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| Personal background |
I am a Roman Catholic seminarian, studying for the priesthood at Mundelein Seminary (near Chicago) for the Diocese of Springfield-in-Illinois. I hold BS and MS degrees in Physiology, and before entering the seminary, was an R&D Chemist for a small pharmaceutical company in my hometown of Decatur, IL. During breaks from the seminary, I am presently employed as a 'polysomnographic technologist' (a.k.a. 'sleep-lab guy') at a Chicagoland hospital. For fun, I fly- I hold a commercial pilot certificate with single/multi/instrument airplane ratings. I am running SETI@home off of my Dell Dimension 8100/2.6GHz P4, an HP zt1175 at 1.4GHz P4m, and off of my parent's Dell Optiplex 300 with twin 800MHz P3's, all running XP and with more RAM than we would ever need. (Well, more RAM and processing power than I would need anymore... I remember those days in the lab as a grad student when I would have killed for a computer like I have today to do similar spectral analyses which back then took all night... a theologian's computer could afford to be a little less extravagant, I suppose.) If there is anyone out there who would like to discuss thoughts on the possibility of (intelligent) extraterrestrial life elsewhere in the universe and what that might mean to faith, feel free to send me email. I would hold the opinion that faith and science are ultimately not in mutually-exclusive opposition.
I switched over to BOINC in Feb 2005, after completing 7000 units on Classic SETI. |
| Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home |
| In case it is not obvious, I do not speak on behalf of the Catholic Church. (As far as I know, the Church does not claim to be able to teach authoritatively on this matter, leaving science free to explore all possibilities.) So, reserving the right to be absolutely wrong about my opinion, I doubt-but don't know if-intelligent extraterrestrial life exists. I would consider it even more doubtful that intelligent extraterrestrial life can be discovered with the SETI techniques and technology in use today (if it were out there to be found). Nonetheless, I believe my participation in this project is important. Like the need to search the heights and depths of this earth, like the need to understand the physical stuff (particles, forces, atoms, DNA, etc) which is used to build our bodies and our (perhaps-shared?) universe, like the need to speculate on our ultimate destiny, the SETI project is an effort to dispel ignorance about the created universe and the human experience. Finding extraterrestrial intelligent life could only been seen as further expression of God's overwhelming creative diversity and God's magnanimity in giving the gift of life to creation. If there is life to be found, let me do my (small) part. If there is life out there, I'll take knowledge over frivolous speculation and ignorance any day. |
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