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.
Last December, I wrote about a Nativity Scene in Brookville, Indiana that had been up for over 50 years, despite warning letters (over the course of several years) from the Freedom From Religion Foundation to take it down. The display, which was owned by the Town of Brookville, sat on the grounds of the Franklin County Courthouse. Read more
Reader Justin Scott, an Iowan who has had exchanges with Sen. Bernie Sanders and Sen. Rick Santorum, attended a gathering with New Jersey Governor Chris Christie yesterday as he made his case for why voters should caucus for him as President next month. Scott asked me before the event if there were any questions I wanted him to ask, so I jumped on that. I was curious how Christie planned to defend separation of church and state when his party seems intent on tearing down the wall between them. Justin, to his credit, not only asked the question, he got the full response on video: Read more
Of all the misinterpretations in the giant game of Telephone known as the Bible, this may be my favorite theory. We’ve all heard the story of how Eve was supposedly created from Adam’s rib… even though men and women have the same number of ribs. But Professor Ziony Zevit from the American Jewish University in Maryland wrote in his 2013 book What Really Happened in the Garden of Eden? that this story was really the result of a bad translation. The book, which enjoyed a second life after it was reviewed in a recent issue of the Biblical Archeology Review, explained it this way: Read more
