Atheism doesn’t mix very well with reality. It leads directly to denying humanity, as I’ve been saying, but that doesn’t just mean atheism is wrong. It’s also grievously sad. For all the conflict they raise against Christianity, I still try to keep that in mind in conversation with atheists. I do better when I don’t just focus on what’s wrong, but also on the life they’re missing out on.

What they’re missing is obvious enough from scripture, but sometimes I find it valuable to show it from their own words. I saw it more than once over this past weekend.

The first was a line I ran across from Sam Harris, whose post-9/11 book The End of Faith is often credited with launching New Atheism.

[Atheism frees people up to be their own god. And then it frees them up to believing their divinity to be superior to that of others. It’s also the impulse that human beings can reorder reality by sheer will alone, the culmination of which (so far) is the transgender movement and the demand that we recognize myriad “genders” rather than objective biological reality. It’s an extension of the sin of Adam and Eve in attempting to usurp God’s creation from Him. — Ed]