Robert Wright ran up against his Southern Baptist upbringing when the theory of evolution was introduced in his 10th-grade biology class. He left that faith, but never those topics, and has been a champion of religion’s potential to propel social evolution toward the good. Wright, 52, is also a founder and editor of BloggingHeads.tv, a Web site devoted to intellectual discourse. His most recent book is “The Evolution of God.”
Do you consider yourself to be of a specific faith?
I do believe that there is some larger purpose unfolding that has so far carried humanity on balance toward the good. And I think for that reason you could say there’s a transcendent source of meaning. I’m not confident about the existence of God, but I don’t rule out the existence of something called divinity.
Do you engage in any sort of religious practice?
The closest thing I’ve had to spiritual practice is flirtation with meditation. I did a one-week meditative retreat that was at least briefly transformative — for at least several days after that, I was a good person. [Laughter.] I’m going back for a refresher course. At first it’s brutal — there’s no talking, five and a half hours of sitting meditation, five and a half hours of walking meditation, no phone calls, no news. But by the end of the week you’re less self-centered and more appreciative of others’ perspectives, and of the good in other people. That’s moving toward moral truth.
Your book “The Evolution of God” expresses optimism for the future harmony of Judaism, Islam and Christianity. What inspires such optimism?
It’s a guarded optimism. But the main point is that the Scriptures themselves, when appraised in the context of the circumstances that surrounded their authorship, show that there is a key to fostering tolerance. After the Israeli exile, for example, once Israel was a part of the Persian empire and surrounded by its allies, that brought out the best in monotheism. You see in Scripture written after the exile that God showed compassion to people like the Assyrians, who used to be enemies. That’s one example — when people don’t feel threatened, and can gain through collaboration, they’re inclined to tolerate other religions.
As the scale of social organization gets bigger, societies have to develop doctrines of tolerance or they collapse. Now that social organization is on a global scale, we’ll have to develop an all-encompassing tolerance for the system to really thrive.
You’ve been criticized by atheist intellectuals. Do you have a sense for why atheism has become so well-accepted in our culture?
I think it’s partly 9/11, and partly the amount of evidence that religion can be bad, including Islamic fundamentalism, and parts of American Christian fundamentalism. But one place that the new atheists are wrong is in their assertion that religion is an overwhelmingly negative force, and that a great many of the world’s ills come out of it — I think that’s wrong. Most religious conflicts are not fundamentally about religion, and do not originate in religious doctrine. Circumstances that bring out religious belligerence would bring out other reasons for belligerence, like nationalism. The world’s problem is not that there are a lot of religious people.
At your core, what is one of your defining beliefs?
The thing I have faith in is that if enlightened self-interest prevails, humans will move closer to moral truth, and we’ll all benefit. If we look out for ourselves in a way that takes into account the whole picture, and doesn’t involve succumbing to emotions that are selfish in the short term, we’ll all benefit as a result.
