Ken Ham Blasts Physicist Lawrence Krauss for Explaining Science Correctly

I’m not a spiritual person, but if I was I’d use the coming from star dust thing a lot. It really is a beautiful thought, maybe the ancient sun worshipers got it right the first time? Heheh.

“Jesus never died for our sins because no one can possibly die for our sins. But if you want to talk about sacrifice, we’re made from dead stars. So there you go.”

Where’s the “probably” on all those “blanket claims” Hemant?

If someone says there is no god you say, “Accurate? Not in the least. Atheists don’t (and shouldn’t) say, “There is no God” because it’s wrong to make such a blanket statement. (The British people knew well enough to put the word “Probably” in their bus campaign.)

I don’t think you’re being consistent. Of course Jesus didn’t die for our sins and of course there are no gods.

Can you imagine what would happen if Krauss dared mock Mohammed or Allah, or the Islamic religion in some way?!

I’m hearing this asinine ploy more and more often from Christians whining like Rodney Dangerfield that “they don’t get no respect.” Are they beginning to envy the fear that some Islamic lunatics have caused around the world? Do these Christians think that fear and respect are the same thing? Or are they willing to take fear if they can’t get respect? Are they perhaps contemplating that maybe they should run around like rabid maniacs with machetes, chopping up anyone they find because somebody publicly challenged their beliefs?

Christians who try this tactic should be confronted on it every single time. They should be asked if they think that they should adopt the violence and mayhem that has brought Islam its bad reputation in the West.

If they say no, then they should try actually defending their beliefs instead of transparently implying that “blasphemers” are cowardly, only picking on the meek. “Oooh you meanies, picking on poor widdu me. I wish I could scare you wike de big bullies do.”

Ham writes: “Krauss is considered to be one of the leading cosmologists and evolutionists in the United States.” Good grief, if he doesn’t know the difference between cosmology and biology, what business does he have running what purports to be a (tax exempt) scientific education facility?

@dude: the word “probably” was used in the bus campaign for legal reasons. In Britain the government polices advertising content and can force you to retract a statement of fact that you can’t substantiate. Although they didn’t bother doing so for the Christian bus campaign which said that non-Christians would burn in Hell, which was what prompted the atheist campaign.

The appeal to jihad envy is unfortunate, but I fear it is an inevitable consequence of society giving in to terrorist threats. It can and should be mitigated by pointing out that it is a feature, and not a bug, that Christianity can be criticized openly with much less fear of violent reprisal. But I don’t know that it can be eliminated entirely in the long term.

Delurking for the first(?) time, here.

This simple but awesome scientific fact shows that we are not apart from the universe, but an integral part of it — because it is an integral part of us. Contemplating that is, for me, the equivalent of a truly spiritual experience.

So. We ARE all one. Now if only humanity would realize that….

I second Jeff Satterly’s comment. That lecture was the best thing I’ve seen on Youtube (well, not counting old Toots and the Maytals videos).

He wasn’t bringing his religious beliefs into the classroom, and he wasn’t doing anything improper. Ham just wants him fired because he said something Ham didn’t like.

No but he made comments that were inappropriate. Its like working in a foreign university and talking about the things you don’t like about living in that country, they will not renew your contract and would probably fire you.

Its just professional courtesy.

Rocklee quoted and wrote:

He wasn’t bringing his religious beliefs into the classroom, and he wasn’t doing anything improper. Ham just wants him fired because he said something Ham didn’t like.

No but he made comments that were inappropriate. Its like working in a foreign university and talking about the things you don’t like about living in that country, they will not renew your contract and would probably fire you.

Its just professional courtesy.

Krauss made comments that were “inappropriate”? In what way?

If the comments were “inappropriate” simply because they outraged a loud-voiced superstitious fringe group by belittling the group’s beliefs (even just as a rhetorical device), then I’d say that the “inappropriateness” label belongs on the other foot. Their wildly narcissistic worldview and childish outrage are what’s “inappropriate” here.

In any case, if freedom of speech on this issue were so stifled that a professor who belittled religion could be legally fired for expressing those beliefs (which, sadly, a vast majority of people in the U.S. still espouse in one way or another), then that type of “professional courtesy” sounds an awful lot to me like de facto censorship, or at least a very strong chilling effect in that direction — and P.Z. Myers would have been out of work quite some time ago. Thankfully, freedom of speech in this country usually is still valued highly and protected.

Religion (especially Christianity) has had a privileged position in discourse for far too long; therefore, approximately as one blog commenter once phrased it, any criticism of religion sounds like a shout, even if it’s actually just a whisper. People need to get used to the sound of criticism of religion before it stops sounding “inappropriate,” like a rude dinner topic. In actuality, it is no different from criticism of any other unsubstantiated claim, however popular.

~David D.G.

dude, there is no “God”

Enough with this stupid, assinine rule that we can’t out and out state that. Rather like saying we can’t say there’s no tooth fairy.

I’ve said it, I say it, and I’m gonna continue saying it. And what’s more I have the audacity to refuse to prove a negative and instead ask anyone claiming there’s a “God” or even might be one to prove their rather phenominal claim.

The fatwa envy is even stupider than saying we can’t say there is no “God”.

I loved — absolutely loved — the we are all stardust line. Beautiful.

He wasn’t bringing his religious beliefs into the classroom, and he wasn’t doing anything improper. Ham just wants him fired because he said something Ham didn’t like.

No but he made comments that were inappropriate. Its like working in a foreign university and talking about the things you don’t like about living in that country, they will not renew your contract and would probably fire you.

Its just professional courtesy.

In what possible way were they inappropriate? Firing someone for making one critical statement (a joke no less), certainly doesn’t strike me as “professional courtesy”. Are you really saying that the appropriate reaction to, for example, an American professor working in England repeating a joke about English cooking is that he should be fired? (When he repeats this joke at a French cuisine lovers convention, no less?)

Think about the implications if it truly was inappropriate. It would effectively bar open atheists from holding teaching positions at universities.

To Ken Ham:

I’ll bet Lawrence Krauss doesn’t have to eat a whole egg to figure out that it’s rotten, either.

Clot of blood, piece of clay, atoms of stardust, what’s the difference? 😉

This Fatwa Envy-phenomenon is truly ironic, don’t these Fundamentalist Christians understand that they’re equating their own religion with the most horrible human behavior in world history?

Isn’t this kinda like saying:

–What? You disagree with my political views? Well I’m sure you wouldn’t be as vigorous in defending your views if you were arguing with Hitler!

Well that’s the whole point you freaking idiot, I’m assuming here that I’m _not_ discussing with someone who represents a genocidal dictatorship, but rather with someone who’s actually prepared to _talk_ about our differences, because I actually believe that people have the _right_ to disagree with each other, as foreign as that might seem to a fundamentalist.

I do understand the impulse to react to every single unpleasant thought expressed by someone by amassing a mob and beating their skull in with the largest rock you can lift, since that approach has worked so well for the last 100,000 years at least, but I’ll take the risk of being called a “fundie leftist liberal” or whatever and say that I just don’t think this is the optimal way of settling differences in the 2010’s.

(Shouldn’t we be at least hover car jousting by now? Stupid disappointing science.. :))

Geez, Ham never passes up an opportunity to whine about how meeeeaaaannnn the evilutionists are, does he?

Re, Ham’s complaint that Krauss spent only 22 minutes in his Museum of Religious Brain-Damage: It’s just a particularly pathetic form of the Courtier’s Reply. Krauss can’t fairly criticize the Creation Asylum without viewing all 50+ videos? Carefully studying the text on every placard? I was there (even ran into Hemant somewhere around Noah’s Ark ;-)), and the entry hall alone is enough to justify everything Krauss says about the place. Hell, even just reading a few random articles off the AiG website, and making the reasonable assumption that their “museum” will represent the same viewpoint, is enough.

dude,

All claims are inherently probabilistic. Sometimes people are explicit about that
sometimes they aren’t. 1+1=2 is a probabilistic claim (there’s some tiny tiny chance that humans have repeatedly just screwed up their arithmetic). Whenever you make an arithmetic statement do you feel a need to preface it with a disclaimer about the lack of certainty?

What a Bunch of Hopeless Nerds on this comment board.