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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