The physicist Lawrence Krause says that one of the values of science is to make us uncomfortable.

I don't mean that science isn't spiritually uplifting. I do think it is,

but for the very antithetical reasons to religion, I guess, is that fact that it causes us to feel less comfortable

should provoke us to try and understand what we can do and what meaning we can make in the universe.

And so learning that the universe isn't made for us, or there's no evidence that it is,

is profoundly inspiring or should be.

Lawrence Krause helps explain why we should all care about dark energy

and for that matter the Higgs boson particle.

He believes that science literacy matters, but more importantly that we can take joy in science,

just as we cultivate enjoyment of arts we may not completely comprehend.

I'm Krista Tippett and this is on being from APM American Public Media.

I invited Lawrence Krause's passion for science as our common human inheritance

to the Chautauqua institution in New York. We sat together in the outdoor hall of philosophy

during the 2012 summer season. The theme for the week was inspiration, action, and commitment.

Public theology has a long history at Chautauqua, and in earlier generations,

that meant a voice like Reinhold Nieber, an authoritative Christian voice in an overwhelmingly Christian culture.

Today's guest takes us in a completely different direction, but one which I find equally distinctive and influential in our time.

Lawrence Krause is a cosmologist, a theoretical physicist, and a public scientist,

bringing the learnings of science to the rest of us, to the wider world.

So the science-religion debate is well known, and Lawrence Krause has strong views on that.

But in my mind, I'm just going to lay my cards on the table, what science might have to say about God,

or what religion might have to say about science is not really what either of those disciplines are for.

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