The religion paradox

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Studies show that religious believers live longer, healthier lives. This suggests that religion may have evolved by natural selection. So, is God real (as religion evolved for a purpose), or is God not real (as particular religious beliefs only benefit survival)?

It should be noted that natural selection does not favor the one who lives longest- it favors the one who has the most babies. From this standpoint the common religious mandate to chastity could be viewed as slightly maladaptive. Living longer does not increase your Darwinian fitness, and may in fact decrease it if you take up resources that otherwise would go to your descendents.
However, if you also look at natural selection as acting upon groups rather than just individuals (as it does) you can see that a religious society would have greater order, with its mandates restraining the impulses of fools, and so the society could grow to be more successful than others. I take the view of theistic evolution, as did Newton, viewing God as the great clockmaker who established the rules by which this world runs and then letting it tick along.
Of course, no clock keeps perfect time, and sometimes He has to step in to reset His clock.

Orwell, I'll go one further on your statement. You dont have it quite right either.

Natural Selection favours those that create viable offspring. Not simply the most. The babies have to live to reproduce.

I think the biggest contributor if this is true, is that it gives people a sense of purpose. It gives them rules and guides their thinking and behaviour. I think that an atheist with the ability to seek out objective truths in life can extract just as much meaning if not more from life.

No, we just keep screwing it up ourselves. God did a good job creating the heavens and the earth, but we wanted to have things our own way...