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.
Does Christian pseudo-historian David Barton have a Ph.D.? If you look at his biography, it simply says he has an “Honorary Doctorate of Letters from Pensacola Christian College,” but anyone could tell you that’s not at all the equivalent of a Ph.D. It’s an award, nothing more. Barton didn’t earn the doctorate. Barton’s only real degree is a bachelor’s in Christian education from Oral Roberts University. But he was very confused on TheDove TV’s “Focus Today” show last week when he admitted he didn’t have a Ph.D. before immediately contradicting himself and saying he did. Read more
The staff members at China Elementary in Texas’ Hardin-Jefferson Independent School District love children and Jesus and not necessarily in that order. If you look at their website and social media, it seems like they promote Jesus every chance they get, mostly with the school’s illegal teacher-led “Hawks for Christ” group which they promote nonstop on their Facebook page (some of which have since been deleted). There’s also the Duck Dynasty dress-up day they had last year, and the school song which includes the words “God bless,” and the book fairs that include Christian books not sanctioned by Scholastic. Read more
In 2010, Oklahoma passed a law called the Lindsey Nicole Henry Scholarships for Students with Disabilities act which provided vouchers to students with special needs. It meant students who qualified could attend one of several dozen private schools with the help of taxpayer funding. The problem with that law was that the vast majority of those schools were religious. (And most of them did not actually specialize in special needs students.) In short, the scholarship was a sneaky way to get taxpayers to pay for the religious education of students. Read more
It was a year ago today when the American Family Association released a “Bigotry Map,” a sort-of response to the Southern Poverty Law Center’s famous list of “hate groups.” But while the SPLC’s list consisted of groups that “have beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics,” the AFA’s map appeared to have just one prerequisite: You disagreed with them. As of today, though, the Map no longer exists. Read more
