Hemant Mehta is the founder and editor of FriendlyAtheist.com, a YouTube creator, and podcast co-host. He is a former National Board Certified math teacher in the suburbs of Chicago. He has appeared on CNN and FOX News and served on the board of directors for Foundation Beyond Belief and the Secular Student Alliance. He has written multiple books, including I Sold My Soul on eBay and The Young Atheist's Survival Guide. He also edited the book Queer Disbelief.
One of the problems with surveys about religion is that atheists tend to be lumped in with a lot of other people who believe in God but have no religious affiliation. We’re all the “Nones.” We’re all unaffiliated. That might be a helpful designation in certain contexts, but there are so many differences between atheists and believers within that category that combining our numbers means overlooking a lot of interesting data. A new report by the Pew Research Center dealing with religion and gender actually teased out some data for atheists. You won’t be surprised to hear this, but at least in the U.S., there’s more than a 2:1 margin of male to female atheists: Read more
If you care about experiments, evidence, data, and facts, then you have to be appalled by what’s been going on in Kansas over the past few years. Imagine Republican Governor Sam Brownback with a rubber stamp from his Republican House and Senate being able to do practically anything he wants. He eliminated income taxes on small businesses, gave huge tax breaks to the rich, cut money from the education budget, laid off thousands of government employees, heightened welfare requirements, and more. Long story short, Kansas is now a hellhole thanks to his conservative policies — the same ones that the Republican presidential candidates now want to institute for the nation. Seth Meyers explained the problem the other night: Read more
Because the Noah’s Ark theme park is slated to open this summer, the officials in Williamstown, Kentucky have been counting on its success as they plan out their budgets. In fact, four years ago, they specifically listed an $11 million highway widening on I-75 (at the Ark Encounter exit) to accommodate all the extra traffic they were expecting. You can see it in the town plan on p. 104. That money was in the state’s original road construction plan for the near future… but suddenly, the Ark Encounter Highway money isn’t there anymore. And the Republican who requested it is blaming the Democrat-led House for trying to screw over God: Read more