The Abuse of Lawrence Krauss

Let’s get straight to the point: Lawrence Krauss is a charlatan. A university-based charlatan.

Lawrence Krauss, you might recall, is the author of the book self-servingly entitled, “A Universe From Nothing”, where the “nothing” in the title actually turns out to be something, a pre-existing field. Despite criticism even from his own field, Krauss has stood behind the easily apparent deception, and his book is being marketed to the general public with the deception intact. A book called "A Universe From a Pre-existing Field" probably would not sell well at all.

Now Krauss addresses the school shootings. Or at least uses them for his own purpose.

Three sentences into his current article, Krauss quickly abandons his shallow attempt to show grief by veering off into his own perceived abuse and victimization by the recent school shooting. Krause has been offended. The nationally publicized references to the deity (which Krauss knows to be evil) are offensive enough that Krauss must protest. He cannot tolerate such things.

In Krauss’ even shallower understanding of theology, a deity worth its salt would not allow free agency. The deity would shield each and every individual from any and all harm. Because the Other misunderstands Krauss’ deity by presuming both agency and responsibility for using the agency, the Other offends and abuses Krauss. At least that is how Krauss reacts to the Other, as opposed to toleration.

Krauss is offended that people believe in God; it is that simple. For Krauss, God cannot exist because the world is not made according to how he, personally would do it, were he God. The world contains things that Krauss doesn’t like; therefore there can be no God. After all, God would make all humans behave perfectly according to Krauss’ model of human perfection, yes?

So since there is no God as Krauss has defined him, then belief in God is “offensive” to Krauss, and he should be protected from being exposed to it: that is the thrust of Krauss’ view of the Connecticut disaster. If you want to do it in your own basement, OK. But not in public where he might be exposed to such abuse. The small deference he pays to the national pain is swamped by his whining about his own victimization by religious references, even presuming to speak for non-believing parents of the murdered children, people who Krauss doesn’t even know whether they even exist. As for those parents who are not Atheist, Krauss attacks their God with his own pre-juvenile understanding of what a deity must be, thereby brutalizing those parents even more.

Even more pitiful is Krauss’ obligatory shot at a solution: gun control and mental health care. That’s it. That’s all. There is little doubt that the shootings are merely an excuse for Krauss to whine about having to live in the same universe with believers in free agency and a source for that.

This article is a spectacular demonstration of both the shrunken empathy, intolerance, and the self-righteous, self-involvement which is endemic to Atheism. Or at least to the Krauss version of Atheism.