THE BELL CURVE:

Every serious journalist I’ve ever known has a drawer in his or her desk devoted to the Book.

The one they are going to write one day that will make the bestseller list and enable them to ditch the daily grind of petty crimes and self-serving pols to devote themselves to the next book — and the one after that.

The drawer is crammed with fragments envisioned while drifting through fast-food dinners that get faster when overtaken with the urge to write these fragments down before they are lost in the miasma of recording the realities of daily life.

Few of us actually get that book written. And most of us who do never get past the struggle for an agent required these days to get your book before a publisher.

That’s why Bill Lobdell is living a miracle with the publication of a book in which he describes his journey away from the possibility of such an assist from God.

As recorded here earlier, Bill spent several years as a religion writer for the Los Angeles Times.

He left that beat a year ago when immersion in the business of religion drove him away from a lifetime of faith. The Times allowed him the space to write about this journey at considerable length and with powerful clarity and feeling.

Several agents came running, a contract was signed, and a book written that will appear in local book stores Feb. 24.

His first book signing will be Feb. 28 at Borders bookstore, 1890 Newport Blvd., Costa Mesa.

I watch this with an extra measure of pleasure since Bill was a student of mine at UCI.

But I also watch it with a twinge of envy since seeking a way to reconcile the faith that carried me through a war with the science and reason I began exploring when I came home has been a lifelong journey for me.

I’ve never had enough of either Bill’s clarity or passion to write about it, but I am finding a current spate of interest in this dilemma that is turning on lights.

Maybe it’s because age makes me more open to such messages that have been around for a long time, especially when they come from Charles and Emma Darwin, Abraham Lincoln, and Albert Einstein.

If ever the potential for a harmonious marriage was low, the Darwins were prime examples because — as described in Deborah Heligman’s biography — they were at opposite poles on the issue that drove Charles’ life, the research and writing of “The Origins of Species.”

He was already into it when he proposed to Emma, who believed strongly that a belief in God was the only way to heaven.

Against advice from his father, Charles told Emma about his project. Honesty won, and they were married. All she asked was that he not close the door on faith.

In the years that followed, she proofread his papers with punctilious skill while she disagreed with his arguments that wrote God off as our creator.

The Darwins were married for 43 years, and never parted from either their convictions or their respect for each other. But throughout those years Emma pleaded with her husband not to approach religion the same way he approached science, because “what leads to faith is feeling, not reasoning.”

Einstein arrived at a similar conclusion without ever abandoning science.

He wrote: “I do not believe in a personal God, and I have never denied this, but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious, then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.”

More pungently, he said: “Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind.”

In a more expansive mood, he said: “Everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe — a spirit vastly superior to that of man.”

And, finally: “What humanity owes to personalities like Buddha, Moses and Jesus ranks for me higher than all the achievements of the inquiring and instructive mind.”

It is left to Abraham Lincoln to summarize the science-faith debate in a single pithy sentence.

Although he regularly referred to God in both public and private talk and attended services at the Presbyterian church in Washington, Lincoln never — according to his biographer, Carl Sandburg — indicated that he belonged to any particular church or special faith or doctrine.

One of Lincoln’s favorite stories was about two Quakers comparing the personal qualities of Lincoln and Confederate President Jefferson Davis.

One said he favored Davis because he was a “praying man.” When the other Quaker countered “Abraham is a praying man, too,” the Davis supporter responded, “Yes, but the Lord will think Abraham is joking.”

He wasn’t joking when his best Illinois friend, Joshua Speed, came to visit him in Washington and found him reading the Bible. Speed said, “If you have recovered from your skepticism, I am sorry to say that I have not.”

And Lincoln rose, placed his hand on his friend’s shoulder, and said: “You are wrong. Take all of this book upon reason that you can and the balance on faith, and you will live and die a happier and better man.”

I find that a place I can work from.

But I’ll also be checking out Bill’s take on this age-old question.

JOSEPH N. BELL lives in Newport Beach. His column runs Thursdays.