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.
Reader Justin Scott, an Iowan who takes his politics seriously, has been going to meet-and-greets with a number of candidates to ask why atheists should consider supporting them. He recently asked Jeb Bush his thoughts on separation of church and state and whether he supported business owners who discriminated against their customers on the basis of sexual orientation (as we saw in Indiana last year). Bush said that church/state separation needed to be respected, but then confusingly added that Christian business owners should be allowed to discriminate against gay customers: Read more
Reader Justin Scott, an Iowan who takes his politics seriously, has been going to meet-and-greets with a number of candidates to ask why atheists should consider supporting them. While he’s been able to chat with just about everyone in the race, Rand Paul wouldn’t give him the time of day. He rejected Justin’s question about why conservative atheists should consider voting for him on three separate occasions at the University of Northern Iowa on Saturday night. Two of them were caught on video: Read more
When Fox News’ liar-in-residence Todd Starnes published an article with the headline, “Public school forced my child to convert to Islam,” I assumed it was bullshit. Partly because it’s Starnes, partly because that’s not how public schools work, and partly because it just sounds like something Christians suffering from a persecution complex would say. It turns out this story is all about a Christian family upset because their daughter learned about Islam in a World History class. Just how frivolous is this case? Well, I read the federal lawsuit and looked at the most damning claims made by parents John and Melissa Wood on behalf of their daughter to see if there was any merit to what they said. What I found was that no such discrimination was taking place at La Plata High School in Maryland. Read more
