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.
It’s bad enough when public high school football coaches preach to the athletes. But it’s downright stupid when they publicize it, assuming everyone will just accept the practice as normal. At Cannon County High School in Tennessee, head coach T. J. Daniels has been pushing Christianity on the students for years — and a local newspaper included a report all about it: Read more
Earlier this year, when the UK Department for Education issued its new curriculum for GCSE Religious Studies classes, the focus was on: Christianity, Catholicism, Islam, Hinduism, Judaism and Sikhism. Humanism, a belief system reflected by far more people than some of the religions on that list combined, wasn’t given the same treatment. That’s why three parents eventually filed a lawsuit against the government (with the help of the British Humanist Association). Yesterday, in a major decision from Britain’s High Court, a judge ruled that Education Secretary Nicky Morgan (below) was wrong to exclude Humanism from the Religious Studies classes in the country. From now on, the judge said, explicitly non-religious beliefs will have to be treated the same as religious ones: Read more
Susanne Atanus (below), the Illinois Republican who told a newspaper in 2014 that God put autism and dementia on Earth as punishment for marriage equality and abortion, lost her bid for Congress that year. But she’s going to try again anyway, even if the Republican Party wants nothing to do with her. Read more
