Dr. Lawrence Krauss, an internationally renowned theoretical physicist and bestselling author, was born in New York City and raised in Toronto, Canada. He earned his undergraduate degrees in Mathematics and Physics from Carleton University and a Ph.D. in Physics from MIT in 1982. He held academic positions at Harvard, Yale, and Case Western Reserve University, where he established influential research programs in particle astrophysics and cosmology. Krauss founded the Origins Project at Arizona State University in 2008, promoting interdisciplinary research on the universe’s origins. He currently hosts “The Origins Podcast” and leads The Origins Project Foundation, continuing to inspire public curiosity about science and inquiry. Krauss, focusing on how science and humanism intersect. Krauss highlights that humanism involves accepting the world as it is, using reason and intelligence to improve it. He discusses the importance of skepticism, the scientific process, and the challenges of communicating complex scientific ideas to the public. Krauss also emphasizes the need for integrity when promoting equality and standing against oppressive structures.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So today, we are here with Lawrence Krauss, probably one of the most prominent humanists. Thank you for taking the time today and indulging in a pipsqueak like me, as an older term for endearment. Today’s focus will be humanism and nothing. I’m an independent journalist. So, I can choose the topic and don’t necessarily have to engage in “gotcha” journalism or focus on one thing or another. I want to focus on a couple topics of interest and expertise for someone for a limited alotted time. So, when we’re focusing on humanism and nothing in this interview, it makes you an expert in something and nothing. You have a broad palette! 

Dr. Lawrence Krauss: The two are not that different. 

Jacobsen: When you see humanism, at least the theory as opposed to the practice, what is its characteristic for you as you travel the world and see different humanist communities?

Krauss: Well, I guess, first of all, I don’t tend to label people in terms of “-isms.” I don’t think in terms of “-isms.” I don’t say, “This is a humanist community,” or “These people are humanists.” People are individuals, and I don’t label myself except, perhaps, as a scientist.

But humanism is a willingness to accept the world for what it is and realize that we can try to make the world a better place with intelligence and reason. Those are the two basic features: accept reality and take the evidence of reality as your guide, and use your intelligence, reason, and observations to try to make the world a better place for both people and, in my case, nature as well.

Jacobsen: Do you think a common mistake for most people is filtering the world’s facts through a particular ideology, religious or otherwise?

Krauss: We all do it. We’re all hardwired to do it, so we have to fight against it. We learned a neat tool about 500 years ago—certainly at least 400—that helps overcome this natural human tendency. It’s called science. We learned that scientists are flawed, but the scientific process is self-correcting.

This process involves taking data, making predictions, checking them against the data, and making your ideas open to rigorous scrutiny and attack from colleagues and others. This way, you filter out what’s wrong. You check again, do more experiments, and repeat the process. It works and helps overcome the natural human tendency to want to believe things—like Fox Mulder in The X-Files.

Jacobsen: What part of scientific training do you think was the most difficult when training junior scientists?

Krauss: The hardest part is learning to work equally hard to prove your ideas wrong as you do to prove them right. The easiest person to fool is yourself. It’s easy to be skeptical of other people’s data but harder to be skeptical of your ideas. The most difficult challenge is being willing to look for what’s wrong with your arguments.

Jacobsen: Who do you think is the best science communicator?

Krauss: “The best science communicator,” one of my favourite science communicators is Jacob Bronowski. He made a TV series called The Ascent of Man and wrote several great books. The Ascent of Man is one of the best examples of science communication, but it’s not just about science. It’s one of the best science and humanist art TV series ever. He was brilliant, and his books are wonderful. So he’s high on my list, though he could be more well-known today. He was more recognized back when his show aired—13 parts, if I remember correctly.

But anyway, he was a great science communicator—a scientist of sorts. Richard Feynman was another excellent science communicator who got people excited and thinking. However, Carl Sagan has done an outstanding job of inspiring people. Albert Einstein also wrote clear books about relativity.

And, of course, Charles Darwin is at the top of the list. 

Jacobsen: I’m sure the late Daniel Dennett would have agreed on that point

Krauss: Well, maybe he would have, I don’t know. Richard Dawkins is always surprised when I say that, as a physicist, Darwin is my top choice. Not because of On the Origin of Species but because I was captivated by his earlier work, The Voyage of the Beagle. It’s a gripping book—it reads like a Hollywood movie. He’s almost always getting killed, making you think about everything. It’s remarkable. It’s a great read. I thought it would be tedious and difficult, but it’s not.

Big ideas—general relativity, quantum mechanics, and so on—have at least been communicated to the public. These are foundational theories that the general public may not fully understand since we don’t all have the math or training, but the concepts have been explained clearly. For example, if you drop a rock and a feather, most people think the rock falls faster because it’s heavier. That misconception is independent of college education, as I’ve discovered.

At some level, though, certain ideas filter down. The fact that the universe had a beginning, even if people don’t believe it was only 6,000 years ago, filters through. The idea of the Big Bang is a profound result. General relativity involves the curvature of space and the existence of black holes—those ideas filter in. That’s why I write books: to give people perspective. I don’t expect them to understand the details. The biggest surprise for me when I first wrote a book, which was originally a disappointment, was that many readers didn’t grasp the full depth. But I got over it.

When people write to me, saying, “I loved your book” and “I loved this part, blah blah blah,” it’s often completely different from what I had written. I need clarification on what I wrote. At first, I thought, “How disappointing.” But I had inspired them to think about it, and maybe that’s what matters.

Jacobsen: Do you find a similar experience when communicating humanist ideas or humanism in general—particularly when advancing science education for the public? Do you encounter similar misunderstandings of what you’re writing about humanism or values that would be considered humanist?

Krauss: Absolutely. First, what happens online is that people often only read the title or what someone else says about the title. So, of course, there are misunderstandings because most people need to be tuned to read what I say. They read what someone thinks I said or just the title and that’s enough for them. Online, the level of discourse is sometimes below kindergarten level—they read almost nothing. They glance at the title, feel they’ve read enough, and then comment, usually writing something antagonistic. Sometimes, they love it without even reading it.

For example, when my Substack article or video is released, I’ll get “I love it” responses within 15 seconds of it going live, which tells me they probably didn’t read or watch it. It’s nice that they love it, but engaging with the content would be good.

Jacobsen: That leads to the second topic—with almost nothing as the transition. You’ve explained this hundreds of times, I’m sure. When people think of “nothing,” they imagine an endless black void. What’s wrong with that image, and what’s the appropriate way to understand it?

Krauss: As I said in my book, A Universe from Nothing, there are many versions of “nothing.” For example, the Bible’s idea of “nothing” is often depicted as an endless void, which is one version of “nothing.” But there are many more. The easiest “nothing” to talk about is space—because space isn’t empty. It’s filled with virtual particles popping in and out of existence, and some eventually become real particles. So, that “nothing” is unstable; if you wait long enough, something will happen.

Then, you have another level of “nothing,” no space or time. That’s the version I was mostly talking about in my book. You take all the space and time we live in and imagine none existed. Then, suddenly, it did. That’s possible, even though some people struggle with the concept, asking, “What was out there before?” or “Was there anything else?” These are generally meaningless questions because everything in our universe—space and time—did not exist before, and then it did. Whether there was some preexisting structure or something else is irrelevant.

Our universe didn’t exist, and then it did. It’s like a magic trick. I’ve been practicing magic tricks while talking to you

Jacobsen: So, Penn Jillette would be proud.

Krauss: Well, Penn is proud! He’s happy that I value magic. 

Jacobsen: I should send him an email. I interviewed the late James Randi before he passed away, and I’m glad I had the chance to do that.

Krauss: One of my favourite pictures is of Penn, me, and Randi. I love it because I’m happy to be with two men I admire, and we all fit in the same frame. It was remarkable, especially because Randi was much shorter than me!

Jacobsen: So, what would be another definition of something from nothing?

Krauss: A lot of what you see in the world is illusion, too. The difference is, in science, we try to distinguish between illusion and reality. 

Jacobsen: When you discuss the concept of “nothing,” more precisely defined as it relates to how the real world operates, what kind of pushback do you typically get from theologians or people looking for more than just that explanation?

Krauss: What do I get from theologians? Nothing much. When you say they’re looking for more of an answer, do you mean they want some meaning behind why it’s happening?

Jacobsen: Correct. You explain, but they often ask, “Why.” And when you respond that “why” has no inherent meaning, that can be frustrating for them, right?

Krauss: They’re looking for an answer that implies some underlying purpose or immateriality. 

Jacobsen: But as you’ve pointed out, when they ask “why,” they often mean “how.” They expect answers about purpose when the question is about reality’s mechanisms. And then they ask, “Where did the laws of physics come from?” or similar questions, right?

Krauss: Yes, that’s a common follow-up. The simplest and most honest answer is, “I don’t know.” And that’s the point of my last book. The three most important words in science—and in life, really—are “I don’t know.”

That means there’s more to learn. But there are many possible answers, and they would prefer something else would need more. The simplest answer is that the laws of physics came into existence simultaneously with the universe. That’s an answer only some people find satisfying, but it’s possible. Another possibility is that some laws have preexisted the universe.

When you say “laws,” it implies that there’s maybe only one underlying set of rules by which physical existence can manifest. At least one thing is certain: many of the laws in our universe are emergent, effective laws—they are accidents of our universe. The properties of elementary particles and the four forces of nature are likely accidental consequences of what happened after the Big Bang. But fundamental concepts, like general relativity and quantum mechanics, may be intrinsic properties of nature. Why does nature have those properties? Who knows?

And maybe—again—it’s unclear whether that question even has meaning. So, it’s almost a meaningless question to ask if the laws were “eternal.” Because if time itself came into existence with the universe, then what does “eternal” even mean?

Krauss: “Eternal” only has meaning if time exists. If time came into existence with the universe, then “eternal” becomes an ill-defined concept. There could be a global time variable in some space outside our universe or in some other context from which our universe emerged. In that case, there could be an “eternal” time variable. But it needs to be better defined, especially when talking about the origin of our universe, where we know the laws of physics break down at the point where space and time began.

Jacobsen: That could also be reduced to Occam’s Razor—parsimony. If people are positing some invariant time outside of our regular universe, does that create a rickety structure of assumptions?

Krauss: Again, it depends on what you mean by “outside of our universe.” Our universe could be infinite. But if our universe emerged spontaneously as a closed universe, there would be no “outside” as it expanded. It just came into existence. There may be other spaces, but there’s no reason to assume our universe was embedded in those spaces.

Now, there are extra dimensions that we’re embedded in some larger multidimensional space. Despite being a well-motivated idea, that’s another possibility, though it currently needs more evidence.

Jacobsen: Do string theorists define “nothing” differently than what you’ve described?

Krauss: Do string theorists define “nothing” differently? No. String theorists are physicists, so we all define “nothing” similarly. It still comes down to quantum mechanics and general relativity because that’s what string theory is based on. String theory expands upon these ideas, but the fundamental definition of “nothing” remains the same.

And what I can say that maybe generalizes string theory, especially beyond four dimensions of space and time, is that string theory suggests there’s a smallest possible distance you can get to—it doesn’t allow you to reach zero size. In other words, you can achieve a fundamental smallest scale, a minimum length, known as the Planck length.

String theory also implies there’s the smallest time increment because space and time are intertwined. The best way to put it is that there’s a minimum space-time interval. Things popping in and out of existence still happen. Still, string theory allows for a much larger framework for these phenomena. Not only does it allow, but it requires more than four dimensions—beyond the three spatial dimensions and one-time dimensions we’re familiar with—for the theory to be mathematically consistent.

If string theory describes our universe, there are likely more than four space-time dimensions. The theory is well-defined. However, we’re still learning about the mathematical structures within it. Strings used to be considered the fundamental building blocks. Still, we know that strings are only some fundamental constructs in string theory. We’ve moved to more complex entities like membranes (branes) and manifolds.

It’s a complicated mathematical framework—I was about to say “mess,” but I don’t know if that’s fair. It’s a work in progress.

Jacobsen: Sean Carroll is another prominent humanist and popularizer of science.

Krauss: I think of him more as a philosopher, however. 

Jacobsen: He’s an effective presenter.

Krauss: He is. Sometimes, yes. He could be overly poetic for my taste, but he’s an effective communicator.

Jacobsen: He uses this concept of “poetic naturalism” to encapsulate his views.

Krauss: Yes, that’s where I don’t quite align with him. He’s effective but sometimes makes things sound grand, maybe to appear smarter. He’s written entire books on many-worlds interpretation, which feels like a waste of pages. The key issue isn’t what interpretation of quantum mechanics we use—whether it’s many-worlds or something else. The important thing is not how we interpret quantum mechanics but how we interpret classical mechanics.

The world is inherently quantum mechanical. So, trying to frame it in terms of some “effective” classical theory and then coming up with something that sounds bizarre doesn’t add much. Of course, quantum mechanics is weird, but the point is that the world is quantum mechanical, and we should embrace that.

So, any classical interpretation of quantum mechanics seems weird. But again, Sean Carroll is more of a philosopher because philosophers love creating and quoting these definitions. I don’t think in terms of definitions. What is “poetic naturalism”? I’m sorry, I’m going on a rant here. But anytime you start creating these fancy terms, it feels like something philosophers love to do, and often, it just obfuscates, as far as I can see. What’s the formal definition of poetic naturalism?

Jacobsen: I don’t know the formal definition, but I understand it’s about using ordinary language to describe the world while acknowledging that we operate under physical laws and principles.

Krauss: Maybe. But if that’s what it is, why not just say that? It is an overly grandiose way of describing something very straightforward. Anyway, I’m digressing. 

Jacobsen: You’ve participated in a few debates—what was your favourite moment from those debates?

KraussI generally don’t enjoy debates. They’re more rhetorical exercises than explanation, logic, and critical thinking discussions. I don’t think about favourites, but I recall one of the most effective moments.

Unfortunately, I debated William Lane Craig several times. I assumed he was well-meaning the first time, but I soon realized that was my mistake. Afterward, I tried to avoid him, though I debated him again despite attempting to convince the organizers in Australia not to invite him. We did three debates for a Christian group—very nice people—with large audiences, mostly Christians. It was fun to expose the superficiality of his thinking on certain topics.

There were two notable things: first, his arguments were low-hanging fruit, and second, he distorts and lies, which is why I found it so frustrating—one moment that resonated with the audience occurred during the Q&A section of one of these debates. Unfortunately, most of these debates were moderated by philosophers who often seemed more interested in hearing themselves talk than in asking us meaningful questions. But one asked, “What would it take to change your mind?”—specifically about belief in God.

Jacobsen: What did you say?

Krauss: I said that if I looked up at the night sky and the stars realigned to spell out “I’m here” in Aramaic, Hebrew, English, or even Russian, I’d be impressed. That would be a remarkable event. It would make me reconsider things. William, on the other hand, gave a remarkably facile answer. This surprised me, considering he has debated this topic his whole life.

William Lane Craig said that if his daughter died, he’d question the existence of God. Wow, that’s a pretty flimsy belief system.

Then there was another moment, similar in tone. I had heard him debate before, and I think this came from one of those debates. It was about the Amalekites. You know, the biblical story where the Israelites are commanded to kill all the Amalekite men, women, and children—everyone.

Jacobsen: Yes, I’m familiar with it.

Krauss: So, I asked him, “What about the children? Why did they have to be killed? They hadn’t done anything wrong.”

His response was, again, remarkable. First, he said, “The children haven’t done anything wrong, so they’ll go to heaven.” Great—because that’s what parents want to hear, right? Then he said something even more shocking: “I don’t feel sorry for the children. I feel sorry for the Hebrew soldiers who had to kill them under God’s orders because they would have been traumatized.”

That alienated most of the audience. It was a moment that stuck with me.

Jacobsen: That’s astounding.

Krauss: Yes, it was. 

Jacobsen: This ties into humanism. A deep sense of fairness, equality, and human rights is important to many humanists, though not all. Noam Chomsky, for example, has a long history of political activism and has been described as a humanist and self-describes as an atheist.

I remember during one debate, you refused to take part because they were planning gender segregation. Could you tell me more about that moment and your decision?

Krauss: Yes, I did refuse. Noam Chomsky—by the way, I don’t think he necessarily identifies as an atheist, even though he’s often described that way. He doesn’t care about that label. He’s often told me that he doesn’t care what people believe, only what they do. It’s about actions, not beliefs, for him. And that’s true for me as well.

Jacobsen: That makes sense. So, how do you maintain that courage in the face of pressure, especially when you’re in a situation where standing up for equality could result in pushback from the crowd? Chomsky has a long history of activism and has faced backlash. I imagine you’ve encountered similar resistance.

Krauss: It isn’t easy sometimes. In that particular case, when I refused to debate in a segregated environment, I was standing by a principle I believe in deeply, secularism in a secular forum.. It’s not about making grand gestures; it’s about not compromising on fundamental values. I knew there would be consequences, but you can’t let that deter you.

The key is to remind yourself of the bigger picture. When you’re in front of a crowd, it’s easy to get caught up in their reactions, but you must stay focused on what’s right rather than on what’s popular. Over time, you develop the resilience to withstand that kind of pushback. It helps to remember that history often judges those who stand for equality and justice more favourably in the long run than those who try to appease the status quo.

Jacobsen: At that moment, you were facing pushback from the crowd. Was that a scary situation for you?

Krauss: There have been scarier moments, but it wasn’t about courage in the traditional sense. You either act in a way you believe is right or don’t. When you put yourself in that position, you must back up your words with action. Deciding not to debate and walking out if they didn’t desegregate the audience wasn’t the most courageous thing I’ve ever done. For me, it was a no-brainer.

I did it partly because I felt it was disingenuous—they had told me the event wouldn’t be segregated, and then it was. But more importantly, two young men sitting in the women’s section were about to be dragged out, and they asked for my help. They were scared, so I stepped in. That wasn’t the scary part, however.

The really scary part was afterward, looking into the eyes of the women in burkas. There was so much hate in their eyes because of the desegregation. You don’t know what people might be carrying under their burkas, and the hostility was palpable. During the question period, one of these women asked, “How dare you? What right do you have to do that?”

I tried to be gentle in my response, explaining that if we were in a mosque, she’d have every right to feel that way. But we were in a university lecture hall, in a secular society. If she went to a football game, she couldn’t say, “Stop the game until the women sit on one side and the men on the other.” The event was videotaped and recorded; she didn’t have to come if she didn’t want to sit next to a man. But in a secular society, she couldn’t expect her religious needs to dictate public events.

People sometimes call me or Richard Dawkins brave, but let me tell you what real bravery is. I recently came back from an event in Oslo with ex-Muslims from around the world. These are people who face death threats for renouncing their faith. They have to flee their countries, and their parents say they wish they had killed them when they were babies. These people live with that pain, and they still call their parents, who tell them they wish they had been killed. That’s real bravery.

That’s a different level of courage than simply getting up and walking out of a debate.

Jacobsen: Lawrence, thank you for the opportunity and your time today, sharing insights on something and nothing.

Krauss: I wonder if I gave you many insights, but I owe you more time. Hopefully, there’s something useful in all of that.

Photo by jony Y on Unsplash