I always find it disappointing when people who are esteemed for their intellects make crass statements.
On his recent visit to Australia, I saw and heard Lawrence Krauss, Theoretical physicist and cosmologist, interviewed on the ABC 7.30 report and on the panel, at the moment, infamous ABC Q and A show.
On the 7.30 report, interviewer Leigh Sales gave him a seemingly Dorothy Dix question on God, namely:
“Given how much scientific knowledge has advanced over, say, you know – well obviously all centuries, but particularly the past century or so, why has science not yet done away with belief in God?”
Rather than addressing his own theories about how creation just happened, these are developed in his book ‘a Universe from Nothing’ , he attempted to justify that atheism’s problem when compared with religion, is that atheism does not necessarily provide a basis for ethics.  He thought there was no more reason for an atheist to kill their neighbour than for a person who believed in God.  In this simplicity, given that his ilk tend to see the worst side of religion and not the better, there is no analysis as to the extent that people who have now become atheists, would still have a loving ethic if there was no religious foundation to our culture and society.  In other words there needs to be an examination of how the fundamental teaching of Christ, that God is love and that we are to love God and love our neighbour as ourselves, despite the atrocities of Christianity, has produced a society where the average person is more respectful than if there had never been this teaching.
His 2nd crass statement was far worse!  He quoted a Nobel Prize winning physicist saying:
“There are good people and there are bad people. Good people do good things, bad people do bad things. When good people do bad things, it’s religion.”
Although Krauss did not make the statement, he quoted it with approval.  I am astounded how a supposedly intelligent man who is trying to lead us into atheism can make such a terribly simplistic statement, given the history of our culture and particular in the light of the 20th century.  The horrors of that century have had a huge influence on how we reflect upon human nature and whether human beings are basically good or basically evil.  How did a culture such as that of Germany of the mid 20th century come to Auschwitz?
Good and bad would seem to be, at least to some extent, culturally relative.  For people who follow the ISIS interpretation of Islam, the work being done by the terrorist is good and they will be rewarded by God.  For them, the West, led by the United States, are evil.  Many of us would not see the West that way, yet probably have a distorted view of our own goodness.  Western culture is responsible for great evils as well and so called good people and especially those who are economically rich and socially powerful, justify a culture where we live at the expense of other people. The number of people who die every day of starvation in the world could be reduced if in fact the so called ‘good’ people were better or at least as good as the word good means.  It might be that we as human beings are far more complex and cannot be described as either essentially good or bad, but whatever our nature we might say the best way is to aspire for goodness amidst all the complexity.  A blog is not a place to analyse this in greater depth but I hope I have said enough to suggest that it was amazing statement from an apparently intelligent person.  Mind you I wonder whether people who think the universe just happened are as intelligent as they are currently thought to be!
A more crass moment for Lawrence Krauss was on Q and A.  He basically said that all the teachings of all the organised religions are false according to science.  I have always been wary of using the word ‘all’. It is such a small word with such a big meaning because any statement that includes it, has to have no exceptions. Logically one exception to an ‘all’ statement makes it false.  As Krauss is a scientist, our 1st question to him would be to ask him on what evidence this is based? Has he studied all the organised religions?  Note in the 7.30 report, he did not say religious ethics were bad but rather that atheism could justify the same ethics without having religion.  To me, he has already contradicted himself by using the `all statement’.  Because if all the teachings of the world religions are wrong, then love your neighbour as yourself is wrong and atheism should not to be trying to imitate.  Already we are moving into ludicrous territory but is not I who have the logical contradiction in this.
One can suspect that he probably has not studied all the religions of the world, let alone really considered whether one can really understand any religion, without living it and studying it for some years.   Perhaps he is working from the simple premise that if God does not exist then religion is not true.  (That does not address the point made above).  We need to note that not all religions believe in God in the way that the monotheistic religions, such as Judaism, Islam and Christianity do.  Superficially at least, it can be said that Buddhism does not base its teachings on God but on an ultimate reality.  Whether in reality there is a difference is another question.
I do not think it would be too much to expect from an intelligent person that they use language well enough to give a little more detail with just a few extra words.  For example: `given the universe just happened, any religion that teaches an eternal reality is false and as a consequence, most of its teachings are false except for those ethical teachings that are based on common humanistic values.’
I wonder whether Lawrence Krauss’s views on how the universe just happened are really of a similar nature to the obviously illogical statements that I have quoted.  See the webpage on the existence of God