Gregg Braden wants to save us from ourselves.
The bestselling author of The God Code: Healing Our Future Through the Message of Our Past (Hay House Press, $39.99) claims he has found a coded message within human DNA that spells out the key to healing our bodies and resolving ethnic and religious conflict.
''It's a mathematic link between the ancient Biblical alphabet and the elements that science recognizes in the periodic table,'' said Braden, who will speak about his discovery Friday and June 26 in South Florida. ``Literally, within every cell of our body the ancient name of God is inscribed.''
By translating Hebrew letters into their numerical equivalents, which he says are laid out in ancient scriptures, Braden has matched them to the atomic weight of the chemicals that make up the human genome. Hydrogen becomes the Hebrew letter Yod, nitrogen becomes the letter Hey, oxygen becomes the letter Vav, and carbon becomes the Gimel, spelling out, Braden claims, Y-hweh, one of the 72 Hebrew names for God.
''These substitutions now reveal that the ancient form of God's name, YH, exists as the literal chemistry of our genetic code,'' Braden writes. The message in its entirety spells out ''God eternal within the body,'' according to Braden, who says he hopes the discovery will help to forge a common identity for humanity at a time when the planet is plagued by ethnic and sectarian warfare.
''It lays the foundation for a principle of peace,'' he said.
A geologist and former computer systems designer, Braden, who has written several other books, including the Awakening to Zero Point (Radio Bookstore Press, $15.95) and Isaiah Effect: Decoding the Lost Science of Prayer and Prophecy (Three Rivers Press, $14.95), said The God Code is the culmination of 12 years of research.
But genetics experts are skeptical about the scientific validity of Braden's theory.
Jonathan Marks, an anthropologist at the University of North Carolina who has studied the genetic similarities between humans and chimpanzees, said that with an estimated 3 ½ billion chemical combinations making up the human genome, it's not hard to construct the message you're looking for.
'The DNA code consists of four letters, AGCT, so the `messages' can only be made of those letters. Consequently, the DNA says somewhere, probably in many places, 'GAG A CAT' but I would hesitate to take that as a message from God,'' said Marks.
Bob Pollack, a molecular biologist and the director of the Center for the Study of Science and Religion at Columbia University in New York City, agreed that the science was off. ''It's not something that makes sense unless you discard the evidence of nature. DNA has been around for about 5 billion years; Hebrew has been around for about 5,000, or one millionth of that time,'' he wrote in an e-mail.
But Braden says that science and religion use different languages to describe the same thing.
''To a scientist, it is a very bizarre concept to think of the chemicals in our body as a kind of alphabet, but, on the other hand, it's how the ancient texts say our body works,'' he said.
Braden, who argues that the divine code has healing powers, will discuss how to ''activate'' the healing properties in human DNA by reciting the ancient name of God in his upcoming seminar.