On February 18, 2013, Laurence Krauss stated on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation “Okay. Well, I’ve recently, in the United States, just stated that teaching creationism is child abuse and I think it is. Namely, if you withhold knowledge or you do anything to children that puts them at a competitive disadvantage as adults, it’s child abuse. It’s mild forms of child abuse but it’s like withholding medicine. Withholding knowledge that later on will cause kids to become less competitive because evolution is the basis of modern biology and teaching things that are basically lies, even if they are well intentioned, is child abuse. I mean people – it’s not that people are doing this to be evil, but they’re hurting their children, especially, of course, telling kids they’re going to go to hell.”

For those of you who do not know of Lawrence Krauss, he is a professor at Arizona State University and a very outspoken atheist. I have heard him referred to as “the Richard Dawkins of America.” In a presentation to the Atheist Alliance International in 2009, Krauss stated “Every atom in your body came from a star that exploded…You are all stardust…So forget Jesus, the stars died so that you could be here today.”

So Krauss is an atheist and a philosophical materialist (again the belief that matter and energy are all that exist).  So like most people with this worldview, Krauss in very inconsistent. In saying “creationism is child abuse” and “they’re hurting their children, especially, of course, telling kids they’re going to go to hell.” He acknowledges there is right and wrong, good and evil.  But he also says “You are all stardust.” If we are all just “stardust”, or matter and energy, then again we are just chemicals. All of our thoughts, and any actions resulting from those thoughts, are just chemical reactions following the laws of physics and chemistry. This is totally inconsistent with the concept of right and wrong, good and evil.

The first thing I would like to clarify is that as a bible believing Christian, I teach my son that we do not have to go to hell. We can be with God for all eternity, because of Jesus of Nazareth and what He did for each of us in paying for our sins. Jesus is the way that Lawrence Krauss rejects when he says “So forget Jesus, the stars died so that you could be here today.”

So Lawrence Krauss and other philosophical materialists do not believe in hell. Interestingly enough, my Jehovah’s Witness friends, who do base their beliefs on the Bible, agree with the philosophical materialists on this point. If you ask a Jehovah’s Witness about Jesus’ parable of “Lazarus and the Rich Man” in Luke 16, they ask “Would a drop of water on your tongue give you any relief?” I think this misses the point of the parable. There are a number of other parables that I would say warn about hell – “The Wheat and the Tares” in Matthew 13, the “Wedding Banquet” in Matthew 22, and the “Talents”, in Matthew 25.

But this is why I believe there must be a hell – Jesus said “But if you cause one of these little ones who trusts in me to fall into sin, it would be better for you to have a large millstone tied around your neck and be drowned in the depths of the sea.” – Matthew 18:6 NLT.  I would claim that Lawrence Krauss, Eugenie Scott (former head of the National Center for Science Education), and Richard Dawkins are all leading children astray. They are teaching children that you cannot believe the Bible because of “science.” Now, if there is not a hell, the philosophical materialists are right, at least as far as what they and my Jehovah’s Witness friends have to say about hell. When they die, that is it. There is no day of reckoning. But I believe Jesus. I believe there must be a day of reckoning which I believe is what Jesus was talking about when he gave the stern warning about leading the little ones astray.

Terry Read

http://www.abc.net.au/tv/qanda/txt/s3687812.htm