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 week after the head football coach at Naperville Central High School in Illinois was told to stop praying with his team, it appears the message has finally been taken seriously by everyone involved. Last we heard, Superintendent Dan Bridges promised that Coach Mike Stine wouldn’t lead prayers with his team but said nothing about his participation in them. That didn’t satisfy the Freedom From Religion Foundation, which had already sent a warning letter to the District, so FFRF sent a follow-up. That may have done the trick. Bridges and Stine have finally promised to comply fully with the First Amendment: Read more
At Riverheads High School in Virginia last week, World Geography teacher Cheryl LaPorte wanted to introduce students to Arabic calligraphy, so she had them copy a phrase to show off its “artistic complexity”: The problem is that the phrase — which was never translated on the assignment itself — actually said “There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah.” Read more
One of the arguments Creationists love to bring up is that evolution is a lie because we can’t see it happening in real time. We can try to explain that natural selection occurs over many generations and long time-scales, but they can’t handle that sort of nuance. Thankfully, there are actually plenty of examples of evolution occurring within a lifetime. This PBS video explains one of them: Read more
