epis of just being a believer or a zealot i just believe this then you think that your religion is better than another person's religion you fight for religion we actually practice your religion you don't in the fight plus christians are doing enough to destroy themselves just by going against each other over the ologies so i'm i'm not really worried about the new atheists as much as i am other christians all next on larry king now. welcome to larry king now it's for the very sprightly discussion today on the state of play in america two thousand and twelve pew research center religion and public life study found that religious disaffiliate in america's recent all time high we welcome a panel of religious leaders and nonbelievers to discuss this trend and more atheist dr lawrence krauss is the director of the arizona state university origins project

and a renowned theoretical physicist a worldwide advocate for the advancement of the sciences gus hall word is an outspoken atheist who directed the film the unbelievers which documents the global speaking tours of dr krauss and the famed evolutionary biologist richard dawkins dr michael beckwith is director of the a gobby international spiritual center here in l.a. and david a are white is the actor and producer who has raised it was raised a man and i community and a sense started and produced over forty faith based films including most recent god's not dead later we'll be joined via skype by jay bakker the son of fame televangelist jim and tammy faye bakker dr krauss were you ever a believer. well when i grew up when i was a kid i was exposed so stories i was brought up as you jewish household and i and i i read a lot read the bible read the qur'an and i'm sort of want to believe and then i just sort of grew out of it just like santa claus just grew out of it yeah it was

not a tiff and it was just realizing was all kind of silly what about you guys and i've said about the same despite my family's valiant efforts to keep me in the religion i never could i just never buy into it it was never something i could believe in and so the cast off an early age in your film you state that so maybe is in some areas of you does as rate this as bad as rape is is that true yeah i've also seen that yeah there was a study by psychologists did in in a in a major journal and they they ranked off of the people that you might trust and atheists were at the very bottom along with rapists at the same time there was a recent pure survey that said who would what what characteristics would you want in a president or not want and you know didn't matter whether of marital fidelity any experience in politics the thing at the very bottom was a few of them and it's kind of interesting because i just ask questions and i want people to think for themselves and and and just asking you know maybe maybe we

don't need a god you get called a strident atheist and somehow that's viewed in our society as a bad thing for asking questions but asking questions is what it's all about and i think that's the point of the film sue is just to show that not only richard lawrence but there's a lot of people out there speaking out again about that and trying to get people to open their minds and not judge atheists based on these kind of knee jerk reactions of just people of the same ideas not to beg with the leavers are supposed to be the giving and loving you don't hate atheists do you oh absolutely has made affect i used to be one of those in college i had the record for converting christians atheism and a college campus so i was i was raised in a christian household and i grew out of it and then. i was a devout i was a devout atheist and then when i later on in school i had a counter with what i called love beauty i didn't call it god because i didn't

believe in god but the presence was so profound and so real that it altered my character and and now i can use the word god again but it's not the same god that you read about in the bible the koran is not a superman in the sky you know there's a presence of love and beauty and intelligence so those who are believers whether they're christian jews muslims there's there's forgiveness within that particular faith but you would agree that there's a large group of believers who i would agree with that there are mature people absolute well hating anything stupid that is going david you're not a hater are you now. how do you. you know i think i think. christianity is like you said it's about love god loves all people he loves atheists he loves christians non christians buddhist muslims doesn't matter and i think so often we did the movie god's not dead and everybody thinks that you know but the trailer up all the atheists came out and said how terrible people we were

and you know and and and picketed and all that kind of stuff but i think it's the christianity is about love jesus loves us that's the whole just like the song is god loves us i'm always amazed when i hear that because i think that there's no one who talks more about hell in either the old or new testaments and jesus so it's like that among us i mean it seems to me that this you know cosmic saddam hussein this guy who wants to if you do something like it's not as if he just tortures you for for a few years it's all eternity that's it's the to me to be loved by all of you will agree gus the hardest thing to discuss is faith because if someone has faith. you're going to talk i'm out of having faith it's true but you know in this day and it just seems like there's kind of this new breed of religious apologist that they seem to be wanting a lot of evidence with their faith they seem to use a lot of scientific arguments these days and i feel like when they enter into that arena it's fair game for people like lawrence and richard to speak out against things like fine tuning and the anthropic principle that kind of thing because the

you can't with one hand use science and reason to defend your position about god and with the other hand say that the laws of nature can be suspended any time god is a miracle these are just the kind of contradictions you hear in religion all the time i think that's what richard lawrence there out there trying to you know we're not trying to convert anybody i think is the point we just want people to think for themselves ask questions demand evidence and be skeptical and that's a useful in all of life you don't fear that you know in fact the tagline on god's not dead is what do you believe it you know it we very safe our line is what are you willing to believe. i mean i would agree with you guys because it's it's you don't want to just believe something because you've been told that i grew up as a mennonite ok mennonites if there's a joke the mennonites make the mormons look like a packed house. where bastardly conservative ok so so my

father was a mennonite pastor i definitely grew up in the faith but certain point you have to go out you have to figure out what is it that you believe and that's why we made this movie in fact you can you prove spirituality what is the ritual. the word spiritual is synonymous with something that is eternal so when we when i use the word spirituality i'm speaking up of verities like love and peace and harmony and beauty those are spiritual qualities and so whether you're an atheist they'd probably be called life affirming values if perhaps or if you're from the religious point of view you would say they emanate from god we godless i believe that love. joy these qualities are eternal qualities that when they become active in you your character changes you become a different kind of person you're not selfish and not greedy you're not hateful unforgiving and you live in a different different could an atheist say as all those values that's all i mean yeah i mean those values of our rational values and this we will have but no i but

but you would argue what do you mean by turn all a movie only been around here for thirteen a half billion years i mean the universe and the earth is four and a half billion years old humans in there even if you stretch it to early hominids a few million years the eternal how can you see those values are values we have and each of us are we don't have and we're dead in us they're gone and we hope that we pass them on to our children so they can try to make the world a better place but eternal is just a concept that doesn't exist as a concept to to you based on a concept to me in terms of you know we use the word consciousness and consciousness precedes form before thirteen billion years of our million years of evolution there's something called awareness of something called lunch when i didn't say what did you get what did you come up though that those are rational things and love and loving people and not hating and not stealing what you're asking i asked people the question if you stop believing in god would you help murder your neighbor that's the probably not it's not

a belief in god some people would rather it's not i think in my neighborhood right neighbors likely to murder my family and i can ask how can i make a liberal world joining us now via skype is jay bakker the leader of the emerging church movement he's the son of the thing televangelist time if a and jim baker what is the emerging church movement. well i mean it's a progressive group of people who are afraid to ask questions. who do believe in science and aren't afraid to doubt or you know be curious but do you continue to believe in a god. i would say i have more faith than i do believe meaning was the difference well i believe faith holds the idea of perhaps and it belief is though something i can see and touch and put my hands on and the faith this kind of the bible says it's the evidence of things not yet seen so it's more like hope just

so my agnostic. if i was an agnostic i'd say i was a christian agnostic. i don't know but it's sort of. a who are a problem really more people like you than a willing to admit it what are you views on that dr krauss well i think you know in fact i think that's probably many people call themselves religious or just like j. i mean they want to believe they they they pick and choose things that they might like from the bible and throw out the things they don't like and they they call that their faith and i think. people want to believe that their you know that there's a better world out there that they won't die when they die and and and so i'd say most religious people in fact many there was a survey in england where the dawkins foundation did and people who checked off the religious box they were asked if they believe this this is this they all said no and they said why did you check off the christian box they said we want to think we're good people and i think that's why a lot of people call themselves religious not just what do you make of the study by the pew foundation that one fifth of the u.s.

public and a third of all adults under thirty and now religiously unaffiliated well i think it makes complete sense to me and i think one of the reasons why is because what you saw happen people like my family in the eighty's but also how the church is treated and gays and lesbian bisexual transgender folks and some i mean some churches don't even allow women to preach or be in eldership so i think when people see this they get an icky feeling and they step back and as far as the bible's concerned i think you know people have confused the times that the bible is written and right but the law of the bible you know like the customs of the middle east two thousand years ago with the message and i when i gets confused i think it becomes dangerous i thought it was funny because dr krauss was talking about hell but if you look at and helen greek and hebrew jesus is often talking about an actual dumpsite southwest of jerusalem you know what you're really study things it's different you know and i'll say oh you're nit picking or you're cherry picking and i can tell you

all the apostles cherry picked jesus cherry picked sure it is or cherry you know this is a part of our faith so it's not something like. oh this is you know you're picking and choosing it's actually kind of fallen in our faith tradition well that you know i think i agree with you about the fact that people cherry pick and and have and presumably even back then when they didn't even know the earth went around the sun when why we call that ancient wisdom i don't know but i think people like david and probably you to some extent can't lose your faith because unfortunately and that's why i think sort of exposing children to young to religion a young age is child abuse because you can't get rid of those things it's really hard to get rid of those things they are exposed to when you're a child at that level and i think it's i think we should let children grow up and begin to think for themselves before we try and impose those again has this caused an impasse with your father. no we've had some really great conversations theologically about it i mean we disagree a lot of things but the neat thing is my father's really respected me through my

questions and through my search and good you know i think he's happy that i'm still pastor in a church and asking these questions. i think it's just the next this is the next generation of christianity and i hope more people will be open to it unfortunately i mean christians are doing enough to destroy themselves just by going against each other over theologies and who said this or who doesn't accept in this first or not accept a nap person so i'm i'm not really worried about the new atheists as much as i am other christians. a sad place to be after the break politics and religion one of the two so closely linked will we ever see an atheist president on panelist william .

underworld strong arm in a lot of these policies just like peter. pleasure to have you with us here on t.v. today i roll researcher. do what he what do you think and i'm like what he's saying i don't i don't believe in the superman in the sky either i believe that as a human being we're evolving and. we're becoming more and more aware that we have tremendous potential within us and that potential is an expression of what we might

call god or an expression of a higher consciousness it's all within us so we don't hold that there's a superman in the sky out of forgot what you called it some kind of adama saddam hussein is a guy you know and so we don't i side truck with what he's saying but i still have an awareness that just the fact that we can be aware and we can be and we can think independent of circumstances that's how we define it many people define the image and likeness of god jay who's in the sky but a that's amazing the bill that's what science i mean that's what we should be amazed at the wonder of the fact that we can think and that the world is amazing and and what you don't need to sort of impose anything else so that alone is wonderful enough to just be excited and i call that the evolution of religion and that we're evolving to that point i don't what it is losing your congregation. all sorts of people. people from all different backgrounds may go from age thirty to seventy right now we do have a lot of l g t b e l t v q folks because i just racial and into minnesota from new

york but asian is different from just the news so it's really people question or people that come out of the church or or people who some people have never even been to church before but you know growing up in church you can brings a lot of baggage with us and we don't want people to feel like they have to throw out jesus or their this out but we also want to come in and let them know that that's you know that's something they feel and that's questions they have and that's an option and we're just there to you know talk about and be a community gave a shia thoughts look forward to have you here in the studio and give my bestie a bed i will thank you larry all of the world's unrest seems to be caused by religious conflict. if everything is love and gone in peace why is all of this being fought in the name of god's on everybody's side. thank you thanks for that what i. just puzzles me. i mean you look back at history you know the middle east has had their issues and so many but they're over god and they're off and they're

all right yeah just believes in god yeah i what god i don't know what got you know what god the god doesn't necessarily agree in the loving and you know that's the point we often say there's been a thousand gods and then we've seen a fist and it was a week there's one less god we believe in and that's what i think about this. is that you have a lot of believers whether whatever they call themselves jews christians muslims whatever the case may be but individuals who actually practice their spiritual teaching bump into peace love and forgiveness now if you remain at the surface of just being a believer or a zealot i just believe this on the surface then you think that your religion is better than another person's religion you'll fight for religion but if you actually practice that with your religion you don't in the fighting or thinking yours is better but it was practicing on it having an insight and most of the conservative religious people are republicans right. yeah i mean during the break we were

talking about you know whether we'd ever have an atheist president and i think as for hitchens said it he said you know we probably will never have an atheist president but we will most certainly have a president that is a because it well it may be true that people may not come out in droves to vote for someone billing themselves as an atheist if it's the right candidate it will happen and it's not going to matter if he's an atheist or not and it's a bad one because as i say this is a democracy of principle and democracy should encourage open questioning of everything and their religion politics sex everything religion shouldn't be different just asking questions and saying you know what i mean i'm not sure what evidence is there why should i believe that why is that a bad thing you have evidence and you prove god i don't i think it's kind of like jade said i think it's a faith i definitely think it's faith and belief based on what. i gain my my faith my belief from what the bible says about god and it's a you know i'll timidly christianity is about

a personal relationship with jesus christ that's what it's really about it's it would when you have that when you when you accept jesus christ in your life when you follow him as lord you know the whole trinity right the holy spirit jesus and god we believe the holy spirit comes inside of us he tells us that and we speak soon admit it when they believe this and truly believe that they are good people who follow the word well some of the fifteen some of the rabbet people i mean but they handle death better than you do why if they believe they're going somewhere you don't want what was at hand we get better i mean enjoying life because i this is my chance to to to experience this remarkable universe that allowed me to experience not just the fact that i'm not going to be here afterwards does not make my left life less interesting in fact it makes every moment more precious i think of something noble about disregarding what we might call wish thinking on what's going to happen after we're dead i mean to say that they handle death that i think that's a complete misrepresentation because there are a million ways to think about that i mean mark twain i think you can find things in philosophy and in other writing mark twain said i was dead for billions of years

before i was born and an inconvenience me in the slightest i mean that's consolation if anything have you seen people dying if you've been with them who are a lot of people die absolutely ok but i did say it's great that i mean i think what dana was or said that death. death is one of the reasons people have religion people don't want to die they don't want to think they're going to not going to go on forever not see their loved ones and and i understand that that desire and that that wish but wishing it doesn't make it true and and. you can happy without you can recognize that if you believe riches if you believe you go on somewhere you're in a no lose because if you've done you go somewhere you win and if you don't go somewhere you don't know absolutely you can't lose yeah it's like the famous scientist niels bohr had had a horseshoe on his lap and people said you know why do you have a horseshoe and you don't believe in that stuff and he said no i don't believe in it but i'm told it works whether you believe it or not. like these an individual

says he i was i was an atheist so i'm having a flashback at another conversation we're having here because this was me many years ago and as i said earlier i had something happen i had an encounter i could see the glow in animate and inanimate objects it was a presence around me and i know that who we are does not end when the flesh ends i mean that's not know that i know i've got to have a doubt how do you know it i've met people on the other side i mean you had people like that in my mother i've seen friends of my i mean i'm a bit on the limb in saying some of this stuff but this is nowhere that is really you know there's no doubt in my mind about that and i have never in was a ugandan i that of course i can't deny that but i can ask the question well you know is it possible you were hallucinating when all men wasn't going to roost it was that. he was asked that question given that you know i've asked that question do you believe there's a good in there is an evil in the world why believe i yeah in fact i as a friend has the wonders of nobel prize winning atheist who said you know there are

good people and bad people good people do good things bad people do bad things when good people do bad things it's religion they would what's tell us about god's not dead what do what does what do we see. its own meet god. now you tell me god basically it's a movie about. a college student who is forced to defend his faith in the university setting when the philosophy. professor basically gives him an ultimatum to to basically write god his dad on the thing or prove it prove his existence so it changes through the journey it takes us through his journey if you think hollywood is anti god. and the opposite look at all the god movies that have come out this year and you know we have this movie and it but you know does it does you all know why is god is not dead there's and there's that other one with a little role here and to go to have a this is the year of the bible you know you have a you know i tell them try to direct as they say religion is a guaranteed way of making money in hollywood and so it's not that it's the office

at c.n.n. i did what people say i mean i don't i don't know because the movies that have come up for this year i haven't seen them all that have been that many movies i mean i have a well this is the charlton heston and things of that particular section movie love sex violence and religion those will sell and i think hollywood cares about what's going to sell not i don't think they have an agenda except making money if you haven't been present at the birth of course my daughter you know i was at my son's are you amazed at how. that hole but that's what is their existence because no it's not a miracle it's amazing but that's what everything about the universe amaze me it's why i do science because the universe is far more amazing than we can even imagine that's why we try and learn about it because it constantly surprises us and life is so remarkable and the fact of the universe that by through this amazing set of circumstances and natural selection and evolution that life arose on this planet and we have this consciousness that allows us to experience that tell us what to

tell a brain as a scientist that something has to be created you know why not have we created know things happen all the time without being created its atoms in the universe and i wrote a book about how the whole universe could come from nothing without it without any of them and i think that again yeah it's the laws of physics allow it and you say i say the opposite i say what the bible says they look around look at the universe look at the stars look at the the fact that the year earth it was one how much grief half a degree hundred millionth degree close of the sun we'd all burn up if it was the other way we'd all freeze it's like well then it's not too surprising that we're here it's amazing that we're here you look at the don't know and then we're not on mars for that reason it's not i mean if there's they were the only two human beings here in the universe well it would i mean i think we're looking well that's what's amazing though what do you say with only beings in the universe that would be amazing because there's a hundred billion galaxies with one hundred billion stars waters in the bible tell you about tell you about life because i believe that we are the only life form now i could be wrong maybe there is some other way that change your belief then if you

were wrong now of course it wouldn't why would anyone anything change your belief i actually do that. can anything change my belief my belief is based on what the bible says my belief is also what i have experienced so is there any amount of evidence that could ever change your faith i actually know ok ok well there you go and because i believe that the evidence that we'd find out later like we had a lot of evidence is that so do you bend to believe in evolution. i don't i don't i don't know whether or not whether or not evolution i don't tend to believe in evolution no i believe that it will read in the seminaries and i do believe in adam if you believe in the sun. not the sun as so and but then as you and juan i mean the point is that we shouldn't use the word belief in science it's not believing in evolution evolution happened whether you believe in it or not you know the sun is going to rise tomorrow whether you believe it or not and so it's unfortunate and in the media that we pretend that evolution is subject to belief or that the earth is round is suddenly on the guy who created the bible who created the earth website as

you know is the bible has a very interesting story about that were light and they existed before night and they exist before the sun and the earth i mean it's kind of a little weird we'll find out of that a lot of that as metaphorical of course it was written at the time but for people the point is that as jay said the bible is written before people basically do anything and it was their way of trying to understand the world but that we've learned a lot in the last two thousand years and why do people hang on to that stuff written by iron age peasants who didn't know the earth orbits the sun it amazes me. i would have a tendency to agree with that the only thing i would differ with you is that this life this you know everything that was created there was intelligence before that tell it just didn't emerge from matt how do you know that and why do you think that and how do you know the office it well there's no evidence of it that's the point so i don't have it in i don't i didn't know but i'm just trying to find out and there's no evidence that there was any there's no need first of all the laws of physics allow us to understand the formation not just because well the universe but of galaxies stars planets and ultimately by physics chemistry and biology life and

there's no evidence that you need anything beyond the laws of physics and chemistry to do it so i say without evidence why should i jump to that remarkable conclusion i personally think i'm sitting here listening to this and this is exactly why i made this film because i think these are the most fascinating and important conversations we can have and i think it's just it's well also miraculous that we live in a time where we can have these conversations between we don't have to worry we have two films out simultaneously you want to go spinning in your mind and some of the unbelievable and then see god's not dead a huge thank you to my guest dr lawrence krauss gus hall were to dr michael back with david a our life and early james baker please no doubt that dr krauss investors will be unbelievers now that on sunday i tunes as well as dave his new film god is not dead also available on amazon and i just as always you can find me on twitter with games that you see

a next time god. i've .