Practical atheism

Denials of God can be so quiet that they are easy to miss | Joel Belz

No one would be surprised later this month, I suppose, if the editors of Time magazine were to announce they were putting Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, and Sam Harris on their year-end cover as co-winners of the annual Person-of-the-Year award. Nobody, the editors would explain, had done more than these three pioneers during the year 2007 to encourage humankind to rethink its superstitious bondage to theism. Nobody had made it more legitimate to leave God out of the day-to-day discussion. Their widely published books, lectures, and debates—for better or for worse—were pacesetting and world changing.

But if the editors of Time did such an unsurprising thing, they would be dead wrong. They should instead have nominated themselves.