Anticipation is building on the eve of the City Bible Forum’s series of public conversations ‘Life, the Universe and Nothing’ featuring physicist Professor Lawrence Krauss and philosopher Professor William Lane Craig. The men will take part in the first dialogue in Brisbane tonight, discussing the question: has science buried God?

Tickets for tonight’s event which will take place at Brisbane City Hall sold out six days ago, indicating the popularity of the clash between the professors. Tonight’s conversation will be moderated by the Online Editor of Religion and Ethics for the ABC, Scott Stephens. The events in Sydney and Melbourne will be moderated by Dr Rachael Kohn and Professor Graham Oppy respectively. Yesterday, Scott Stephens published articles by both William Lane Craig and Lawrence Krauss on the ABC’s site.

In his piece, Krauss argues just because it seems like that the world we live in has been created by design doesn’t mean it was. He makes the argument that we’ve often held wrong assumptions about the universe, and it’s likely our current knowledge will be trumped before long. “Everywhere we look,” he writes, “it appears that the world was designed so that we could flourish.” But that’s the so-called “illusion” we need to fight.

William Lane Craig’s article attacks the notion of materialism or naturalism, wherein the physical world is all there is. In it, he argues using philosophical and scientific logic there must be a reality beyond the physical world. It is a much longer, detailed piece of rhetoric.

It will be interesting to see how the Professors fare in conversation with each other, given they come from different disciplines (science and philosophy) and have faced off in the past, but in a format Krauss refused this time around–debate. City Bible Forum is hoping the conversation style events promote more open discussion and less of a point-scoring approach.

Lane Craig is in the country at the invitation of the Australian Fellowship of Evangelical Students. While here he is visiting Adelaide and appearing at the South Australian Preaching School on Friday as well as speaking at various universities around the country, including twice for the Sydney Evangelical Union’s YourGod mission.