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.
The Super Bowl halftime show, featuring Coldplay, Beyonce, and Bruno Mars, ended with this colorful image reading “Believe in Love”: And wouldn’t you know it? There were people complaining about it on Twitter, making the case that the NFL was using the halftime show to promote homosexuality: Read more
Earlier tonight, during the Super Bowl, the Church of Scientology aired this ad: It’s the fourth straight year the Church has aired a Super Bowl ad — in certain markets, anyway — and it may have cost them up to $5 million. I guess they didn’t want to spend enough money during the game answering that question, so I’ll do it for them: Read more
Our latest podcast guest is Robyn Blumner, the newly appointed CEO of the Center For Inquiry. Robyn spent 16 years as a nationally syndicated columnist and editorial writer at the Tampa Bay Times newspaper, where she wrote a lot about civil liberties, church/state separation, and free speech issues. In 2012, she was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize along with the rest of her editorial team. Before she was writing professionally, she headed up ACLU affiliates in Florida and Utah. She entered the world of organized atheism, if you will, in 2014, when she was tapped to run the Richard Dawkins Foundation. Recently, RDF announced a merger with the Center For Inquiry, and Robyn will run the merged organization. I spoke with Robyn about her experience coming out as an atheist publicly long before it became commonplace, how the CFI/RDF merger took shape, and — yes — Richard Dawkins’ tweets. Read more
Wheaton College officials have finally apologized to a professor after being mired in a controversy of their own creation. It all began in December when Professor Larycia Hawkins wore a hijab (and posted a picture on Facebook) in solidarity with Muslim women, adding that Muslims and Christians believed in the same God. Wheaton officials said that statement — not the wearing of the hijab, they seemed to say through clenched teeth — potentially violated the evangelical Christian school’s Statement of Faith. On Saturday, the schools president Philip Ryken announced that the school had reconciled with Hawkins, though she had decided she would no longer be working there. Read more
