Following Henry Schaefer and his lecture, I am a Traditionalist especially
in my chemistry. I take a traditional (1820s) view of the Atomic weight of
Carbon and accept the same as Darwin did in his only chemical notes.
I believe that the Atomic weight of Carbon is 6 and not 12.
Why shouldnt I teach that in schools or colleges as it is my honest belief?
Can schaefer or anyone eklse tell me why not?
Michael Roberts
----- Original Message -----
From: <CMSharp01@aol.com>
To: <asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Thursday, February 22, 2001 7:43 AM
Subject: Dr. Henry Schaefer and YECism
> I went to a public talk this evening at the University of Arizona given
> by Dr. Henry Schaefer, who is a quantum chemist (and Nobel Prize
> nominee), and who is also an evangelical Christian. The talk was
> billed as being on "Ten Questions Intellectuals Ask About Christianity",
> although in fact about 18 questions were dealt with. These were
> standard questions like can you prove God exists, and why does God
> allow suffering? I thought there would be more of a scientific context,
> in particular the interaction (or lack thereof) between science and
> theology, but I enjoyed it nevertheless.
>
> After the talk there was about 1/2 hour for public questions fielded by
> the audience, followed by time for questions on a one-to-one basis
> out at the front. Inevitably some of the questions involved creation and
> evolution. During the talk or during the formal question time, I can't
> remember which, Dr.Schaefer made it clear that he was reluctant to
> discuss the age of the earth/universe, stating that he would get into
> trouble with his wife (who I don't believe was there), as he said he
> disagreed with his wife on the age of the earth/universe. Clearly his
> wife is a YEC, but he is obviously not. He mentioned the Big Bang on
> a couple of occasions and said he had no trouble with long ages for the
> earth. It would be impossible of course to imagine a Nobel Prize
> nominee being a YEC anyway.
>
> However, I was a bit disturbed by his response to a question posed
> during the formal question session when someone asked if the speed
> of light was decreasing. Dr.Schaefer clearly stated that
> measurements in the last 100 years or so showed no change, and
> any changes observed would be due to experimental errors. However,
> rather than going further and stating that there was no observational
> evidence that the speed of light has changed in the past, he talked
> about the fact that we had to make uniformitarium assumptions, as
> these were consistent with the observations, and gave the impression,
> I think, to the audience that there might be an uncertainty about this,
> without stating it explicitly. In view of the fact that he had earlier
> stated that the fundamental constants are very well tuned, I thought
> that the impression he gave about the speed of light was surprising.
>
> After the formal questions I went up and pressed him on this point,
> stating that from the spectral lines of distant galaxies and the
> observed fine structure constant we can see that the velocity of
> light was the same in the past. Being a quantum chemist he would
> of course have known this. His reply to me was that any possible
> change in the speed of light would have been before the Planck time,
> about 10^-43 seconds after the Big Bang, and clearly the velocity of
> light has been constant since then. He was also very reluctant to
> get into any discussion when I mentioned the ICR and AiG, which he
> knew to be YEC organizations.
>
> >From the fact that he was a little bit ambiguous in public about his
> views of the speed of light, and played down YECism, it's seems to
> be clear to me that he regards YEC as somewhat as an
> embarrassment to evangelical Christianity, but tries to avoid the
> subject so as not to alienate any YECs present.
>
> These are my musing right or wrong, anyway.
>
> Christopher M. Sharp
> http://www.csharp.com
>
>
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