OK, that all falls into the “Kook of the week” award category, and to be totally clear, I do not of course mean Lawrence Krauss, but rather the chap making the claim.
It all started with my opening post within a Humanist Muslim Facebook group that consisted of the following quote …
“The least questioned assumptions are often the most questionable.”
– Paul Broca
In response to this, the very first comment that pops up is this …
Now to put this in context, I better explain a bit of the history here. The group itself is essentially a place where Muslims and ex-Muslims go head-to-head and debate, and Artemio is a believer who has in the past quite strongly asserted his firm commitment to the idea that evolution is simply a myth, is sure that there is no evidence at all, and so this would potentially be the trigger to replay previous conversations …
“There is no evidence, its just an atheist lie”
“Look, here is some evidence”
“Nope, it is just a lie”
“Oh and here is some more evidence”
etc…
Having been through it all before I took a different approach and asked him why he rejects the prevailing scientific consensus, and the response was quite surprising …
I ignored that, and so we proceeded with the Q&A, and soon this same rather strange claim pops back up again …
Artemio: were going in circles david , just answer this , why do you think that Krauss don’t beleive on evolution …
Me: So what leads you to think that Mr Krauss does not accept evolution?
Artemio: i remembered dawkins turned more red and choked on his saliva when Krauss slammed him and said that he does’nt believe on evolution …
Artemio: what leads me to think that LOL , a video , you want me to post it
Me: Sure … go for it …
And sure enough he does, he posts this 2 hour interview that took place between Prof Krauss and Prof Dawkins back in 2012 …
Now what is quite frankly astonishing is that this supposedly “anti-evolution evidence” just happens to be one of the most pro-evolution clips out there on YouTube, and is indeed very very good, so if time permits, I can highly recommend watching it.
OK, so what exactly is the evidence here that Prof Lawrence Krauss does not believe in evolution?
Well, Artemio, strongly encouraged us all to watch and assured us that this was all in the first 20 minutes, so several of us (you can see it all in the comments) sat down and proceeded to watch.
It turns out that the actual context was as follows. At 24:02 the following exchange takes place …
LK: “I’ve had people write me and say, I’m a medical doctor and I don’t believe in evolution“
RD: “Thats a disgrace“
Yes indeed, if you removed everything and complete ignored the previous 24 minutes, except the last bit where LK says, “I don’t believe in evolution” and then chopped the rest out right after the response from RD, you could indeed craft a quote-mined clip to fool a few gullible people, but you would have to be incredibly dishonest to do that.
So was Artemio fooled by such a clip? I suspect he was, and did truly believe it, so the discovery that it was the complete opposite when viewed back in within its full context must have been quite a shock for him … he promptly vanished and added nothing further to that thread.
I must confess, I also find it highly amusing that a devout Muslim who is strongly opposed to evolution and also very vocal about that stance, was posting a link to Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss discussing how truly crazy such a stance is, and not only posting that link, but was strongly encouraging everybody to watch it.
Will this experience have caused him to change his mind?
I suspect not, he is too heavily invested in his stance emotionally and no doubt will pop up again in due course, pretend that this never happened and proceed to take the same anti-science stance … then again, I just might be wrong about that.
It is a shame when nonsense can substitute for fact with impunity. – Lawrence Krauss