do these destitute parents know if they’re giving their, you know, children to well meaning missionaries or giving them to sex traffickers? So it is a very complicated situation.

ABERNETHY: But there is this practice that has gone on before the earthquake for very poor families giving away some children, no?

LAWTON: There is. In fact, there is a common practice of giving children to other family members, perhaps, and those children become almost like indentured servants for an extended family member. You know, they cook, they clean. And my own grandparents were missionaries in Haiti during the ’70s and ’80s, and my grandmother had Haitian mothers coming to her saying, “Please take care of my children. Take them to America so they can have a better life.” My grandparents chose not to do that. They chose to stay in the country and try to create a better life there. Unfortunately, that’s a long-term process, and these kids are hungry, you know, they have to be fed tomorrow and the day after that, so it is a very difficult situation.

ABERNETHY: Kim Lawton, many thanks.

KIM LAWTON, guest anchor: Science and religion are sometimes at odds over the environment, but one prominent biologist is pleading for both to work together in order to protect the earth’s biodiversity — the many species of plants and animals that scientists say are at risk. E.O. Wilson is the author of a recent book, THE CREATION. He spoke with Bob Abernethy.

ABERNETHY: The thin layer of life covering the earth’s surface is made up of perhaps 10 million species of plants and animals, maybe more, and many scientists say those forms of life are in mortal peril. One of those sounding the alarm is biologist and retired Harvard University professor E.O. Wilson.

Dr. E.O. WILSON (Biologist and Author, THE CREATION: AN APPEAL TO SAVE LIFE ON EARTH): I want us to save the creation — not just care about it, but to save it.

ABERNETHY: Wilson is a broadly learned man with many honors, among them two Pulitzer Prizes, one for his lifework — the study of ants.

Dr. WILSON: Here is a typical drawer of hundreds if not thousands of specimens.

ABERNETHY: His mission now is to protect all the Earth’s species. The greatest threat to biodiversity, says Wilson, is humankind’s appetite for more and more lumber and food and minerals and space to support six-and-a-half billion people, on the way to nine billion. Wilson says it is human over-consumption that’s the greatest threat to other species, and therefore a problem for us, too.

Dr. WILSON: We are threatened by the immense loss of future scientific knowledge, of future products that could enrich humanity and give us a higher quality of life. But the loss that I care about most is in our — in spiritual enrichment, in living in the magnificent original environment in which humanity was born.

ABERNETHY: Wilson says the natural world cleans water, pollinates plants and provides pharmaceuticals, among many other gifts.

Dr. WILSON: Thirty trillion dollars worth of services, scot-free to humanity, every year.

ABERNETHY: Wilson says scientists have identified 25 so-called hotspots — two-and-a-half percent of the earth’s land surface — in which nearly half of all the plant and animal species have been found. He wants the world to spend $30 billion to protect those ecosystems, in his words to “throw an umbrella over them.” The same species in other places might be endangered, but those in the hotspots would survive.

Wilson has long been a secular humanist, but he was raised a Southern Baptist in Alabama, and he understands religion’s power. So his new book, THE CREATION, is addressed to an imaginary Southern Baptist minister.

Dr. WILSON (From THE CREATION: AN APPEAL TO SAVE LIFE ON EARTH): Pastor, we need your help. The Creation is the glory of the earth. Let’s see if we can’t get together on saving it, because science and religion are the most powerful social forces on Earth. We could do it.

ABERNETHY: Wilson’s imaginary pastor could be Richard Land, a Southern Baptist minister who is the chief spokesman for the Southern Baptist Convention. He’s a radio broadcaster and the author of his own book on the environment, THE EARTH IS THE LORD’S.

Dr. RICHARD LAND (President, Southern Baptist Convention Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission): Genesis chapter 1 tells us that God put man in charge under his headship. Human beings have dominion and are given dominion. But then that’s tempered by Genesis chapter 2, where man is put into the Garden to till it and to keep it. We’re not to just worship nature in its pristine form. We have a divinely mandated responsibility to both develop the earth for human betterment and to protect it and to guard it and keep it and exercise creation care.

ABERNETHY: Land accuses Wilson of being too concerned about wildlife and not enough about humanity.

Dr. LAND: He looks upon human beings as an alien species to the habitat of nature and that we are the ones that are destructive and that we have been a catastrophic event. Nature would have been far better off without human beings. As a Christian, we believe that God created the creation for humankind. So while we are to give respect to all life, we must treat human life with reverence. And there is in Christian theology a hierarchy of species, and there is a firebreak between human beings and the rest of creation. It is human beings that God gave a soul.

ABERNETHY: And protecting other species?

Dr. LAND: We certainly need to do all we can without causing grievous harm to human beings. There’s the difference — without causing grievous harm to human beings.

ABERNETHY: Land says millions of people, especially the very poor, would be devastated by some proposals for protecting the environment. Wilson insists that biodiversity could be protected without hurting humans.

Dr. WILSON: It would increase our standard of living if we did it sensibly with less material and energy consumption and conservation of the rest of life. We can actually increase the productivity of the world while saving all of the, or most of the remaining species.

ABERNETHY: Wilson sees a problem in what he says is the implication for some Christians of the belief that Christ is coming again.

Dr. WILSON: And that therefore there isn’t a lot of value in paying any attention to what we do to the Earth. We could go ahead and tear it all to hell and back, and I do consider that, frankly, as a gospel of despair, a view of humanity and our place on this Earth that is indefensible.

Dr. LAND: I personally have never met an evangelical Christian who believes that. I’m beginning to wonder if it’s a mythic figure. I believe that history will culminate in a radical second advent of Jesus Christ to judge the quick and the dead and to redeem his creation and humankind. But I specifically repudiate that you can draw from that that we can ignore the biblical admonitions and the biblical commands to exercise creation care. I think that is a false theology.

ABERNETHY: And Wilson’s idea of setting aside those 25 hotspots to protect their ecosystems?

Dr. LAND: As long as it can be done by not severely damaging the human beings who are in that eco-culture.

ABERNETHY: Land acknowledges that protecting the environment is becoming a high priority issue for many evangelicals.

Dr. LAND: Oh, I think that’s right. I think it’s a growing consensus among evangelicals and a growing consensus among Western civilization in general, and evangelical Christians are a part of that. The devil’s going to be in the details. It’s going to be in how do we address this?

Q: As briefly and as strongly as you can put it, what do you want all of us to do?

A: I want us to save the creation. Not just care about it, but save it. A large percentage of the Earth’s ecosystems and the species that live in them are endangered, and many will go extinct unless we take proper action.

Q: How serious is this threat of destruction? You have made some calculations and estimates about what percentage of existing species might be lost in some period of time.

A: It might be best to preface that by saying that the official list, which has been gone over species by species by experts, has something like 40 percent of the fresh water fish species in the world at some degree of risk, and about 25 percent, very roughly, of the frogs and other amphibians and reptiles and things of that sort, and 12 percent of the birds, and they are at sufficient risk so that most specialists on biological diversity would agree that as many as one-half of the species of plants and animals on Earth will be gone by the end of this century if we don’t do something.

Q: What if they disappear?

A: In very brief summary, what we will lose would have otherwise been incalculable value to future generations — well, to our own generation — in scientific knowledge, in potential new products, including pharmaceuticals that can be discovered in these species. We will lose enormous value and ecological services. It’s been estimated that the wild creatures of the world, the ecosystems they form, provide roughly $30 trillion worth of services scot-free to humanity every year. But to come quickly to the issues that I have most recently brought up, we will have severe spiritual loss, and we ought to also have for all generations to come, if we don’t do something about it, a bad conscience for having allowed the world biodiversity, and I will also call it “the Creation,” to disappear.

Q: You say severe spiritual loss. What do you mean by that?

A: The rest of life is important for humanity. It’s important not only for our day-to-day welfare and for our potential to manage a healthful life for humanity, but it is important for our psychological well-being. Psychologists have now established that probably due to the fact that humanity has lived in the midst of wild nature and came into being in wild nature’s environment that we are hard-wired to a very substantial degree to respond to it in particular wars, and to gain a sense of security, of depths of relationship, on occasion a sense of unlimited frontiers to explore, and the sense of our own worth. It’s a mix that, put together, produces spirituality.

Q: I can imagine someone saying that we have a growing population. We need to expand out into more and more farmland. From your perspective, that means destroying the natural habitat. Wouldn’t a lot of people think there was more practical value in growth and more economic prosperity than there would be — that that would be more important than protection of the species?

A: Well, let me put it this way, and with a metaphor, with a parable, so to speak. It would be a more immediate practical value to the French people to sell off all of the contents of the Louvre, take the money and put it into, well, whatever. But that would be very short-term, would it not, in terms of what would be yielded in money and income and perhaps comfort? But consider, too, it would be even greater practical value to burn it and use it for fuel. But, of course, the value of that would only last a matter of a few hours.

Q: What I’m trying to get at is the extent to which we are threatened by the loss of all these species. A: We are threatened by their loss.

Q: Why?

A: We are threatened by the immense loss that it entails of future scientific knowledge, future products that could enrich humanity and help stabilize our economies and give us a higher quality of life. We would be at severe loss, and you can measure it in dollars, of the ecosystem services, like the cleaning of water, the maintenance of water systems, pollination and so on that these wild systems provide for us. But the loss that I care about most is in spiritual enrichment, in living in this magnificent original environment in which humanity was born.

Q: What might be lost unless we act? What are the figures?

A: We know 1.8 million species of plants and animals and microorganisms today. We know them enough to classify them and identify them. The actual number is perhaps ten million, I think at least ten million, but when you include the microorganisms, it could go to a hundred million.

Q: We’re not conscious, most of us, of all these species on which you say we depend.

A: I don’t say it. It’s a fact that we depend on balanced, harmonious ecosystems for our lives.

Q: If we continue on the road we’re going, then, are we at risk of going hungry?

A: Let’s put it this way. Eventually yes, but I think the long-term loss would be the pauperization of the Earth. We’d get along, but it would just be a far poorer, less stable Earth. You know, I wish you would ask me the following question: Should we really be giving up fertile land and reducing our agricultural output worldwide and other resource output to save this species?

Q: Consider it asked.

A: Okay. In fact, the good news part of all of this big issue of the living environment and its conservation is that if we use our science, if we use common sense, we can actually increase the productivity of the world while saving all of the, or most of the remaining species. And we can do it in part by studying and making use of the resources of new food crops, new genes that can improve existing crop productivity, and furthermore the restoration for agricultural purposes of parts of the world that have become wasteland. But there’s another reason why this is such a foolish equation to draw, you know, between development versus conservation, and that is that we now know that something like one-half of the plant species of the world and perhaps 40 percent, very roughly, of the best known groups of animals, you know, like birds, mammals, and reptiles, are found on the land at least, and only about two and a half percent of the land surface. We call these the hotspots; the scientists have got them identified and mapped to some extent. We know how to save or at least throw an initial umbrella over a large part of the rest of life, including some of the most endangered species of ecosystems, by saving only two and a half percent of the land surface of the world. And if you throw in, in addition, chunks of the tropical forest wildernesses in the Congo and the Amazon and New Guinea — those wouldn’t be terribly expensive to acquire — you’re getting up to about 70 percent of the known species.

Q: What would it cost to preserve that much of the Earth’s surface?

A: The latter figure, one that covers as much as 70 percent, would cost, if ideally applied — and, of course, you know this, a lot of this has got to be political, economic planning and the like — would cost one payment of about $30 billion. Now $30 billion is a lot of money, you know, when you just say the word, but it’s worth pointing out that that’s only one part in a thousand of the world domestic product. In other words, humanity — and all of the countries in the world — has its annual domestic product combined of about $30 trillion, so that a $30 billion cost to save a very large part of the rest of life, one thousandth of that, now this seems to me, and I’ve never been rebutted on that, to be the best bargain ever offered humanity. Another way of putting the figures that have been worked out by teams of biologists and economists is that $30 billion would save, at least for a while, would throw an umbrella over some 70 percent of the known species living on the land.

Q: And what about people in this country? Suppose we took seriously what you propose. Would it require that we lower our standard of living, and if so, how much?

A: It would increase our standard of living if we did it sensibly. It would mean that we would now include in our programs of scientific and technological advance the methods to make far better use of already cultivated land, other natural resources that we have of alternative energy sources, all those things, you know, that we now are waking up to as crucial to our future, quite apart from the living environment from the creation. We move in that direction, and then include in it the goal to take through with us, through this bottleneck that we’re in right now of overpopulation and over-consumption, gross consumption, to take through as much of the rest of life and creation as we can until we can get on better footing economically and environmentally. Then this would be worth tremendous amount of effort on our part as a country and the world at large.

Q: How much would population growth have to be reduced in order to accomplish what you want?

A: You know, the question is moot, because we already know that the population is slowing down; growth is slowing down fast. Right now we are at a point of somewhere around an average worldwide of three children per woman, fertility worldwide. And that is down to about half of what it was 40 years ago or so. It turns out that women get a little more freedom, a little more security, more independence, and more control over their own reproduction virtually everywhere in the world, they reduce the number of children they have. They want a small number of quality children. It’s as simple as that. So, it’s been estimated that due to this downward trend of fertility, we will peak worldwide at a population of somewhere around 9 billion, and that’s, say, roughly 40 percent more than are on the earth today. That’s manageable.

Q: What about the implications for government power? The kinds of things that would have to be done, it seems, require a certain amount of coercion on the part of the state, no?

A: No, sir. In a free, capitalist, competitive democracy like the United States, it only requires markets, some boosting markets, some kind of encouragement, and that can come about by two means. One, and foremost, is public awareness. As the public becomes better informed about what the world and America’s environmental problems are, and therefore can see things in personal, human self-interest, then they will begin to ask questions of how we can accomplish this. And when they see the role that biodiversity plays in the stability of the world and how valuable it can be in every respect to us now and the future generations, then we will get a bottom-up pulse of opinion that can push it, expressed in the marketplace, expressed in the polls and voting booths. The other way is — and this has to come about as part of the political process — we should put subsidies on those kinds of scientific and technological advances. We have all kinds of subsidies already; most of them are to pursue what often are ruinous environmental practices, you know, such as the fisheries, at least in the past. And now we need to be able to encourage industry and technological innovators to move in the direction of producing a better world with material and energy consumption and conservation of the rest of life.

Q: I’d like to take you through some of what I imagine to be the objections of a Southern Baptist pastor, the kind of person to whom you have addressed your book. You’re speaking from the point of view of someone who was long ago convinced that evolution and natural selection are the way we all got to be the way we are. I can imagine someone who would say Genesis doesn’t say that. Genesis says God created everything in six days.

A: That’s precisely why I wrote THE CREATION. I put my cards face up on the table as a biologist who indeed has spent his life working on evolution and is convinced of its reality. But then, having expressed my own personal beliefs very frankly, including my secularist interpretation of the position of humanity and the universe, I offer a hand of friendship. That’s something I don’t think any natural scientist of my acquaintance has ever done, particularly when they start arguing about these issues. And that’s why I address the Southern Baptist pastor. He stands in for the evangelicals, who stand in for religious believers who have that moral view, generally: Pastor, we need your help, and it doesn’t matter what either one of us, or any of us, believe about how it got there. The creation is there. It’s the glory of the Earth. It’s the treasure house and the responsibility of humanity. Let’s see if we can’t get together on saving it as common ground in a good American tradition, and if we did, because science and religion are the most powerful social forces on Earth, we could do it. It would be a wonderful way to get together and put the best of what we have, your commitment, your religious passion, your beliefs put to a good purpose, and the scientists’ passion, based on secular knowledge, scientific knowledge — I mean, that’s what we do. That’s our business is to find out all these facts, put them together, and solve the problem.

Q: There are people who claim that evolution is not yet proven.

A: I think they’re wrong. I think the evidence is overwhelming. But that said, I don’t think that should be a serious stumbling block even in terms of the cooperation of religious [communities] and environmentalists and scientific researchers at all, because we can find, I think, common ground without settling that argument. I want to put aside the culture wars. I want to call a truce on the culture wars. Or if they continue to be conducted, I’d like to have them conduct this on a different battlefield. I want to see these differences in worldview acknowledged but then put aside, or at least that the culture wars, as they’ve been conducted recently, occur on a different battlefield. It can be simultaneously, but I want to join on another terrain that in the long-term I believe will prove to be more important for humanity to solve this other big problem.

Q: Some people say history is going to come to an end very soon. The end times are approaching, perhaps within our lifetime, so why do we have to worry about all these species? We’ve got better things to think about.

A: On the matter of end time, I know a lot of people believe in it, especially within the evangelical movement. But it comes down to really a matter of time, doesn’t it? There are some who believe that it is upon us, that it will occur in our lifetimes, it could occur within a few weeks, and so on. But I think the majority of Christians and possibly a majority of evangelicals don’t believe that it’s coming that quickly. If you accept it — as a secularist I wouldn’t, but let’s say you accept it, that it’s coming. Then it really is a matter of how long it is off. Even if it’s a short time off, I believe that the Bible was quite plain, and that common sense makes it compelling, and that everything that is human that we feel as human should make it a precept of our morality that we take care of the creation. An evangelical leader, I think it was Billy Graham, but certainly one of that fame and caliber, said not long ago that just because we’re stewards of the Earth doesn’t mean that we should be trashing it.

Q: There’s a line in your book: “Pastor, tell me this is not true.” You were referring to this idea that we don’t have to take care of the Earth because it’s all going to end very soon, and you said that was a gospel of cruelty and despair.

A: A very small majority of Christians, and maybe a small majority even among the born-again Christians, believe that the Rapture, that is, the bodiless asset of those born again, saved by the Redeemer, will occur very quickly, very soon, in our lifetime, and that therefore there isn’t a lot of value in paying any attention to what we do to the Earth. We could go ahead and tear it all to hell and back and make whatever use of it we want, because it’s been given to us sort of like a Christmas present to be unwrapped and used by the Creator. I do consider that, frankly, as a gospel of despair, of pessimism, a view of humanity and our place on this Earth that is indefensible.

Q: And some people might say don’t worry too much about it. Human beings are resourceful. Some of them are brilliant, and human genius will get us out of this.

A: Yes. I’ve faced the argument many times. That comes from the other extreme. Now we’re departing from the religious as such, and now we’re going over to what can be called techno-mania, and that is an unlimited faith in human potential to solve our problems, including of our own making. No matter how serious they are, we’ve always been ingenious. We’ve always figured out some way of replacing things we threw away, of restoring things we destroyed, of finding new sources of strength and energy. So we’ll just rely on human genius, we’ll rely on science, and we’ll rely on technology to pull us out, no matter how badly we screw up. So it’s okay to just plow full ahead and have total faith in humanity’s ability to adapt to all changing conditions. You might say that’s a kind of secularist extremism way at the opposite side of the pole of those in the evangelical movement who say it doesn’t matter what we do to the Earth, we will be provided for by God.

Q: Do you think human genius could solve it?

A: Well, let me put it this way. Can human genius solve all problems of our own making as we are totally reckless about how we handle our own environment? I think there are lots of situations that could be imagined in which no amount of human genius can solve the problems. If you chose to take a nose dive off a ten-story building, we can’t do anything for you. We’re just not that brilliant.

Q: Back to the imagined Southern Baptist pastor. What arguments would you put to him that you would want him to answer?

A: I think straight talk. In fact, what I’ve done in THE CREATION is to say, and the key to this is respect, deference, and a willingness to ask for help from the secularists, particularly the secular- based scientists and environmentalists, and to say, particularly in my case I could say I know the evangelical culture. I know the Bible. There’s a lot for me to learn. I’d like to learn more. I’d like to learn more about the worldview of Judeo-Christianity and particularly evangelicalism. But now I’d like to take you on a tour through my world and tell you how I see modern biology, where it is today, where it’s going, what the problems are that we’ve revealed concerning the environment and the like. So that’s the first thing I say to my new friend, the Southern Baptist pastor, and then I say, “You know, I’m not in a position to tell you this, but I would be so heartened if you agreed that there’s common ground and that somehow what I could lay before you, and my colleagues, you know, in science and environmental work — we lay before you something that you see as worthy of your ministry.”

Q: Isn’t the idea of stewardship strong in the Bible? Can it ever be interpreted to mean that God put us in charge and we can do anything we want with these lesser forms of life? And there is also plenty that says we have a responsibility to look after what God created.

A: Well, I’m not a biblical scholar. But I’ve read a lot in the Bible, and I grew up with it, and the feeling that I had from the very beginning was that the Bible preaches stewardship, that is, gives us responsibility. It gives us the rule of the Earth, the dominion of the Earth, but it also gives us responsibility, and it does not tell us really to transform everything into a cornfield, you know, to make everything just produce more people and more products to feed more people. There’s nothing in the Bible there that I’m aware of — I’m willing to stand corrected — but I go by Genesis and this magnificent command, I think it was on the fourth day of creation: “Let the waters be filled with countless living creatures, and let the birds fly above the Earth beneath the vault of the sky.”

Q: In one of your books it was widely interpreted that you were saying our behavior and everything about our lives was determined by our genes, much more than people at the time wanted to hear. You were the center of a lot of controversy, which eventually died down. But where do you stand now on that, on the extent to which we are the creatures of our genes and, on the other hand, we are shaped by our environment and by free will?

A: It’s a tough question to answer today, even though we know a great deal more about the relation between heredity and environment in shaping the human character, and by that I mean not just our individual traits as human beings, but the entire panoply of human nature. Thirty years ago, I published a book called SOCIOBIOLOGY and proposed that there is such a thing as human nature and that a lot of what we tend to do, what can be called instincts in humans, has a biological basis. The idea was very controversial. In fact, it was very substantially attacked. At that time, what was called a blank slate view of the brain was in almost complete control of the academic world, of social sciences. Marxists — that was their prayer book, the blank slate, because they believed at that time that humanity was entirely the product of culture and environment and that the brain came into existence, that is, in each human a blank slate on which experience inscribed our character. We know that’s not true now. The blank slate view disappeared rather quickly in the face of scientific evidence. But that evidence did not lead to the view of human beings as genetic automatons, you know, all determined and not in control of our own destiny. No, it led to something else. It led to a picture, and it’s getting clearer all the time, of humans as having a true nature that we all share, and that these are expressed in our emotions, and that they make some things easier for us to learn and other things very hard to learn. They make it certain that we’ll have strong emotions in different stages of our lives that make it almost compelling to do one thing as opposed to another. But it gives us enormous freedom in the way we do that and in the way we can control or enhance those traits that are hard-wired into our brain. I think that’s the basic idea today concerning the nature of human nature.

Q: Is one of the things that is hard-wired into us the idea that God exists?

A: Yes. Maybe not the Judeo-Christian God, but the idea that there are deities, there are supernatural forces in more elementary societies. These are sometimes just the spirits of the ancestors that are with us and wandering about and helping guide us, but the idea of supernatural guidance and empowerment of our tribe — notice tribe, not all of humanity, but particularly the group we belong to — I believe is hard-wired in us.

Q: Is there hard-wiring for the idea of there being something more than the material world?

A: Yes.

Q: Not just for the tribe but for all –

A: Yep.

Q: — for all human beings, something more that deep down we have a yearning for, experience of, and contact with?

A: I think that one of the deepest of human qualities hard-wired in the brain, if you wish, is the intense desire to belong to a group that shares important parts of its culture, and shares the sense of purpose larger than individual self, and shares, in the most cases it would be, a supernatural approbation and guidance and favor. In the case of secularists, we have the same types of grouping, culture formation, but now it comes and gets its expression as great goals of humanitarianism, a desire to learn as much about the universe as possible. But whatever form it takes, it seems to be fundamental to human beings.

Q: Can a person be both a good scientist and a person of religious faith?

A: Absolutely. I think that a person who is fundamentalist, to the extent of being a biblical literalist — you know, very strict interpretation of the actual words as sacred script and who denies that evolution ever occurred — is going to have trouble doing science in certain broad areas of biology. But otherwise I would say for those who accept that humanity came about by evolution, and that would include members of the Roman Catholic Church, for example, and most denominations, it is quite possible to have all the accoutrements of spirituality and believe in a deity.

Q: As a secular humanist, do you think everything can or will be explained by science?

A: No.

Q: Do you think that science can tell us everything there is to know about living?

A: I believe that science will, in the end — and remember science is not some body of entities that exists apart from humanity or from other belief systems; science is simply that body of knowledge from which we have gained some confidence by testing, by transparency, by logical connections to other bodies of science; [it] is the most democratic of all human activities, and it is one that’s widely shared, so let’s be clear on what science is. I would say that the scientific knowledge expanding still, almost at exponential rate, has already covered and given different explanations, and different world views apply, to a large part of what religion earlier appropriated to itself. But will science explain everything? No. We’re not that smart. Even with supercomputers, we’re not going to explain everything. There’s just too much complicated detail out there. We may get finally our unified theory of physics. We may come to understand in substantial detail how almost every species on Earth came into being and so on. But that’s still far from everything.

Q: Religious people often remind us that there are things like beauty and our appreciation of beauty. There are things like moral law. There are things like the religious impulse itself. I think a lot of people would argue that these are things science can never explain, because they are part of a spiritual reality that science doesn’t deal with.

A: I think science will explain a lot, particularly when neuroscience really reaches maturity as a science. But that does not degrade the matter whatsoever. If you explain the total physics of a violin, and you go to explain why the brain responds and what parts of it are responding and perhaps even some reasons, in terms of human survivability, we consider a particular piece of music beautiful, it doesn’t degrade the beauty of it. I think it enhances it, and that’s where science and the humanities and perhaps religion eventually will converge.

Q: Many people think it very important that there is a God who is separate from us, who makes his presence something we can experience in our daily lives, and that experience is of enormous value to people. The idea is that there is a spiritual realm to reality that is separate from the material. Do you acknowledge that?

A: Let me put it this way. I’m a good scientist. I’m not a hundred percent sure about anything, and I do have a kind of driving faith that humanity, having seized Promethean fire, so to speak, and found out how to understand the universe, will keep going until we will be able to explain things like the origin and the mechanics of spirituality. But that’s just a belief that I have, based on the track record of science. I do not believe, but this is a personal belief, that there is any sort of intercession, via divinity or other supernatural force, on human feeling, even the most exalting human feeling. But, as I said to my pastor, you could be wrong. I could be wrong. We may both be partly right.

I’ve tried not to water down in any way the fundamental difference between science and mainstream religion concerning the origin of life. God made the Creation, you say. This truth is plainly stated in Holy Scripture. Twenty-five centuries of theology and much of Western civilization have been built upon it. But no, I say, respectfully. Life was self-assembled by random mutation and natural selection of the codifying molecules. As radical as such an explanation may seem, it is supported by an overwhelming body of interlocking evidence. It might yet prove wrong, but year by year that seems less probable. And it raises this theological question: Would God have been so deceptive as to salt the earth with so much misleading evidence?

Much as I would like to think otherwise, I see no hope for compromise in the idea of Intelligent Design. Simply put this proposal agrees that evolution occurs but argues that it is guided by a supernatural intelligence. The evidence for Intelligent Design, however, consists solely of a default argument. Its logic is simply this: biologists have not yet explained how complex systems such as the human eye and spinning bacterial cilium could have evolved by themselves; therefore a higher intelligence must have guided the evolution. Unfortunately, no positive evidence exists for Intelligent Design. None has been proposed to test it. No theory has been suggested, or even imagined, to explain the transcription from supernatural force to organic reality. That is why statured scientists, those who have led in original research, unanimously agree that the theory of Intelligent Design does not qualify as science.

Some have suggested that scientists have formed a conspiracy to halt the search for Intelligent Design. There is no such conspiracy. There is only agreement among experts that the hypothesis has none of the defining qualities of science. To think otherwise is to misunderstand the culture of science. Discoveries and the testing of discoveries are the currency of science, its irreplaceable silver and gold. Challenges to prevailing theory on the basis of new evidence are the hallmark of science. If positive and repeatable evidence were adduced for a supernatural intelligent force that created and guided the evolution of life, it would deservedly rank as the greatest scientific discovery of all time. It would transform philosophy and change the course of history. Scientists dream of making a discovery of this magnitude!

Without such an event, however, it is a dangerous step for theologians to summon the default argument of Intelligent Design as scientific support for religious belief. Biologists are explaining the previously unexplainable — providing evolutionary steps for the autonomous origin of ever more complex systems — at an accelerating pace. What is to become of the hypothesis of Intelligent Design as the remaining unpenetrated systems decline toward the vanishing point? The hypothesis will be dismissed and with it credibility of the idea of science-based theology. The odds powerfully favor such an outcome. In science, as in logic, a default argument can never replace positive evidence, but even a sliver of positive evidence can demolish a default argument.

You and I are both humanists in the broadest sense: human welfare is at the center of our thought. But the difference between humanism based on religion and humanism based on science radiates through philosophy and the very meaning we assign ourselves as a species. They affect the way we separately authenticate our ethics, our patriotism, our social structure, our personal dignity.

What are we to do? Forget the differences, I say. Meet on common ground. That might not be as difficult as it seems at first. When you think about it, our metaphysical differences have remarkably little effect on the conduct of our separate lives. My guess is that you and I are about equally ethical, patriotic, and altruistic. We are products of a civilization that rose from both religion and the science-based Enlightenment. We would gladly serve on the same jury, fight the same wars, sanctify human life with the same intensity. And surely we also share a love of the Creation.

I hope you will not have taken offence when I spoke of ascending to Nature instead of ascending away from it. It would give me deep satisfaction to find that expression as I have explained it compatible with your own beliefs. For however the tensions eventually play out between our opposing worldviews, however science and religion wax and wane in the minds of men, there remains the earthborn, yet transcendental, obligation we are both morally bound to share.

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: Now, a rare look at a dying phenomenon: the tent revival, where religious fervor seems to be encouraged by the open air.

Tent, or camp, revivals have been important social and religious traditions throughout American history, especially in the rural South. Producer David Bernknopf went to the Rock Springs campground in northwest Georgia, where they’ve been having camp meetings since 1887.

BETTY ROSS: I love the spirit that’s here. People just seem to be a different person when they’re here. I don’t know what it is.

WALLACE SUTTON: I’ve been coming to this campground ever since I was even big enough to remember. People used to come here and bring their cows — tie them out around here. They’d milk the cows here on the property.

EMMA ALLEN: Hey! How you doing? How are you doing there?

Unidentified Woman: It’s going to be a glorious day.

Ms. ALLEN: You know when you get together and have a good time in the Lord — what a time, what a time.

Unidentified Man #2 (Singing): No more bill collectors knocking at our door.

Reverend RANDY MINCEY (Presiding Pastor): It’s good to be able to see where we were and where we’ve come from. So this camp meeting is an opportunity for us to go back and reflect. That’s why I have this attire on today, just to go back and reflect on some of the hard times.

Congregation (Singing): Don’t visit heaven. Don’t cry against glory. Tell them we’ll be happy. Don’t you see? And there will be — don’t hang that sorrow. No more worrying about tomorrow.

Reverend FRANKLIN WINTERS (St. John Baptist Church, Cleveland, Georgia, preaching): The church is going to be raptured in a few more years. I don’t know the day, I don’t know the hour. I don’t want to know. But one thing I do want to know — I want to be ready when I’m in heaven. I want to be ready to go home with the Lord.

You’ve got to live the life that you talk about — the life that you sing about — Jesus is my Lord. And if he’s really your Lord, you will make it in.

Rev. MINCEY (preaching): Somebody need to know the Lord today. Somebody needs to feel God right now.

Unidentified Woman #2: It’s like a family reunion to us. Baby, we just enjoyed your preaching. You did a wonderful job, and you say give flower power, but we want to thank you for that message that you brought to us today.

Congregation (Singing): I still have joy.

GLORIA SUTTON (Campground Committee) (Singing): We say that we have glory. I still have joy.

ALASKER JAMES: Whoa, yeah. Whoa! Whoa, whoa. It’s joy. It is just so much joy. It just thrills your body. It just give you a new release in life and the spirit — when the spirit comes to you, you know the Lord God Almighty is looking down upon you.

Ms. SUTTON: There is a special feeling here, and I would say that it is because of the open air that there’s a freedom, there’s a freedom of spirit, you know. We’ve got so traditionalized in the churches and so programmed until — there’s no program to this. You move according to the spirit of God. And you just let Him have his way.

You feel it when you come on the ground. There’s a peace, there’s a serenity, you know, that man can’t give. You can’t buy, you know, and God can give it.

Congregation (Singing): Goodness and glory, hallelujah since I left my burden down.

Reverend LARRY DEAVERS (Mount Zion Baptist Church, Oakwood, Georgia, preaching): The message today, hold on in spite of. The Lord is looking for dedicated Christians. He’s looking for Christians who will stand for right when all others are wrong. I come to tell you to hold on in spite of. Hold on in spite of the dark days. Hold on. I know you get tired sometimes, but hold on. I know it, you get tired. But hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Oh, Satan, the blood of Jesus is against you.

Congregation (Singing): Oh, Satan, the blood of Jesus is against you. Oh, Satan, the blood of Jesus is against you. Satan, the blood of Jesus is against you. Oh, Satan, whoa, the blood of Jesus is against you. Oh, Satan. Oh, Satan, the blood of Jesus is against. I know the blood of Jesus is against you right now.