TONY JONES: Good evening and welcome to Q&A. I'm Tony Jones. Answering your questions tonight: astrophysicist and atheist Lawrence Krauss; Howard Government minister, turned Radio National broadcaster, Amanda Vanstone; Gene Robinson, the first openly gay man to be ordained a Bishop in a major church; the leader of the Christian Democratic Party, Reverend Fred Nile; and Hawke Government Minister now Age Discrimination Commissioner, Susan Ryan. Please welcome our panel.

Thank you. And as usual we are being simulcast on ABC News 24 and News Radio and you can join the Twitter conversation with the #qanda hashtag. Our first question tonight comes from Amy Judge.

CHOOSING GAY OR STRAIGHT

AMY JUDGE: Hi. My question is for Fred Nile. I have read that you believe homosexuality to be a lifestyle choice that is immoral, unnatural and abnormal. When did you make the choice to be straight?

FRED NILE: Well, thank you...

TONY JONES: The choice you maintain to this very day.

FRED NILE: Well, thank you for quoting me accurately. Yes, I do agree with what you just said and I was born straight.

TONY JONES: So you didn't make a choice?

FRED NILE: No, I was born straight. All the heterosexuals are born the way they are.

TONY JONES: So being gay is a matter of choice but being straight, that's in your DNA. Is that right?

FRED NILE: It's a way of choice. Because I have met a lot of homosexuals who are no longer homosexual so if in some way you're born that way you can't change and people do change. I have had some friend of mine, who was previously leader of the gay liberation movement and is now a committed Christian and he's no longer homosexual. So I think it is a life choice.

LAWRENCE KRAUSS: Can I jump in here. I have a question. So, you know, homosexuality is ubiquitous throughout nature. In fact probably 1,500 species. My favourite one is sheep because there's homosexuality in many species but there is only one that I know of that particularly exhibits the fact of that when - that they choose unique partners and 10% of rams have sex with only other rams. Now, I'm wondering if that's a lifestyle choice too?

FRED NILE: Just a crazy mixed up ram, that's all.

TONY JONES: Okay. I'm going to actually go to Gene Robinson. Do you regard your sexuality as a matter of choice?

GENE ROBINSON: Well, I appreciate getting a voice here since I may be the only gay person on the panel. I don't know.

LAWRENCE KRAUSS: I'm pretty happy.

GENE ROBINSON: I think it is the experience of most gay and lesbian people that, indeed, this is something that was determined long before choice was remotely an option. And, in fact, all the research shows that sexual orientation is set by the time one is three years old, much earlier than any kind of meaningful choice can be made. I think, given the stigma against gay and lesbian, bisexual, transgender and intersex people, you would have to have your head examined to choose it. On the other hand, I think it's really important to understand that we wouldn't choose to be straight if we had that option because we are who we are and some of us are even rather fabulous.

TONY JONES: Can I just ask you, you mentioned or you alluded to the science in the early part of your answer: sexuality determined by the age of three. What is the science? We have heard in the past about the gay gene and by this I don't mean...

GENE ROBINSON: I am the gay Gene.

TONY JONES: I appreciate there's a coincidence there. But have you followed the latest science?

GENE ROBINSON: The science, as I understand it, is that we still don't know the mixture of nurture versus nature. But, as I say, whatever that mixture is it's determined by the age of three, long before a choice is anything meaningful. And, certainly, it's borne out by the experience of LGBTI people themselves. This is something one discovers about one's self as you live through your life, because, you know, we grow up learning the same things everyone else does. We are told all the awful things about us. And so coming out to one's self is the hardest part and then I would go on to say learning that God loves us as much as God loves everyone of God's children is the really thrilling part and knowing that nothing can separate us from God's love.

TONY JONES: All right. Lawrence just wanted to jump in.

LAWRENCE KRAUSS: Yeah. There is more science than that. There's lots of science that shows, first of all, the science I was talking about, the fact that is' ubiquitous in biology. It's obviously biologically based but there is a lot of science recently looking at genetic basis of homosexuality, epigenetics particularly. Not so much in the gene but in the gene expression. And there's just overwhelming evidence that it's biological and that's kind of the thing that I think I object to most as a scientist, that someone like Fred decides in advance or reads some book written by iron age peasants 2,000 years ago before we knew that the earth orbited the sun and decides that it has to be unnatural. But how can it be unnatural if it is so natural?

TONY JONES: I just want to hear very briefly on this from our other two panellists. I'll start with Susan Ryan, your thoughts?

SUSAN RYAN: Well, I agree entirely with the scientific view on this. As you say, it's ubiquitous. We understand - we all grew, us older people, grew up in a society where homosexuality was repressed, people didn't like to talk about it, people didn't like it was happening. But as we understood that some people were homosexual, we then look around the world and every society, be it an old society, a modern society, be it urban, rural, in every society is it about 10%, Gene?

GENE ROBINSON: Probably a little less than that.

SUSAN RYAN: A little less.

FRED NILE: 2%. 2%. 2%. Don't exaggerate.

SUSAN RYAN: Well, let's not quibble. Let's...

TONY JONES: Okay. Let's quickly - I'll just bring in Amanda Vanstone in here.

SUSAN RYAN: Let's not quibble. To me it is a part of nature. It is a part of the fabulous diversity of human beings and we have the fabulous Gene over here to prove that. But, no, I think it is absolutely a part of human society. Thank you for the sheep stuff. I didn't know that. It's great having a scientist on the program. And therefore, we should all recognise that equality, legal equality, marriage equality, must be extended to people. It is absolutely unacceptable not to do it.

TONY JONES: Okay. I asked for a brief answer and I'll get one from Amanda Vanstone, I'm sure.

AMANDA VANSTONE: You will get a brief answer. Susan and I have agreed dangerously on a number of things over a long period of time and I agree with what she says now. And the question I'd put to Fred Nile, if I may, is if you believe that society is made up of people who are dependent on each other, who are prepared to say I will care and look after this person as opposed to wanting the State to do it, why in God's name wouldn't you be in favour of gay marriage?

TONY JONES: Can I - I'll pause you on that thought. We have actually got a question about this and we'll take it right now.

AMANDA VANSTONE: I would quite like the answer.

TONY JONES: Yeah, I know, but you don't get to ask questions. The people in the audience do. So the next question comes from David Fouad.

ANTI GAY - BIBLE

DAVID FOUAD: My questions is directed towards Gene Robinson. Gene, being a Bishop, a leader and an example for many Christians in the world, how can you encourage the act of homosexuality when it has been condemned numerous times in the Bible, being called unnatural, unrighteous, lawless, an abomination and shameless and being a Christian how can you encourage gay marriage when Christ himself said that God made the male and female, therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife.

FRED NILE: Amen to that.

GENE ROBINSON: Faithful Christians, many of us progressive Christians, we understand the Bible in its context. The whole notion of sexual orientation is only about 140 years old. It was at the latter part of the 19th century that the notion that a certain minority of us would be born affectionately orientated towards people of the same gender, rather than the opposite gender, it is a new concept. You can't take a modern day concept, bring it back into an ancient scripture without doing violence to the scripture. The three-day seminar on this constricted down to one or two sentences is that the Bible is not talking about what we are talking about today, which is faithful, monogamist, lifelong-intentioned relationships between two people of the same gender. As far as the Christian community and my role in it as a Bishop, it seems to me that I am doing far more for the faith in trying to live a life of integrity, being honest in a way that all the gay bishops before me were not honest and standing up for who I am, which is a child of God who happens to be gay and is absolutely convinced of God's love for me.

TONY JONES: Briefly, in your book, you actually make the case that you support marriage as an institution. In fact, you want more people to be married because that would make the institution stronger, including gay marriage?

GENE ROBINSON: Yeah. You know, the first line in my book is I believe in marriage. I do. I witnessed my own parents 66 years married and hope I live long enough to achieve that. I am up to 25 years so far with my partner and now my husband. You know, it's interesting to me, and I would join you in this, that I can't imagine that the conservatives aren't all for this. You know, for years they accused us of shallow relationships and promiscuity and we've got people wanting to pledge themselves in faithful commitment to one another and in support of the institution of marriage.

TONY JONES: Okay. Let's hear from Fred Nile then because it seems you do agree on one thing, the institution of marriage is important. He just wants more people to get married?

FRED NILE: Well, he doesn't recognise the truth that he wants - his actions will undermine marriage. Marriage, the way God intended it, was to be between a male and female. That is the institution of marriage. It can't be two men or two women and you're undermining the institution and I'm in favour of the institution. I was married for 53 years and I want to uphold the institution of marriage and I know people are arguing what you're saying, you're for marriage so you want homosexuals to get married but you actually are torpedoing the institution of marriage and undermining it and that's why I oppose same-sex marriage.

AMANDA VANSTONE: I think what's torpedoing the institution of marriage is the very high number of heterosexual people who are jumping out of it.

LAWRENCE KRAUSS: I am sure we will get to talk more about marriage but I want to go back to the questioner a little bit because it seems to me I actually kind of agree with him a little. I can't quite understand why you stay in the church. I mean, look, you read the Bible and it's pretty explicit. You know, there's that wonderful section, really heart-warming, where Lot is visited by these angels, men and the town's people want to take him on a raid and he says 'No, no, rape my daughters instead,' and, you know, it is one of the wonderful parts of the Bible. And when you read all of this and, you know, you read that men who lay together should be killed and all that, you know you can interpret it all you want but you're sort of picking and choosing, I think. You decide you want to be a Christian and you throw out the stuff that you don't like, like I think most Christians do, actually. Throw out the stuff you don't like, keep the stuff you do. Why not just throw out the whole thing and just be happy and love people and be gay?

TONY JONES: That's a fair question. You can answer that.

GENE ROBINSON: I am actually delighted to respond to that question. It is the experience of the living God in my own life. That is why I stick with it. That is why I believe that the church, the synagogue, the mosque can constantly reform itself because God's will is being revealed to us over time. We are constantly understanding better God's will and this is one of those places where we are changing what we have believed for 2 or 3,000 years. I believe that scripture is holy in the sense that it is the story of people who have had an experience with the living God and we read it in order to know where to look in our own lives for an experience of the living God. And so I do believe in it. The Church has got a lot to apologise for but, then again, don't we all? And I believe that this is the way to discern God's will and I am thrilled to be a part of that.

TONY JONES: Okay. I'm just going to go to Fred Nile here. What makes you think that you understand God's will and he, the Bishop, does not?

FRED NILE: Because I take, as my authority, Jesus Christ, the son of God, and also the living word and I believe that God gave to us the written word, the holy Bible and as a Bishop you would know the church for 2,000 years and longer has upheld marriage as it is and has also said that homosexuality is immoral and unnatural and so on. So you are going against the teaching of the church so you should be ashamed to be a Bishop and going against the teaching of the church.

TONY JONES: I'm just going to interrupt because...

FRED NILE: I am referring to the atheist over there.

TONY JONES: Just hold on. The Bible is always open to interpretation and we've actually got a question on this subject. It's from Rebecca Kriesler.

SELECTIVE BIBLE QUOTES

REBECCA KRIESLER: Why is it that when the Bible contains something that is obviously ethically wrong, for example "happy are those who seize the children and smash them against a rock", which is in psalm 137, religious people claim that the Bible is just a guideline and shouldn't be taken literally? So why is it the second someone brings up gay marriage they use the Bible as a concrete reason to oppose it?

TONY JONES: Yeah, Fred Nile. The Bible has many messages, I think, is part of the point there, including some very violent ones?

FRED NILE: Yes, well...

TONY JONES: As you heard earlier from Lawrence Krauss.

FRED NILE: Yes. Well, we understand that. You have the old testament and the new testament and Jesus made it very clear that he had replaced the old testament with the emphasis it did have with a new testament and said 'I have a new commandment for you: to love one another.' And so Jesus brought in a completely new emphasis, which is what I follow as a Christian.

TONY JONES: But can I just make the point that Gene and his partner love one another. Isn't that following the teacher?

FRED NILE: Gene has to answer to God not to Fred Nile.

GENE ROBINSON: And I am delighted to answer to God for that.

FRED NILE: And I am worried because there is a passage in the Bible with Jesus where he said that in the last days some people will come to me and start saying "Lord, Lord, Lord" and think that they're on the right side and he said I will say depart from me, I never knew you. So you must be very careful where you are in your own personal salvation and your relationship with God.

AMANDA VANSTONE: I don't like doubt as a motivator. I mean you're saying that people might choose to follow a particular path because they have been frightened by the scripture that says if you don't you might not get into heaven. Well, frankly that's not any heaven I want to get into. My grandmother used to say if you are nice to people every day - because she didn't make us go to Sunday school when we stayed with her - she said, "If you're nice to people every day, other than to defend yourself because that's - you know, a box on is fair enough then, you will get into any heaven worth getting into." How could you disagree with that?

TONY JONES: Lawrence, I know you want to jump in.

FRED NILE: Only that it is different from the teaching of the new testament. It's nice, friendly advice...

TONY JONES: Well, can I just interrupt because we've got ...

AMANDA VANSTONE: So you can be a nice person your whole life and still not get into heaven?

FRED NILE: That's right. That's right.

TONY JONES: Just excuse me for one second because...

AMANDA VANSTONE: It is not worth going there.

FRED NILE: Yes.

TONY JONES: ...on this table we have two...

FRED NILE: To have eternal life you...

TONY JONES: Excuse me. Excuse me for one minute.

FRED NILE: ...have to believe in Jesus Christ as saviour.

TONY JONES: Excuse me for one minute.

FRED NILE: There's only one way.

TONY JONES: I will give you a chance to answer this but on this table we have got two different interpretation of the new testament. We have got Gene's, and I'd like to...

LAWRENCE KRAUSS: Maybe three.

TONY JONES: Two theological interpretations. So, Gene, what did Jesus say about homosexuality?

GENE ROBINSON: Jesus said nothing about homosexuality.

AMANDA VANSTONE: Correct. Correct.

GENE ROBINSON: This was also - I mean, I want you to listen very carefully to what I'm about to say and what I'm not saying. This is a man who remained single throughout his lifetime in a culture that virtually demanded marriage. He spent most of his time with 12 men. He singled three of them out for a special leadership and one of them is known as the beloved disciple, the one whom Jesus loved. I think to solicit Jesus into the notion of nuclear families, husband and wife and 2.2 children, begs the question of the fact that Jesus actually had a very kind of alternate lifestyle. I am not saying he was gay. I'm not saying that he ever had sex with anyone. I am just saying that this is a man...

FRED NILE: He couldn't. He couldn't.

GENE ROBINSON: ...who lived outside the normal boundaries of his own culture and knew about a family of choice. When his mother and brothers came to fetch him once at a house and he was told they were outside, he said "Who are my mothers and brothers? " They are the ones who do the will of God. So I think we have lots of room to wonder about this Jesus who was always reaching out to the marginalised, to the oppressed and was always advocating for them, usually against the moral arbiters of that day.

TONY JONES: Okay. Now, Fred, there is the other interpretation of the new testament.

FRED NILE: Yes.

TONY JONES: According to Gene Jesus said nothing about homosexuality.

FRED NILE: Yes. Well, he is misrepresenting what Jesus said.

TONY JONES: What did he say?

FRED NILE: Jesus, for example, did say what marriage is when they were asking him. He said marriage is where a man shall leave his mother and father and shall cleave to his wife. The two shall become one. Two men cannot become one. Two women cannot become one. But God has made us biologically so a male and female can become one and complement each other. So that's the first thing. There is also a code word in the new testament and Jesus often referred to sodom and everybody - and it's been all quoted here already - you quoted the story. So every Jewish listener knew what Jesus was referring to when he said it is going to be worse for you than it was for sodom. He only had to use the word sodom. They all knew what the story was about where the men wanted to have sex with these two attractive - I assume they were attractive angels, male angels.

GENE ROBINSON: Actually, Fred you're quite wrong about that. If you go back and read you will see that Jesus said that the sin of sodom was its ill-treatment of the poor.

LAWRENCE KRAUSS: Well, let me jump in and say - I mean we're all pretending Jesus was this great guy but let's step back and say this guy also seemed to say if you don't believe in me you know what, you'll be condemned. You know you won't get to heaven. You'll be condemned eternally to pain and worse than the people in Sodom and Gomorrah, just for not believing in me. What kind of God would you - I mean, you know, what kind of love is that? What kind of love...

FRED NILE: That was the...

LAWRENCE KRAUSS: People who are loving, caring, good people will go to hell for all eternity for choosing - choosing to have the - to use their brains and I find that just, you know.

TONY JONES: Fred, I just want to hear Susan, who has been left out a little bit on the end there.

SUSAN RYAN: Well, I'm not gay. I'm not married. I'm not a great fan of marriage. I have been married. So maybe I haven't got a lot to say. Maybe I haven't got a lot to say. But I've got this: I was brought up a Catholic and our religious education was really the new testament, not the old testament. And the parts of that that I remember fondly and, indeed, I have brought into my political life and my human rights work is not whether Jesus said sodom, it's feeding the sick. It's healing the - feeding the hungry, healing the sick, even raising someone from the dead, which is the ultimate healing. It's throwing the usurers out of the temple. It's including women in the conversation he was having with his disciples. It is saying suffer the little children. They're the things that I think are worthwhile, even though I am not signed up to any religion these days, Lawrence, because I think they're things, you know, we can all incorporate. But this argument endlessly about, Fred, that you're going on about this was in the old testament, I mean, we're here now. It's 2013. We've got responsibilities to each other. We've got responsibilities to the people Jesus Christ apparently looked after. Let's go for it.

TONY JONES: Just to sort of end this part of the discussion, can I just bring Fred back in here. I mean are you worried if you create an exclusive world where your version of Christianity leaves out people like Gene, that that is actually bad?

FRED NILE: Well, I'm not leaving him out. He is excluding himself. I haven't left him out. I want him to come in.

TONY JONES: Well, in fact, he's not excluding himself in the sense that he is a bishop with his own congregation.

FRED NILE: I would like you, at the end of this program, to say, "I believe in what you have just been saying Fred." I hope he might do that.

LAWRENCE KRAUSS: But all the people who also believe in God but from other religions are also excluded, I presume. So basically you're an atheist about all the other religions. It's just yours you're not. Is that correct?

FRED NILE: I leave it to God. He is the judge and he will judge each person.

LAWRENCE KRAUSS: So, no, but are they excluded? If you're not a Christian but you, say, you're a very faithful Muslim or a faithful Jew, are you excluded?

FRED NILE: I'm just saying God will judge them not me.

TONY JONES: Okay. We've got a...

FRED NILE: I know God is a loving God and God will be fair in his dealing with each individual.

TONY JONES: We've got a question from the floor, who put up his hand. I'll just quickly go to you.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hi, there Fred. I want to ask you when the suicide rate is so high in LGBT teens, when you use such hateful and disgusting language about them, do you not feel - or I think maybe you should - feel slightly responsible for some of this that goes on?

FRED NILE: I must object to that because I will give you $1,000 if you can find anywhere where I have said anything which is hateful or vicious about homosexuals. Okay.

TONY JONES: Okay. I think it is time to move on.

FRED NILE: you won't find it. You won't find it.

TONY JONES: I think it's time to move along. Our next question, and it is on a different subject, comes from Charles Northcote.

ISLAMISM AND TERROR

CHARLES NORTHCOTE: Panel, good evening. In light of recent events in the UK, namely the horrific terrorist murder of the British soldier Lee Rigby, we have terrorism coming from within. Let me quote the word of Ayatollah Khomeini. "Islam makes it incumbent upon all males to prepare themselves for the conquest of countries so that the writ of Islam, Sharia, is obeyed by every country in the world. Those who know nothing about Islam pretend it counsels against war. Those are witless. Islam says kill all unbelievers just as they would kill you". How do you propose to make a stand against such radical behaviour and belief systems?

TONY JONES: Lawrence Krauss, let's start with you.

LAWRENCE KRAUSS: Well, I think the way you make a stand is the way you make a stand against all religious nonsense. You point out there's - actually Islam, I don't think, is that different than Christianity. It is 500 years behind the game but Christianity was doing the same stuff 500 years ago. I think you have to point - I think you have to point out that we all have a common humanity and that the myths and silly stories in Islam are just as silly as the ridiculous stories in the Bible and that we teach kids to, in fact, get their beliefs to conform to the evidence of reality rather than deciding in advance what is right they've even asked the question. So education. I'm an educator and I have said it before but, you know, if the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. And to me it's education. You educate people. What you're talking about is really ignorance. I think you can control people by keeping them ignorant and you see the Taliban doing it in Afghanistan. They have madrasas that get kids to memorise sections of the Quran instead of teaching them mathematics. And so the more knowledge you have about the world, the less likely you are to that kind of radical hatred it seems to me.

TONY JONES: Amanda Vanstone, the questioner began by talking about - thank you. The questioner began by talking about the murder of that young trooper in a suburb in London, hacked to pieces by two people who were trying to make a political point. How do you actually deal with that?

AMANDA VANSTONE: Well, I suspect British people can deal with it better than legislation or intelligence agencies can. If you were there, I think the best thing to do is find your Muslim friends, if you have got some, if you haven't find some and make friends with them, and find your friends who have come from Africa or the children have come from Africa, and go out to dinner with them. Make a public statement that not everybody is like that. I think if you let the media stories of this push us into it's us versus them, that is what you will get. What you have to do is say, no, it's not us versus them. It is all of us over there against those few crazy nutters.

TONY JONES: Susan Ryan.

SUSAN RYAN: Well, I couldn't put it better than Amanda has. It is about embracing and including people and I think we do that very well in Australia. Not well enough. We have still got some issues. But the more we provide every community opportunity to people of Islamic faith coming to live in Australia, the better it will be. And the other thing that always - I always say helps in any situation about religion or terrorism is educate the women.

AMANDA VANSTONE: Indeed.

SUSAN RYAN: The education of women is the great solution to many a problem.

LAWRENCE KRAUSS: I agree.

TONY JONES: Fred?

FRED NILE: Just a quick comment. I object to your comparison of the Islamic religion and those quotes with the new testament. You will find nothing in the new testament which would encourage you to kill anybody. In fact, they...

LAWRENCE KRAUSS: No, I didn't say it was violent. I just said it was silly.

FRED NILE: No, but you were giving the impression, as you said, 500 years ago - what happened 500 years ago was not based on what the new testament teaches. It was based on the crusades and what men think.

LAWRENCE KRAUSS: Well, I mean, I actually think the worse crime in the new testament is the crucifixion of Jesus. It seems to me amazing that you solve the problems of the world by having someone sacrifice - by having this person violently tortured and sacrificed for the sins of a non-existent forbearer, who made a mistake of taking an apple from a rib-woman. I mean it just doesn't seem to make sense.

TONY JONES: Okay. All right.

FRED NILE: Jesus was dying for all of our sins. Your sins and my sins and the victim's sins.

TONY JONES: Okay. Fred, we went a bit off topic there because the question was actually about terrorism and how to deal with it and particularly Islamic extremism.

FRED NILE: Well, I'm very concerned about Islam and I have spoken on this before and what is being quoted is correct, it is in the Quran. So we have to have the Islamic...

TONY JONES: I don't think it was a quote from the Quran. That was a quote from Ayatollah Khomeini.

FRED NILE: Yes, but he's quoting the Quran. There are verses in the Quran that say cut off the hands of your enemies, their legs, crucify them and so on. And these fanatics can find those verses in the Quran, as Bin Laden did, to justify their terrorism. Now, I believe the Islamic...

TONY JONES: Just like, in fact, you could take that psalm, which is out of the old testament, which suggests you could dash babies' heads against rocks as part of a revenge against the Babylonians...

FRED NILE: Well, that's the point I'm making, that that is no longer relevant in the new testament period. Jesus said that was the old covenant. We're now under the new covenant.

MULTIPLE SPEAKERS TALK AT ONCE

FRED NILE: He said, "Love your enemies. Love your enemies."

TONY JONES: All right. I'm going to interrupt this just for a moment because we've got another question on this topic. It's from Rashad Farid.

TERROR OR RACISM

RASHAD FARID: Last week a British soldier was brutally murdered outside of his barracks. On May 2 in Birmingham a 72-year-old man was viciously stabbed. He was a Muslim returning home after prayer at his local mosque and police deemed it racially motivated. Why is the attack on the British soldier considered an act of terrorism while the other is just an act of racism. Do you blame the religion or the individuals who committed it?

TONY JONES: Gene Robinson, let's start with you.

GENE ROBINSON: Rashad, I believe is your name.

RASHAD FARID: Yeah.

GENE ROBINSON: Yes. I think you're absolutely right to point out this discrepancy. I think it points to prejudice and bias on our part and the part of the media. Both are serious and both need to be taken seriously. You know, I think we have extremists in every religion and Christians should be very humble about pointing out someone else's extremism and we have just as many Christians who would love to see a theocracy as Muslims or Jews. Actually the Jews are better on this than any of us. They have rarely ever wanted to take over the world the way some Christians and Muslims have done. I think that one of the ways in which we can respond to this kind of terrorism is to encourage the middle ground of all the religions to stand up and speak. We have let the extremists own the airwaves, own the blogs, own the social media and those people of peace in all of the world religions and those of no religion need to stand up and speak for the vast majority of us who find all of those crimes heinous.

TONY JONES: Fred, you've heard the comparison. 72-year-old Muslim man returning from prayer stabbed to death in the street and the comparison is made with the killing of the soldier who was hacked to death in the street. The difference is, I suppose, that the killers in that case stood in front of phone cameras and told their reasons. What are your thoughts?

FRED NILE: Well, I'm just as critical of both individuals who carried out those horrific murders. I have got no interest in supporting that and I follow what Jesus said: love your enemies and that is the central teaching of the Christian faith. It's not a source of violence against people at all.

LAWRENCE KRAUSS: Who are the enemies in this case? I just don't who the enemy are. Are you saying Islam is the enemy? You know, the problem is...

FRED NILE: Well, however is attacking you...

LAWRENCE KRAUSS: Yeah.

FRED NILE: Whoever is attacking you, like in Cairo, burning down the Cathedral, that is your enemy. So you still love them but you try to change that society.

LAWRENCE KRAUSS: Part of the problem here, and I agree with, of course, what you just said, but we label people and religion is a wonderful way of labelling people and making us versus them. And so we don't see the people, we see them being Christians or Muslims and we hate them because of that and so that's another reason why, I think, religion gets in the way because it causes us to stereotype people instead of seeing people as individuals with a common humanity.

TONY JONES: Can I just interrupt there because in this particular case, the case of the two men who killed in a suburban street, hacked to death, literally, a British soldier, we did see them actually. We saw them as individuals and they used phone cameras rather uniquely immediately after the event, still covered in blood, to explain their reasons. How do you deal with that?

LAWRENCE KRAUSS: The point is that obviously they were driven by hate. My point was that they were not killing that poor young man because they knew him, they knew anything about him. They had already labelled him by a bunch of labels: military, representative of a Christian state that had done supposed atrocities against Islam and that is the kind of labelling that leads people to be able to do these heinous acts because they no longer see people as people but representative of something they hate and that, to me, is one of the real problems of the us versus themness of religious groups that cause other people to no longer be people.

TONY JONES: Amanda, just taking the young man's question up there, I mean he's asking whether the two things are fundamentally different: the stabbing to death, a racist attack of an elderly Muslim man and the killing with knives and hatchets of the British soldier?

AMANDA VANSTONE: I don't know the details of the second case but they would seem, on what you have said, to be inextricably related. I mean the more you have people saying Muslims want to go and kill everybody, the more you have whipping everyone else up into a frenzy of fear and apprehension and a feeling that they must deal with this. So it goes back to what my granny said: if you lead a good life, you will get into any heaven worth getting into and it follows that you - you know, if I get up to Heaven and St Peters says, 'Gee, you made a mistake and you went to the Anglican Church and you should have gone to a Catholic one or you should have gone to some other church," I'm going to be bitterly disappointed because I went to a Christian school and I was taught the need to be a good person and not judge people, as you say, on labels. It doesn't matter if they are Catholic or Anglican or Muslim or whatever. What matters is whether they are a good and decent person and that is how we should be dealing with each other. And once you start this, "Well, they're Muslims. They want to kill you," well, you're separating it out, you're getting into us and them and you will have battles, ugly ones, where people will be killed.

LAWRENCE KRAUSS: Steve Weinberg, who is a physicist and also an atheist, said that there are good people and there are bad people and good people do good things and bad people do bad things. When good people do bad things, it's religion.

TONY JONES: Okay.

GENE ROBINSON: Yeah, I'd just jump in here and say...

TONY JONES: There's a young man there with his hand up in the air. We'll just get a microphone over to you. Yes, come in, Gene. Go ahead.

GENE ROBINSON: Let me just ask a quick question. I think the labelling...

TONY JONES: I'd rather you didn't ask a question.

GENE ROBINSON: No, then I'll make a statement. Which is I think we all have to be careful of labelling.

LAWRENCE KRAUSS: Of course.

GENE ROBINSON: And I believe that you quite often make the distinction between atheist and religionists as being a kind of label.

TONY JONES: Okay.

LAWRENCE KRAUSS: Absolutely.

TONY JONES: I'm sorry, but I'm going to go back to the questioner in the front row there. Go ahead.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Professor Krauss, you say religion is the only way to make a good person do a bad thing. But don't you think you could turn that around and say, well, religion helps a lot of bad people to just be better and do good things? I mean speaking for myself, I am not a great person but (indistinct) the influence of Christianity has on me.

LAWRENCE KRAUSS: Yeah, absolutely. Look, you can't deny that religion serves many good purposes in society. There's no doubt it brings people consolation at hard times. It brings people together in groups often and gives support groups. So, you know, it is indeed stereotypical to try and label it. My point is that we pretend that religion only is the basis of morality and leads to good things and sometimes it does but a lot of the times and, again, if you read the old testament, it is one of the most immoral books ever written.

TONY JONES: Okay. I'm going to go to a - sorry, we've got another questioner.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Sorry, just very quickly.

TONY JONES: Yeah.

Q1 FROM THE FLOOR

AUDIENCE MEMBER: With respect, I think religion is the only way you can have an objective set of moral values?

TONY JONES: Why?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Well, what else would you suggest is an objective set?

LAWRENCE KRAUSS: Reason. Reason.

TONY JONES: Okay. Thank you. Thank you. We will take that as a comment and we'll go to our next questioner. It is Eddie Ozols.

CATHOLIC LITE?

EDDIE OZOLS: Gene Robinson, American comedian Robin Williams has suggested that Episcopalians are Catholic Lite, L-I-T-E, all the rituals but only half the guilt. It seems he is saying that there is no God in all this, it is all about the bells and smells. Can you defend the existence of God to someone like Lawrence Krauss?

TONY JONES: He is sitting right there. You can have a crack at it?

GENE ROBINSON: I have no need to convince Lawrence Krauss of anything. I am delighted to be his colleague and I am also delighted to affirm the appropriate role of reason. I don't see it as an either/or. I see it as a both/and. I think we can be reasonable, logical, scientific people and be religious. There is no conflict between religion and science. Science tells us what happens and religion tells us who made it happen. It is God who thought up the big bang. It is God who thought up evolution.

LAWRENCE KRAUSS: How do you know that? How do you know that? I mean, you know, that's...

GENE ROBINSON: I don't know that.

LAWRENCE KRAUSS: Yeah, okay. Good.

GENE ROBINSON: I believe that.

LAWRENCE KRAUSS: Oh, okay.

GENE ROBINSON: And my point would be my particular believing of that allows me to treat people with - I shoot for infinite respect of one another. I derive my own values from my own experience of God and it motivates me to be the kind of better person that Amanda is talking about. So for me that works. I don't have a need to convince you of that and I can also respect...

TONY JONES: I think it is probably a good idea you don't have a need to do it because the truth is, I don't think you did because he's not going to be convinced by it.

LAWRENCE KRAUSS: No. No. No. But I think you would accept and I am sure you would accept the fact that I can feel exactly the same way about respecting people and it is all based on the fact that I don't need to buy into those myths. I can come to the conclusions based on the evidence of reality and reason and decide it is reasonable to treat you with respect because it leads to be a happier for me and for you. So it's not as if I need that God to come to that conclusion. God is just redundant.

TONY JONES: Okay. All right. Now, Amanda Vanstone in the middle of that conversation?

AMANDA VANSTONE: Yeah, well, look I have an admission to make. I think the young man in the front has a point to make. I am disappointed in all of the churches. I think they have let us down in a whole variety of ways but I do think there is a place for someone, certainly other than the state and certainly other than just Rafferty's Rules, to come up with a set of moral values or a number of sets of moral values. I don't have the same confidence in reason and rational. Plenty of books you can read to show that cross-culturally you can come to different conclusions and I don't think history shows that men left to their own devices always do good things. So the churches, in my mind, have had a role to play in guiding people as to what is a moral and good life to lead but they haven't always done it themselves.

LAWRENCE KRAUSS: Well, they don't have the same world.

AMANDA VANSTONE: No, they don't but we don't all have to be the same.

LAWRENCE KRAUSS: Well, then why is it any different than reason?

AMANDA VANSTONE: Well, I think reason is not be trust.

TONY JONES: All right. Okay. Now, I'm going to - Amanda can I just...

AMANDA VANSTONE: You have got point.

TONY JONES: Amanda, I'm going to cross to the other end of the panel. I'd like to hear what Susan Ryan has to say about this.

SUSAN RYAN: Well, I think that having a faith can inspire people to live very good lives. We have two examples here. I am not sure about Amanda's status, you don't have to tell me what your...

AMANDA VANSTONE: Give me a break. You think I've been bad?

FRED NILE: She is a good Liberal.

SUSAN RYAN: But it's not the only thing. I mean I know many people in my own family are Catholic nuns, priests and so on, who live a life of altruism. I admire that but I agree with you, you don't need to have that. If it is there you think, well, that's good. That's very fine. You're a Sister of Mercy who goes and works with the asylum seekers and so on. I really admire that and I respect it. I will do what I can to help you but there are other people who go and do similar different good works from different motivation. So I would never knock someone's religious motivation. I would respect it when it was constructive and altruistic. But I can't see that you have to have that particular motivation. You don't have it and these days I don't have it and yet I hope we are pretty constructive people.

TONY JONES: Let me bring in Fred and we will go back to Eddie's Ozols question and really do you want to have a crack at convincing the atheist of the existence of God?

FRED NILE: Well, I was interested - you keep talking about reality and creation. I believe in reality. I believe in creation. When I see creation, I just thank God who created it and I worship the creator. You're in a vacuum. You don't know what you believe, what's there.

LAWRENCE KRAUSS: No, well...

GENE ROBINSON: He seems pretty clear to me.

LAWRENCE KRAUSS: No, it's...

FRED NILE: (Indistinct) what he believes.

LAWRENCE KRAUSS: I try not to use the word belief because I try to not decide what the answer is before I have asked the question and so I try - in fact I am really happy about the fact my faith is shakeable. I can think of something - you know, I'm a physicist and most of what I do is wrong and that's exciting because it means nature is telling me something new and that's because it means nature is telling me something new and that is what is so exciting about science is the fact we can actually change our minds instead of deciding in advance what is right, as you have about - you have claimed do have done about homosexuality, in the face of all evidence and so that to me is the real problem is that you have to be willing to change your mind.

TONY JONES: Okay. I'm sorry, I'm going to just pause this argument just for a moment because we have actually got - we have got a question from Trish Ellis and it does relate to what you were talking about a moment ago.

SCIENCE AND RELIGION

TRISH ELLIS: Lawrence Krauss, you were quoted as saying you want to intelligently design our society, our ethics and morality so that we live in the kind of society we want to live in rather than in the kind of society that was laid down in the Bible. So if we get rid of God and make ourselves the God instead through our progress in technology and science, we should be a far better race of people. But in actual fact, we now have the ability to destroy ourselves through science. Einstein once wrote that "Science without religion is lame and religion without science is blind. They need and complement each other." How do you respond to that?

LAWRENCE KRAUSS: Well, the first thing I want to say is the quote you gave was not mine. It was my friend Richard Dawkins but I think when we establish laws in government we try and intelligently design society. Laws in government in Australia, as well as in my country, no matter what people say they are based on secular principles, okay. They're based on trying to organise people in a way to produce the maximum happiness, maximum comfort etc. Now, I think that you're absolutely right that the products of science, the technology of science, can be used in many different ways. But the point is that what we need to do is if we're going to address the main problems of the 21 century, including the danger of nuclear weapons, we have to be honest about them. We have to be honest about things like the fact that global warming is happening and we have to deal with it, instead of deciding in advance what the problem is. So what we have to do is say let's make our policies be based on empirical evidence. Wouldn't that be amazing if we made our public policy in government based on reality instead of ideology?

TONY JONES: Lawrence. Lawrence, I'm sorry to interrupt but can I just bring you to the latter part of the question because Albert Einstein is not here on the panel but Albert Einstein is the iconic genius. He clung to his belief.

LAWRENCE KRAUSS: He wasn't - you know, I didn't get to know him very well because he was dead before I was born but he's been misused - his quotes have been misused completely. He derided a personal God more than anyone else. When he talked about religion, he talked about order in the universe, the God of Spinoza, whatever you call that. He made it quite clear, as many people do, that their religious beliefs because no matter what you say, science is certainly compatible with some vague notion of a purpose for the universe. We can't ever disprove that is some purpose in the universe, there is just no evidence for one. But it is incompatible with the detailed doctrines of the world's major religions and Einstein argued that as strongly as anyone else.

TONY JONES: Okay. Gene Robinson, I mean, the quote still remains if religion without science is blind, I think it was. That was a quite from Einstein, according to our questioner. What do you say?

GENE ROBINSON: Well, I like the quotation in the sense that it ties the two together and I think either one by themselves can be distorted and incomplete. So for me - for me - putting the two together is really important. Where I find science a kind of shortcoming is that science can describe what is and how it works, but there is much that is unprovable that is also important to me. So a scientist can tell me what makes a sunset colourful, how it works, how the curvature of the earth affects it but it doesn't tell me about beauty, it doesn't tell me about watching that sunset and being inspired by it. So I would say that the two together are very much important. I couldn't agree more with Lawrence about basing our policies and our public stances and so on, on the actual facts and one of the things in America right now that just makes me crazy is that no-one seems to think that the facts matter and we are getting into terrible trouble because of that.

MULTIPLE SPEAKERS TALK AT ONCE

TONY JONES: Okay, No, I'm going to interrupt because Fred wants to get in there.

FRED NILE: I would just like to challenge Lawrence that the greatest fact is the fact of Jesus Christ.

LAWRENCE KRAUSS: How do you know?

FRED NILE: He is a reality and he came into this world to show us the way of salvation and he said in his own teaching...

LAWRENCE KRAUSS: Is that because he said he did?

FRED NILE: ..."Who do you say that I am?" And so the question you have to ask who was Jesus Christ and what is his meaning - what is his meaning, his life to you and his death? You talked about the crucifixion. What does his death mean for you? And it's a source of salvation. He died for our sins, the sins of the world.

LAWRENCE KRAUSS: Well, you know, when someone tells me they're God I tend not to believe it. Okay. But, you know...

FRED NILE: But have you studied...

LAWRENCE KRAUSS: Hold on.

FRED NILE: Are you open-minded enough as a scientist...

LAWRENCE KRAUSS: I'm not even sure he was real, to tell you the truth.

FRED NILE: ...to study - to study Jesus Christ and to study the new testament?

MULTIPLE SPEAKERS TALK AT ONCE

FRED NILE: Are you open-minded enough, I just...

TONY JONES: Fred. Fred. Fred.

FRED NILE: ...would like you to give me...

LAWRENCE KRAUSS: When I was a kid...

TONY JONES: Can I just put this to you, the counterpoint: Are you open-minded enough to accept the Muslim position that Mohammed is the greatest man in history?

FRED NILE: I don't believe he is the greatest man in history in the same way Jesus Christ was. Jesus Christ was the son of God and...

LAWRENCE KRAUSS: But that's because you have decided he is.

FRED NILE: But that's factual history. You can actually study that.

LAWRENCE KRAUSS: Factual history?

FRED NILE: There are documents, there are historical documents, that show that. It's not a myth.

LAWRENCE KRAUSS: That show what: that he existed or he is the son of God?

FRED NILE: That he existed and how he was born and so on.

TONY JONES: Well, I'll tell you one thing, Lawrence, Mohammed certainly agreed that Jesus Christ was a great prophet. So we'll leave that aside for one minute.

LAWRENCE KRAUSS: But it's this provability thing that bothered me but I'll get back to that.

TONY JONES: We've got a few other questions to go to. You're watching Q&A. The next question is a video question. It comes from James McKay in Orange.

EUTHANASIA

JAMES McKAY: My question is to Mr Nile. I have a terminal illness, Motor Neurone Disease. Why did you not support the NSW Greens' Rights Of The Terminally Ill Bill? By your actions you have condemned me to a very painful, undignified death.

FRED NILE: Well, thank you for the question and obviously you are suffering and I feel very sorry about that. But when we debated the euthanasia bill, as a member of parliament I have a responsibility. If we had have passed that law, what affect it would have on the people - aged people going into hospitals where people feel at risk. Would it change the nature of our doctors? Doctors are committed to saving life. We give them the power to take life, we change the nature of a doctor's role and if we have hospitals where patients' lives can be taken as well, then we change the nature of the hospital. Instead of saving life you could lose your life in hospital and we've had reports from the Northern Territory where a lot of the Aboriginal people are very fearful of going to hospitals in the Northern Territory because of the possibility of euthanasia by a white bigoted doctor who is racist who would take the opportunity of removing numbers of the Aboriginal population and that's what they've said to me. So I want to protect life. I want to protect you too and have the proper palliative care. You should not be suffering pain in our modern society with all the knowledge we have of palliative care, all the experts we have, all the money that's being spent. You should not be suffering and I am sorry that you are.

TONY JONES: Susan Ryan?

SUSAN RYAN: Well, I think we should be talking about voluntary euthanasia and I presume that was what was in the Greens Bill.

AMANDA VANSTONE: Yeah. That was the question.

SUSAN RYAN: Voluntary euthanasia is something which philosophically I support and agree with. I do have some worries about the attempt to put it into legislation in this respect. I now come across a lot of examples of elder abuse. That is frail old people being abused by their families, sometimes for financial gain and so on and I think we have to be very careful in getting voluntary euthanasia laws that make sure that the frail, older person is well protected against those who would exploit that person and one of the particularly difficult areas of this is friends of mine who say that they want voluntary euthanasia. They want the right are often saying it in relation to a discussion about Alzheimer's disease and dementia. But a problem I can't see my way around yet is that if a person has dementia, advanced dementia, then they're not in a position to make the voluntary decision. So somehow or other they...

AMANDA VANSTONE: They can do it with an advanced medical directive.

GENE ROBINSON: Yeah, exactly.

SUSAN RYAN: An advanced directive.

AMANDA VANSTONE: Advanced medical directive.

SUSAN RYAN: Okay.

AMANDA VANSTONE: Look, I agree that the difficulty for legislators - I know plenty of people who philosophically agree, you should be able to say I can't face this and I want to choose to end my life and I need help to do it in a dignified and decent way. You should be able to choose that. The problem for legislators is exactly as you say. You have got an old person who is very frail, who knows they are near their end and they know that if they said see you later to the world there would be assets so that the grandchild could, I don't know, go to university or whatever. I mean kids can now. But you know what I mean and there is pressure on someone to say I want to give my life up.

SUSAN RYAN: Yes. Yes.

AMANDA VANSTONE: That is absolutely criminal and a terrible thing to allow and how to devise a bill, as we have both had this experience, to exclude that but give the rest of us the right we want to have is the hardest part.

TONY JONES: Gene?

AMANDA VANSTONE: And can I just say...

TONY JONES: Sorry. Sorry. Yeah.

AMANDA VANSTONE: It is not just the suffering. Look, you can get plenty of pills and poppers and stuff to - it is the indignity and the loss of the life that you were leading that you're just breathing as someone else, not the person you were. It is not the pain that guy is complaining about. That is not all he is complaining about. He wants to end his life as he is, not as someone he has become because we wouldn't let him go when he wanted to.

TONY JONES: Gene, let's hear from you on this.

GENE ROBINSON: So I would very much agree with Susan and Amanda on this. I think that part of a society's respect for each individual citizen includes this right to die with dignity. I also agree that we have got some thorny things to work through, certainly legislatively. I also remember that ethical choices are rarely between good and bad but between two goods and so knowing how to balance those two things, both the protection and the freedom, it is very complicated. But we can do it.

LAWRENCE KRAUSS: But societies (indistinct)...

TONY JONES: Okay. No, sorry, Lawrence. We have got one last question. It is actually to you. It comes from Chris Summers.

MULTIVERSE FAITH

CHRIS SUMMERS: Hi Lawrence. Huge fan. My question is this: criticism of science by religious people is sometimes focused on a particular scientific theory. The multiverse theory has been criticised by religious people as an example of science having faith in a guess made without evidence at all in order to explain a mystery and it has been suggested that scientists have faith in their theory in the same way that religious people have faith in their God. So do scientists have evidence that are suggestive of a multiverse?

TONY JONES: Can you give us a multiverse theory in 30 seconds? Is that possible?

LAWRENCE KRAUSS: Well, yeah, the difference between the multiverse and God is the multiverse is well-motivated by evidence. Okay. So we have been driven to it because of theories that actually do describe nature and so those same theories can be tested and so, in fact, just like we knew atoms existed before we could see them, okay, it is true that if there are many universes, we're subject and in my own field I am constantly reminded that we are limited. That we live in one universe. Most of us do. The Republican party in my country doesn't, but most of us do and therefore there are some questions we can't empirically test direction. But if, for example, If we have a fundamental physics theory that makes 25 predictions, all of which agree with the data and the 26th prediction is that in the early universe those same physical processes would have resulted in an early expansion that would produce many different regions that are causally disconnected, there would be no reason not to accept that fact. But the other huge difference is, however, that if there was any evidence against it, we would throw it out like yesterday's newspaper. That is not the faith of religion. It is the fact that we make a theory, we test it and we throw it out with impunity if it's wrong. And that's the hallmark of science.

TONY JONES: Lawrence, I remember - very briefly because we're running out of time quite quickly, but I remember the last time you were on this show, we went back into the green room and I said to you, "Is it possible the multiverse, that is multiple universes, could have existed at the time of the big bang?" And from memory you said "Yes?"

LAWRENCE KRAUSS: Yeah, absolutely. In fact, if you look at what we now know about fundamental physics it is quite likely that our universe isn't unique. Almost all the theories we have suggest our universe isn't unique. Now...

TONY JONES: But at the same time you argue that the big bang sprang from nothing but it can't if there are multiple universes?

LAWRENCE KRAUSS: Well, certainly it can. There was nothing there. There was absolutely no space, no time, no matter, no radiation. Space and time themselves popped into existence which is one of the reasons why it is hard...

TONY JONES: But only...

LAWRENCE KRAUSS: Hold on.

TONY JONES: But only in that universe.

LAWRENCE KRAUSS: Only in that universe, that's right. Exactly.

FRED NILE: Lawrence, you have to ask the question why are the majority of scientists believers in God?

LAWRENCE KRAUSS: Actually, that's not true. In my country 90...

FRED NILE: It is true. It is true. There's been surveys conducted.

LAWRENCE KRAUSS: Hold on. 90% of the scientists in the National Academy of Sciences in my country, the highest ranking group in the world, 90% of them don't believe in God. In the Royal Society 80%...

FRED NILE: I'm talking of all scientists - all scientists.

LAWRENCE KRAUSS: In fact, you know what, again some people think God is important to science, it isn't. The point is, again, as Steve Weinberg said most scientists don't think enough about God to even know if they're atheists. It never comes up because it is not relevant to try and understand how the universe works. I've never heard it discussed in a scientific meeting. It's just not an issue. It's irrelevant.

FRED NILE: There have been surveys. There have been surveys.

AMANDA VANSTONE: Fred. Fred, I think I can help you with one thing at least and that is that any God worth following wants converts not conscripts. So religious people should stop looking to parliaments to conscript people into a belief that they don't adopt.

FRED NILE: They've already tried...

TONY JONES: Okay. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry everybody. The laws of the universe have dictated that we're out of time. That is all we have time for.

FRED NILE: (Indistinct) volunteer movement.

TONY JONES: On our panel tonight, please welcome our panel. Please thank our panel, I should say: Lawrence Krauss.

SUSAN RYAN: We'll go again.

TONY JONES: We could start again in another universe. Amanda Vanstone, Gene Robinson, Fred Nile and Susan Ryan.

Thank you. Thank you. Next Monday, we will be joined by Canadian songstress Martha Wainwright; American environmentalist Bill McKibben; financial review editor Michael Stutchbury; renegade Liberal Senator Corey Bernardi; and writer and feminist historian Anne Summers.

Now, make sure you tune in tomorrow at 8.30pm for an extra edition of Q&A when Bill Gates, the world's richest man and most generous philanthropist, will face your questions. If you think you know everything about the geek who changed the world, think again.

Now, just one more thing before we go. Q&A was five years old this week. No other program asks so much from its audience so please accept our thanks for making Q&A work. We are having a great time here. And we will leave you tonight with just a few of the highlights from the last five years. Until the Bill Gates Q&A tomorrow night at 8.30, good night.