The mapping of the human genome is one of man’s great intellectual achievements. And the sequencing of the 3 billion DNA letters of our genetic code will one day enable millions to live longer and happier lives. But to some the ‘book of life’ also shows that living things, including humans, are merely information-processing machines. As the scientist Richard Dawkins put it “The digital revolution at the very core of life has dealt the final killing blow to the belief that living material is deeply distinct from nonliving material. There is no spirit driven life force...” From this viewpoint free will, consciousness, and love are but fabrications of our imagination.

This is hardly the first time such assertions have been made. “God is dead” Friedrich Nietzsche proclaimed over a century ago. To him scientific advances like the theory of evolution had discredited the concept of a higher force and so religious belief could no longer play a central role in human experience. To avoid the absence of all belief man would have to find secular justifications for morality.

But Fyodor Dostoyevsky felt it was impossible for an atheist society to have genuine moral principles. “If God does not exist then everything is permitted… If you were to destroy in mankind the belief in immortality, not only love but every living force maintaining the life of the world would at once dry up.”

Nietzsche’s ‘superman’ philosophy held that moral conduct is necessary only for the weak and inhibits the self-realization of the strong and hence the development of the superior individual. It found its logical conclusion in the Nazi Aryan ideal and Auschwitz. While the scientific materialist Russian revolution ended, as Dostoyevsky might have predicted, in the Gulag Archipelago.

The physicist Freeman Dyson, this year’s winner of the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion, sees no conflict between science and religion.

(This prize, whose 600,000 pounds value exceeds the Nobels, was created in 1972 by Sir John Templeton. It is awarded annually “to a living individual for outstanding originality in advancing the world’s understanding of God or spirituality”. Previous recipients include Billy Graham, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and Mother Teresa.)

To him science and religion are two different windows looking on the same universe. Both are one-sided attempts to understand existence which leave out essential features of the real world. And both are worthy of respect. But the greatest mysteries are those of our existence as conscious beings in a small corner of a vast universe. Why are we here? Does the universe have a purpose? Whence comes our knowledge of good and evil? Such questions are beyond the reach of science and lie on the other side of the border, within the jurisdiction of religion.

Religion has been a force for both good and evil throughout history. Terrible wars and persecutions have been conducted in its name. But it has also inspired many to lives of heroic virtue - bringing education and medical care to the poor, helping to abolish slavery, and spreading peace among nations. Progress in religion means that the good works inspired by religion should more and more prevail over the evil. It means that religion should more and more take the side of victims against oppressors.

Even the gruesome 20^th century evidenced progress in religion. Its great tyrants – Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot – were all avowed atheists. While most of thaose who epitomized the good - Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Mother Teresa - were in their different ways religious.

Dyson sums up his personal theology thus.

“The universe shows evidence of the operations of mind on three levels. The first level is the elementary physical processes we see when we study atoms in the laboratory. The second level is our direct human experience of our own consciousness. The third level is the universe as a whole. Atoms in the laboratory are weird, behaving like active agents rather than inert substances. They make unpredictable choices between alternative possibilities according to the laws of quantum mechanics. It appears that mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent inherent in every atom.

The universe as a whole is also weird, with laws of nature that make it hospitable to the growth of mind. I make no clear distinction between mind and God. God is what mind becomes when it has passed beyond the scale of our comprehension. God may be either a world-soul or a collection of world-souls. So atoms and humans and God may have minds that differ in degree but not in kind. I don’t say this personal theology is supported or proved by scientific evidence. But it is consistent with scientific evidence.”

Science and religion have been linked in another way. The National Institute of Healthcare Research in America analysed 42 scientific studies investigating the role of religion in health. It found that regular churchgoers of any denomination live significantly longer. There was a 7-year difference in life expectancy at age 20 between non-attenders and those who went to church more than once a week.

Regular churchgoers had lower blood pressure, suffered less from heart disease, cancer, and depression, and were less likely to be obese. They also tended to take better care of themselves, perhaps because they have a greater respect for the body. And the more people attended church the better their health.

The findings were even more surprising since many people turn to religion in extremis, often after they have become ill. The health benefits of religion may be partly due to the social support and friendship derived from frequent church going. But there is a known link between psychological and physical health.

American Gallup polls show that highly spiritual content people are twice as likely to be happy as those with low spiritual contentment. Apparently the meaning to life that religion offers and the sense that God will ultimately correct all injustice bring hope in the face of despair and so assist in coping with psychological stress. Faith seems to bestow a contentment and resilience in the face of misfortune with which modern medicine and psychotherapy still cannot compete.

Jamaica supposedly has the most churches per acre in the world and may be the most church going nation on earth. Perhaps this explains why, despite ranking only 126^th in PPP per capita GDP and 53^rd in health care quality and having one of the world’s highest murder rates, we rank 36^th in healthy life expectancy? changkob@hotmail.com