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.
On last night’s Real Time, Bill Maher delivered a short monologue about how President Obama has avoided coming on his show despite doing interviews with practically everyone else in the media. Why was that? Maher wanted to know. For all the support he gave the President, it was only fair, right? Was it because Maher was a pothead? Was it because of a lack of viewers? Was it the quality of his audience? Maher dismissed every one of those thoughts — but he also brought up the possibility that it was because he was an atheist: Read more
During the “Overtime” (non-televised) segment of his show last night, Bill Maher got into a brief argument with Ralph Reed and Dr. Cornel West about whether or not the stories about Jesus were in fact stories. It began with a discussion of whether the evangelical vote will still make a difference in the Iowa caucuses. But when Reed brought up how Jesus fed people with fish and bread, Maher laughed it off as fiction written by people who didn’t even live at the same time as Jesus. Reed’s response? They were still “contemporaries.” And that began a brief but entertaining debate over how the Gospels weren’t written until about 40 years after Jesus died, by people who didn’t know Jesus personally: Read more
If government officials want to stop Pastafarians from wearing colanders in their driver’s license pictures, the Moscow State Traffic Inspectorate is creating a model for others to follow. The group’s deputy head, Vladimir Kuzin, told newly-licensed Pastafarian Andrei Filin (seen below with a yellow knitted strainer on his head) that if he ever gets pulled over by a cop, and he’s not wearing that strainer, his license will be revoked. But there is a genuine problem with that sort of thinking. Read more
