The new documentary film The Unbelievers follows two top scientists, physicist Lawrence Krauss and biologist Richard Dawkins, as they travel the globe promoting atheism. The two men are now close allies, but their relationship got off to a rocky start when Krauss suggested that Dawkins’ frank critiques of religion were counterproductive. But lately Krauss has come to agree that you might as well be straightforward, since no amount of coddling will ever appease brittle religious sensibilities.

“Just asking questions you get called strident,” Krauss says in Episode 111 of the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. “I guess I’ve come to appreciate that a lot more too, as I get condemned for the same heresies as him.”

The Unbelievers was directed by former musician Gus Holwerda, who wanted to create a movie about science that played like a rock and roll tour video. He and his brother Luke, who also worked on the film, grew up in a Christian fundamentalist family, and credit their love of science fiction for helping them break free of those beliefs. Their next film is a time travel story in which Krauss makes a cameo appearance. Krauss, whose books include The Physics of Star Trek, agrees that science fiction can help people expand their minds beyond the limits imposed by religion.

“I used to read a lot of science fiction when I was younger,” he says. “As Stephen Hawking says in the introduction for The Physics of Star Trek, science fiction encourages the imagination, like science, and it’s a wonderful thing for that reason.”

Listen to our complete interview with Lawrence Krauss in Episode 111 of Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy (above). Then stick around after the interview as guest geeks James Morrow and Tobias Buckell join host David Barr Kirtley to discuss writing and blogging as an atheist.

Lawrence Krauss on debating theologians and philosophers:

“I’ve done tons of debates with religious apologists and philosophers, and for the most part [their arguments] are incredibly weak, especially the philosophers. … There are some philosophers who think that philosophy is a substitute for science, and in my book I made a joke which perhaps infuriated that group. I talked about the fact that a number of philosophers and theologians take exception with my discussion of nothing, and as I said, ‘Well, you know, they’re experts at nothing.’ … To be a—I don’t know if this phrase is an oxymoron—but to be a sensible theologian, or at least one who has a pretense of being scholarly, you at least have to have some vague idea of what’s going on in science, how old the universe is, etc., etc. But to do science you don’t have to know anything about theology. Scientists don’t read theology, they don’t read philosophy, it doesn’t make any difference to what they’re doing—for better or worse, it may not be a value judgment, but it’s true.”

Lawrence Krauss on quantum mechanics and consciousness:

“Your brain is a complicated system with lots of particles interacting, and it’s unlikely to expect that quantum coherence is responsible for the nature of consciousness, because quantum coherence gets destroyed in most physical systems—because of the many particles interacting—in a small fraction of a second. … Anyone who makes a claim about consciousness is probably lying, because we don’t understand the nature of consciousness. And there are lots of people who try to make their living by being hucksters about this. In particular there are those awful people who promote things like that silly, nonsensical book The Secret, which suggests that if you think about it, it will happen. If you want it, it will happen. That somehow your desires can affect the universe, and that is the worst garbage, the worst misrepresentation of science mechanics. It’s fraudulent, it’s a lie, and people should ignore those people, and moreover ridicule them.”

Writing and Blogging as an Atheist Panel

James Morrow on his novel Only Begotten Daughter:

“I would trace it to the feminist movement of the early seventies. I just woke up one day and said, ‘You know, it’s a big problem that all the major monotheistic religions rank-order the genders, and men win.’ As that old Yiddish proverb goes, ‘The best thing a woman can hope for is to be her husband’s foot stool in Heaven.’ And I said, ‘Wow, what if there was a female Jesus? What if there was a Second Coming, but with the gender expectations reversed?’ … I just wanted to get away from that, you know, all the Hebrew prophets are guys, and God is a guy, and Jesus is a guy. And the Virgin Mary’s a big problem when you consider what a schizoid role model that is for women. You know, you’re supposed to be a mother and you’re also supposed to be a virgin. … I find it very reliable to ask the question, when we want to know how moral a behavior is, how moral a society is, how moral a particular strain of faith is, the question to ask is: How does it treat women?”

Tobias Buckell on science denial:

“Writing these novels actually exposes me to a great deal of right-wing religious lashing out, because of this weird conservatism-plus-evangelicalism thing where they’ve sort of wrapped around each other and convinced people that if they’re evangelical and right-wing that they’re basically against science right now in terms of the realizations about global warming and its impending problems. … You cannot have a functioning society that grapples with science and that grapples with rational stuff when you just have a large number of people that go, ‘Uh-uh, God said.’ … A lot of people will send the same links and the same arguments. … So I do have a template for responding to basic inquiries, because sometimes you can tell people, ‘Hey, you’re using really bad data. This is made up stuff. Scientists don’t actually believe that. Here’s a PLOS query you can run and look up the academic articles.’ … But if it’s someone who just sort of throws up their hands and says, ‘It can’t be real because I’m religious,’ that is so dangerous, I think, and it’s so perplexing.”

James Morrow on Proof of Heaven and Heaven Is for Real:

“How does God feel about the fact that his cover has been blown? How does he feel about this unequivocal proof? Because there’s not one syllable of doubt in either [book]. Here God has been messing with our heads for thousands and thousands of years. You know, he’s been hiding himself, declining to answer our prayers—at least not doing so reliably—declining to intervene at Auschwitz or Hiroshima. Suddenly the game is up and God has been unequivocally unmasked. Did he really want this to play out in that fashion? I mean, did he really want the ultimate revelation to take the form of a New York Times bestseller? That seems preposterous to me. … The other thing that so bewilders me about this genre [is the lack of] a single shred of substantive corroboration. I mean, if only one of these people would return from Heaven with a mathematical proof. I mean, for heaven’s sake, Eben Alexander saw the face of God. Could he exit with maybe a beautiful sonnet in his head now? Or something other than this New Age boilerplate that he lays on us in the second half of the book?”