Christopher Hitchens, 62, outspoken atheist and author of God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, died Thursday at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. Vanity Fair magazine announced his death, saying the cause of death was pneumonia as a complication of esophageal cancer.
The New York Times said Hitchens had not experienced a late-in-life conversion to Christianity, but he was amused and appreciative that some hoped he would. He was a popular speaker on television, radio and in debates and was a regular contributor to Vanity Fair and other magazines. The Christian Post quoted him at his last public appearance in Texas: “We have the same job we always had. To say that there are on final solutions; there is no absolute truth; there is no supreme leader; there is no totalitarian solution that says if you would just give up your freedom of inquiry, if you would just give up, if you would simply abandon your critical faculties, the world of idiotic bliss can be yours.”
Rick Warren tweeted: “My friend Christopher Hitchens has died. I loved & prayed for him constantly & grieve his loss. He knows the Truth now.”
