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.
A former Jehovah’s Witness recorded a conversation between his 17-year-old younger brother, who is now an atheist and no longer wants to attend JW meetings, and their parents. Take it all with a grain of salt since it’s hard to verify these things, but the recording is pretty horrifying. There’s plenty of verbal abuse — at 4:27, the mother says she should have aborted him; at 7:10, she says she should put him in a mental institution. The anonymous poster also added that there was physical abuse at home (“My father put him in a choke hold, my mother hit him.”) If you can stomach it, have a listen: Read more
I noted earlier that the Freedom From Religion Foundation chapter in Chicago had put up an atheist display at North School Park in the city of Arlington Heights. They did it to counter the Nativity Scene that was also on the property. In addition to a five-foot-tall Scarlet A, there was an “Are you Good Without God? Millions are” banner from the Chicago Coalition of Reason: Late Tuesday night, a group member noticed that someone had tampered with the banner. Read more
On Sunday, members of the Secular Coalition for Massachusetts put up a fairly innocuous banner in the Boston Common area: Rangers took it down the following day, even though the atheists had a permit, so the group put it back up on Tuesday. Then, on Wednesday, they saw that it had been slashed: Read more
