What Lawrence Krauss Could Learn from a Children's Book


Recently, Dr. William Lane Craig and Dr. Lawrence Krauss engaged in a series of talks entitled Life, the Universe and Nothing.  The dialogues were put on by City Bible Forum.

During the dialogues both Dr. Craig and Dr. Krauss had a 15 minute opening statement.  During Dr. Krauss's opening statement in the third dialogue, he featured a picture of Dr. Craig reading a book from his new series for children entitled, "What is God Like?"  Now, Krauss used this as a springboard to attack Dr. Craig's position on the slaughter of Canaanites in the Old Testament; however, the purpose of this post is not to deal with that particular narrative and for those sincerely interested in understanding Craig's position, he has explained it here and here.

I own the first two books in the "What is God Like?' series and my two girls enjoy them when I read to them. [Richard Dawkins would say this is child abuse!]  So I had to smile when Dr. Krauss, during his opening speech at the third dialogue, referred to God as "an old man in the sky."  Why?  Simply because Craig deals with this type of poor characterization in his book written for elementary aged children.  In the book, the character "Papa" explains to his children what God is like and says the following:

"You can't touch God because God doesn't have a body.  Sometimes people think of God like old man with a long, white beard.  But that's not true.  He is only spirit.  That is why I said, 'God is like a person without a body.'"

So, it's seems clear here that Krauss was doing nothing more than attacking a straw-man and that he could benefit from reading Dr. Craig's children book series!

Courage and Godspeed,
Chad

Note: I have featured the 3rd dialogue above because I felt it was the best of the 3.   

Reasons: 1. substantive dialogue 2. best moderator 3. You really get a sense of what separates the two.

Further, kudos to Krauss for admitting that Jesus was most likely a historical figure and not buying into the "Christ-myth" nonsense.

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