Lawrence Krauss' Behavior

From William Lane Craig's latest newsletter:

This trip was unusually difficult because of a combination of two things: first, poor planning on the part of the organizers of the three key dialogues with the physicist Lawrence Krauss and, second, Krauss’ determined attempts at character assassination.

With respect to the first, we were shocked to learn upon our arrival that Krauss had refused to allow live-streaming of our dialogues on the internet, had denied permission to have the dialogues broadcast live on national television by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, and was even withholding permission for all the dialogues to be video-recorded and posted on YouTube! The organizers of the events had failed to secure these permissions in advance, and now Krauss was squarely in the driver’s seat. As you can imagine, this was quite distressing, and we have had to hold our tongues until the events were over and until Krauss, apparently confident of the job he had done and under increasing pressure from bloggers demanding to see all three dialogues, finally granted permission to have all the recordings posted.


Our topic was, “Has Science Buried God?” In his opening statement, which went 33% overtime, Krauss launched the most vicious, personal attack I have ever sustained, insinuating that I was both a liar and a thief. Someone later said that it seemed Krauss was trying to bury William Lane Craig rather than God! Since I had already prepared my own opening statement, I elected not to respond to his spurious charges but to stick to the topic at hand. During my statement, Krauss not only engaged in histrionic gestures and making faces to the audience but even brought an electronic buzzer which he pressed when he disagreed with what I said in order to disrupt my opening speech! To say that he behaved unprofessionally would be an understatement. In the ensuing dialogue, he constantly interrupted me and literally shouted me down by raising his voice. I quickly understood why he had insisted on a dialogue format rather than a formal debate! The hapless moderator was unable to control him.