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.
We know what religious leaders claim the Bible says about sex. But what does the book actually say? More importantly, what does it leave out? Theologian Matthew O’Neil has written a book discussing what the Bible says about everything from birth control to homosexuality to circumcision. It’s called What the Bible Really Does (and Doesn’t Say) about Sex: The How, When, Why, and With Whom of Scriptural Prohibitions and Permissions (Pitchstone Publishing, 2015): In the excerpt below, which is reprinted without footnotes, O’Neil tackles the question: What does the Bible say about abortion? Read more
Franklin Graham, the Christian evangelist who seems to instinctively disagree with everything President Obama says, couldn’t bring himself to admit that the common sense gun safety measures proposed by Obama made any sense. So he offered his own ideas for how to reduce gun violence. Like Jesus. Because Jesus is his goddamn answer to anything, no matter how ridiculous it sounds: Read more
Here’s yet another reminder that Focus on the Family under the leadership of Jim Daly is really no different than it was under James Dobson. It involves an incident that took place last week at Glenview Elementary School in New Jersey. Students there were told to say “God bless America” after the Pledge of Allegiance (because why invoke God once when you can do it twice?!)… and they had been doing this since 9/11. The ACLU reminded the District that this was not something you could tell kids to say, and administrators reluctantly complied. They said it would no longer be a formal part of the school day. But kids who wanted to say it could obviously still do that. So how did Focus on the Family spin that story to their gullible Christian base? Well, Daly’s post is titled “It’s Now Illegal to Say ‘God Bless America’?” if that gives you any indication. (The question mark doesn’t temper the bullshit claim he’s making, but the obvious answer is “no.”) Read more
