Lawrence M. Krauss is a cosmologist and director of the Origins Project at Arizona State University, which explores questions ranging from the origin of the universe to the origins of human culture and cognition. His commentaries on matters of science and religion have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, including a Sept. 8, 2010, column, “Our Spontaneous Universe,” and one […]

Jack David Eller is an assistant professor of anthropology at Community College of Denver and the author of Cruel Creeds, Virtuous Violence: Religious Violence Across Culture and History (October 2010) and Natural Atheism, Atheism Advanced: Further Thoughts of a Freethinker (2007). He also contributed two chapters to the anthology Atheism and Secularity (2009).

Beliefnet.org’s article that explores the meaning of suffering in different faiths.

David J. Wolpe is senior rabbi of Temple Sinai, a Conservative congregation in Los Angeles. A well-known speaker and writer, he has written several books, among them The Healer of Shattered Hearts: A Jewish View of God (Henry Holt & Co., 1990) and (with Mitch Albom) Making Loss Matter: Creating Meaning in Difficult Times (Riverhead Trade, 2000).

Raphael Grunfeld is a New York attorney and Jewish scholar who can explain Jewish philosophy and religious thought regarding suffering.

Jerry Walls, philosophy of religion professor at Houston Baptist University, has written about making sense of evil and Christian conceptions of God. He is co-editor of The Chronicles of Narnia and Philosophy (Open Court Press) and co-author of C.S. Lewis & Francis Schaeffer: Lessons for a New Century From the Most Influential Apologists (InterVarsity Press, 1998).

Sharon D. Welch is provost and professor of religion and society at Chicago’s Meadville Lombard Theological School, which educates students in the Unitarian Universalist tradition. She is also a senior fellow at the Institute for Humanist Studies.

James Tappenden is associate professor of philosophy at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. His essay “An Atheist’s Fundamentalism” is included in Philosophers Without Gods: Meditations on Atheism and the Secular Life (2007).

Bryan F. Le Beau is a history professor and vice president of academic affairs at the University of St. Mary in Leavenworth, Kan. He is the author of The Atheist: Madalyn Murray O’Hair.