The meaning of life: Religious discourse in the science and politics of human biotechnology.

Globally there has been a vitalization and strengthening of the religious dimension during the last decades, We propose to investigate this re-actualisation of religion within an area traditionally thought of as its opposite, namely science, and more prec isely the science of human biotechnology. Science is often thought of as the globalising and modernising force par excellence, while religion is seen as a local and tradition-centred phenomenon, bound to wither away under the pressures of modernisation. H owever, this equation of modernization with rationalisation and disenchantment is fundamentally challenged both by the new revival of religion and by the developing new technologies of life within modern genetics. At the same time, the division between re ligious and scientific discourse may not at all be clear-cut. The discourse of hope accompanying and driving the development of human biotechnology, may be seen as a secular variant of Christian salvational beliefs, promising the creation of a medical hea ven - not in the hereafter, but on this earth, and not in a millennial perspective, but within 10 or 20 years. To what degree are we facing a change within the political and scientific discourse on human genetics, from a scientific risk discourse to a rei nforcing of a religious dimension within scientific and political discourses in western societies? And what does such a change mean, in terms both of the possibility of democratizing the politics and science of human biotechnology, and in the wider cultu ral and social understandings of this technology? We aim at investigating how the relationship between religion and science unfold in different socio-cultural and political settings throughout the world today. Focussing upon human biotechnology allows us to use this technology as a key to discussing the revival of religion and religious argumentation in general and how this revival spill into both public debate, scientific discourse and political regulations.