Magicians say their craft makes them see faith as just hocus-pocus

Magician Penn Jillette and his shorter, quieter partner Raymond Teller have mystified audiences around the world with their card tricks and other illusions that would make even Harry Houdini proud.

With a Showtime TV series that seeks to disprove supernatural beliefs, including religious ones, the duo have long been a public face of atheism and skepticism.

Now, Jillette, in his new book, “God, No!,” says he has little use for performers who try to use magic tricks to lure audiences into a spiritual message. Magic doesn’t make someone an atheist, he says, but it makes it a lot harder to be a believer.

“It’s always astonished me how any magician can be spiritual,” he writes before lambasting magicians who connect the loosely mystical or the vividly Christian with sleight-of-hand. “It seems like depicting the most important event in one’s philosophy with a $19.95 trick from a joke shop cheapens it a bit.”