Something from Nothing? Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss Discuss Cosmology, Origins of Life & Religion Before a Packed Crowd

Richard Dawkins needs no intro­duc­tion. Lawrence Krauss bare­ly needs an intro­duc­tion — although we’ll tell you that he’s a lead­ing voice in the­o­ret­i­cal physics and the author of the recent book, A Uni­verse from Noth­ing: Why There Is Some­thing Rather than Noth­ing. (We rec­om­mend watch­ing this lec­ture to get famil­iar with his work.) In Feb­ru­ary, the two sci­en­tists met up at Ari­zona State Uni­ver­si­ty and spent two hours in a free­wheel­ing con­ver­sa­tion, touch­ing on evo­lu­tion, cos­mol­o­gy, reli­gion, and oth­er top­ics. They spoke before a packed house, but Shirley Films was good enough to post the video online, and you can watch it above. Anoth­er con­ver­sa­tion — this one record­ed at The Aus­tralian Nation­al Uni­ver­si­ty on 10 April 2012 — can be viewed here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lawrence Krauss: Every Atom in Your Body Comes From a Star

Grow­ing Up in the Uni­verse: Richard Dawkins Presents Cap­ti­vat­ing Sci­ence Lec­tures for Kids (1991)

Richard Dawkins & John Lennox Debate Sci­ence & Athe­ism


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Comments (5)
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  • louis says:

    your the­o­ry of some­thing from noth­ing require’s more faith than believ­ing in God… What if when God made man from the dust of the earth, and blew the breath of life into his nos­trols it took longer than one day,as in a thou­sand years are like a day to God.and as God formed man in His image,and mak­ing all ani­mals accord­ing to their kind,like a tad­pool turn­ing into a frog,God form­ing man ?can evo­lu­tion, and cre­ation be the same­thing but peo­ple still argue for argu­ment sake.and it all still is a mir­a­cle !!!

  • Via says:

    Full tran­script here: http://vialogue.wordpress.com/2012/02/26/something-from-nothing-notes-review-response/

    And I’m curi­ous if the answer to Krauss’s chal­lenge in this post is viable?

  • christopher palermo says:

    Krauss’s “chal­lenge” is to sell his own book. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, he has bad com­ic tim­ing, and pro­vides a dis­grace­ful inter­view of Dawkins who, like most thinkers, need time to warm-up to a dis­cus­sion… with­out being inter­rupt­ed, at odd times, by some book sales­man.

  • Boris says:

    Mr. Krauss, your fre­quent refer­rals to your polit­i­cal beliefs and your left affil­i­a­tions, con­stant bash­ing Pres­i­dent Bush, idea to ban from teach­ing those who do not share your opin­ion only spoil oth­er­wise inter­est­ing dis­cus­sion. Let me just remind you that many Physi­cists, who under­stand Physics infi­nite­ly bet­ter than you do, believe in God. Speak­ing of which by the way, one can also say that today we do not know what God is, and where it comes from, but one day we will. If you allow your­self to believe that our cur­rent gaps in knowl­edge (genes, DNA ori­gin, etc) should not pre­clude us from believ­ing in evo­lu­tion, why this is not the case for God?

    Fac­tu­al com­ments: 1. emp­ty space (math­e­mat­i­cal­ly emp­ty) by def­i­n­i­tion does not have ener­gy. If it does, it is not emp­ty. There is no such thing as emp­ty space in physics.

    2. Some­thing from Noth­ing is called in Physics Phase tran­si­tion (ice — no ice, for exam­ple). I high­ly rec­om­mend that you learn about phase tran­si­tions. It’s known to physics for over cen­tu­ry.

  • Gryph says:

    Please cite your sources, oth­er­wise your argu­ment holds no mer­it.

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