Can Science and Faith Mingle?

I still remember the day I saw the film, My Sister’s Keeper. I was fascinated that the family was able to go to a doctor that was able to engineer their next child to be a genetic match for their daughter suffering from acute promyelocytic leukemia. I was a freshman in high school and quite inquisitive so, in addition to learning about genetics in school, I did my own research. I looked into what jobs were available in that field. I was determined that I would grow up to be a genetic engineer.

I was so enthusiastic about my career choice; I wanted to share the news with everyone! I told my whole family at the table and the responses weren’t what I thought they’d be, “Oh, you want to play God?” Those weren’t my intentions; I just wanted to help people. I was in shock and confused. My family is Catholic and, I never thought that my religion could have such a significant impact on my life and what I wanted to be. If I like science more and believe in evolution, am I not Catholic?

Can science and faith mingle? I thought by reading, Francis Collins’ book, The Language of God, I would finally be able to know if it was okay to believe in God and science. Collins wrote, “…I was beginning to understand from looking into my own heart, the evidence of God’s existence would have to come from other directions, and the ultimate decision would be based on faith, not proof” (36). I believe that there is no definite answer as to whether faith and science can mingle. Due to perception, everyone has their own beliefs and this is one of the topics where I believe there is no right or wrong answer. It is unique to each individual. 

A Revitalized Sense of Tenor

     My bun. The closest experience that I had ever gotten to television was the local broadcast of my bun on Virginia Beach’s Channel 3 News WTKR.  It was the homecoming of sailors, not my hair that was the local news beat, and I just happened to be in the right arms at the right time.

     Naturally, they cut off the part where I turn my head up and point at the camera, and switch to a floating reporter head. And in the quest for editing perfection, I think that news segment suffered. It would seem to be a moment that you would want to linger on, the reunion of a family. But undoubtedly due to some unspoken commandments of broadcast journalism, it would be cut short.

     This memory made becoming a live audience member of the 13^th Congressional Candidate Debate at the University of Illinois, that much more exciting. In a congressional race that broke state history for campaign expenditures, most of which funded negative television ads, it was enlightening and entertaining to see the battle between Republican and Democrat, and Independent.

     With each jab that Rodney Davis (R) and David Gill (D) took towards each other, a candidate became less composed; pink, sweaty, and irritated. All the while John Hartman , the unusually lucky (yet still unrewarded) independent candidate, stood at the end, receiving little airtime and even less scrutiny from his rivals. And perhaps that’s where Hartman went wrong. It was obvious that the man was inexperienced. From the blandness of his suit, his sensible solutions, and his nonexistent “thoughts and prayers” that went out to the Hurricane Sandy Victims (see Rodney Davis), it seems to be that Hartman wasn’t thought to stand a chance.  

     In light of the Presidential Race, the 13^th Congressional Race of 2012 appeared to be miniscule, but with the uncut and raw nature of a debate unfolding before one’s eyes, politics, even on a Congressional Representatives’’ scale, gains a revitalized sense of tenor. 

Classical Music, an Acquired Taste

Many scientists write off music as auditory sensory adaption stemming from human evolution, but musician and psychologist Denial Levitin theorizes in his book, This is Your Brain on Music, that music is partially a tool used for attraction. Thinking in a purely psychosexual standpoint, if a person has enough time and intelligence to master the art of music they prove to also have enough to raise a family. It makes sense. Just think about all the love songs that play on the radio.

Music is seen as a form of communication, yet individuals react differently to various genres. Levitin explains that the brain’s neural networks of perception are closed off after adolescence. So if you enjoyed rock music growing up, you will most likely continue listening to similar genres as you age. The same would be for any type of music. Unless you continuously seek out diverse genres in your lifetime the brain’s perception of music hits a roadblock.

There is something about that reasoning I don’t find justifying. Maybe it’s my underlying desire to find out why classical music is less popular than rap, for example. Humans are wired to look for patterns and relationships in everyday living which, I feel, plays a large role in musical perception. Much like coffee or anchovies, classical music is an acquired taste. Popular modern music tends to have much repetition: whether it is lyrics, harmony, and/or rhythm. It’s hard to find a song on the radio that even remotely changes in volume. People are comfortable with music that has no surprises. It’s predictable. Contemporary music is so structured and simplified; it’s left with little to no room for interpretation. Classical music is slightly different. It relies mostly on the effect of tension and resolution. Like a movie, it keeps the listener wondering what’s going to happen next. It takes a while to become used to the uncertainty and obscurity of classical music. This could be why it’s so much harder to write.

Herberia: Invaluable and Under-valued

Botanist Mike Murphy shows sedge specimen. These are specimen of particular interest to Murphy because they are present in nearly every ecosystem in the Midwest, but little is understood about them since they are difficult to identify.

Picture the Field Museum's main entrance. You're likely to imagine groups of schoolchildren and camera-clad tourists crowding around Sue, the famous t-rex skeleton. Now, imagine the herbarium at the University of Illinois. This may be more difficult, since the herbarium sees few visitors and many people have no idea what an herbarium looks like, or even is. However, the herbarium, which holds hundreds of thousands of dried plant specimen, is as important to understanding our planet's past as dinosaur bones. And, unlike Sue, these plant specimen are also important to understanding the present and future of our planet. 

“You hear a lot of talk in the news about conserving species, but when you talk about ecosystems the foundation... of the majority of ecosystems are plants,” says Botanist Mike Murphy.

The Roger A. Evers Laboratory is home to the Illinois Natural History Survey Herbarium, which is one of the largest and most active remaining university collections in the country.

“A lot of colleges, because there are so few botanists, are getting rid of their herberia,” says Murphy. This collection is instead growing by 4,000 to 5,000 specimen a year and holds local and international specimen.

Rows of cabinets make up the herbarium, which simply appears to be a storage facility. It would remain unclear to visitors what was stored within these cabinets, if not for the earthy, almost flowery, scent. The cabinets are fire and waterproof and the room is kept around 65 degrees and at 33 percent humidity. These measures keep the collection from being ruined by insects and moisture, which could easily destroy the collection- especially the oldest specimen dating back to the 1700's.

“The herbarium is completely invaluable to protecting our natural resources and understanding what was here, what is here and why it's here,” says Murphy. In order to protect these specimen, the botanists must continue to protect the collection from the threats of fire, moisture, and insects- as well as humankind.

What is Journalism?

Jean Garner, a guest speaker from Al Jazeera English, asked the students of JOUR 199 what they considered journalism to be. Through her work with Al Jazeera, Garner focuses on the impact documentaries have on rural communities as well as the network’s Western audience. The program seeks observational films that are character driven, bringing a face and voice to important issues related to social justice, minority rights, economic equality and civil rights.

Garner drew on our own experiences, questioning whether or not social media constituted as a form of journalism. As college students, we use social media every day, having access to Facebook and Twitter on our smart phones and other electronic device unbeknownst to us even twenty years ago. The majority of the class wasn’t sure as to how to answer. The daily updates of the minor nuances in our lives—what we ate for breakfast, the obnoxious driver that cut us off while driving, are concise reports of actual events. Is that journalism? Garner argued that it could be; where we draw the line on how we get our news becomes our responsibility.

A former ABC news correspondent with broadcast experience, Garner explained how documentaries are a form of journalism, despite their bias. Often the best reporters with a vested interest in the topic they’re reporting can’t maintain objectivity; the closer you are to your subject matter, the harder it is to cover. She uses the example of a photographer from New Jersey who photographed the Twin Towers until four days before 9/11. The attack affected his ability to photograph the event objectively because he had a personal connection to his subject. Garner’s love for her ability to provide an honest voice for the voiceless made me think about why I want to be a journalist. I realized that regardless of its outlet, journalists have the ability to convey the thoughts and emotions of those who cannot, allowing others to see the world through a different perspective.

Alyssa Rege

Hot Off The Press

        When the students of JOUR 199 took a field trip to the News-Gazette back in September, we had the opportunity to go behind the scenes and get a glimpse of what the creative process of publication entails. Not only were we exposed to the writing and editing aspect at 15 E. Main Street, our tour guide led us down the road to the publication’s original building that now houses the production center. It was within the musty walls of this old structure that I became fascinated with an enormous piece of machinery towering three-stories up from the basement level, also known as the printing press.

 

        Although the inner workings of this kind of machine have been revamped and updated since its premiere debut around 1450, its creative objective remains the same: to produce words on paper. In this case, the term “press” in its original meaning is no longer applicable, with each template created electronically and printed on page at a must faster pace. This particular machine makes use of tons of paper a week and thousands of gallons of ink every couple of months to keep up with the publication’s distribution demands. It’s a shame that these modern wonders are more increasingly being written off as less-than-spectacular as advances in digital news continue to unfold.

        I experienced these dramatic changes for myself during an honors blogging assignment this semester. My task was to follow a particular news outlet’s coverage of a beat. In attempting to do so, I noticed that many of the buildings on our campus only receive new issues of the New York Times once or twice a week. This inconvenience forced me to explore the publication’s online version, an exploration that often left me with a feeling of nostalgia. Call me old fashioned, but experiencing the news on my laptop is nothing compared to the feeling of a fresh ink copy, hot off the press and into my hand.

DNA sequencing forms the tree of life

DNA sequencing reveals humans' relationships to other animals, like chimps. 

Like most middle class American children, I first learned about the tree of life and chain of survival from Disney’s The Lion King. However, the popular film neglects to inform us about which animals we are most related to and the degree of similarity between us. One can examine this from a scientific point of view, but a religious standpoint can also be applied.

In his book The Language of God, Francis S. Collins, a physician and geneticist from Virginia, explored the formerly invisible connection between science and religion through his study of the human genome. He concluded that these studies allowed him to understand “God’s instruction book.”

Collins’ diagram of the tree of life uses brackets to show how different animals, including humans, are connected, but also uses the length of the line to show how different the animals are. A longer line represents a more significant difference.

Finding very short lines between the humans, chimpanzees and orangutans was not surprising to this Rafiki fan, but realizing that our next closest relatives are rabbits, guinea pigs and porcupines came as a shock.

Collins is able to make this connection because human DNA sequences are most closely related to the chimpanzee’s. DNA sequencing is the process in which a scientist maps the sequence of nucleotides, or DNA molecules that make up a DNA strand.

These sequences begin to differ more with the rabbit, and even more with the elephant and more so still with the tenrec, the hedgehog-resembling mammal of Madagascar. Studies showing similarities in anatomy support these findings.

Collins asserts that the ability to see these connections between species allows scientists to understand the language of God. He acknowledges that this relationship to faith is up for debate, but the concrete DNA findings prove our connection to other animals, even if The Lion King’s tree of life failed to inform me of my relationship with the llama.