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.
If you were to go skiing at Whitefish Mountain Resort in Montana, a resort on land owned by the U.S. Forest Service (USFS), you might come across a statue known as “Big Mountain Jesus”: The reason that statue is allowed to be on the property is because the USFS gave the Knights of Columbus a “Special Use Permit” in 1953 to build and maintain a memorial to honor WWII veterans. However, the Knights decided to build Big Mountain Jesus because “veterans from the 10th Mountain Division… wanted to commemorate their fallen comrades with a statue that evoked memories of the many religious shrines and statues they had seen in the mountain communities of Europe.” That’s convenient, isn’t it?… We didn’t intend to build a statue to Jesus. The veterans requested it! Read more
In 2013, American Atheists President David Silverman announced that he would be writing a book called I, Atheist. But a few months later, that book was off the table. What happened? Silverman explained in a now-deleted Facebook post that there had been a disagreement with his publisher: “We parted ways amicable over a smiley face, labeled ‘Muhammad of Islam’, which I refused to remove.” Now, a different version of that book is finally seeing the light of day. (And the smiley face is in it.) It’s called Fighting God: An Atheist Manifesto for a Religious World (Thomas Dunne Books, 2015). And if you thought Richard Dawkins was “aggressive” in The God Delusion, just wait till you read this. Unlike Dawkins, who wanted readers to shed their faith, Silverman wants those of us who are already atheists to be much more vocal about it. In the excerpt below, Silverman discusses the idea of “Islamophobia” and why we must push back against the faith-based rules others demand we follow. (I have removed footnotes for ease of reading.) Read more
