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 study published in Current Biology is making a lot of headlines for what it suggests about atheists and altruism. Neuroscientist Jean Decety, of the University of Chicago, ran an experiment to measure the generosity levels of children. In essence, children in six countries were asked to select 10 stickers from a larger sample… then told that they could give up some of those stickers to a friend who wouldn’t be able to play the game otherwise. The question was: How many stickers would these kids be willing to give up? It turns out the children of non-religious parents gave away an average of 4.1 stickers, while kids from a religious background gave away only 3.3. (There was no statistical difference between children of Muslim and Christian parents.) Read more
Back in September, the Students’ Union at Warwick University (England) decided to prevent atheist and critic of Islamic extremism Maryam Namazie from speaking at the school on the grounds that she would “incite hatred.” They eventually reversed course after criticism from all directions. The talk that she eventually gave at the school is now online: Read more
The last time I wrote about The Nightly Show, it was because of an infuriating discussion between Bill Nye, who was eager to talk about the implications of finding water on Mars, and two comedians who couldn’t care less. The problem was that the comedians became the focus of the segment while Nye was mostly relegated to the sidelines. The other night, I feared it would happen again during a discussion about faith and science. Thankfully, that wasn’t the case. Not bad for a six-minute segment. Read more
For several weeks now, there’s been a lot of chatter in Oregon because students in the Portland Public Schools were told they could no longer perform at The Grotto during the Catholic shrine’s Festival of Lights in December. The longtime tradition came to an end after the Freedom From Religion Foundation pointed out that the Grotto is a religious venue. Even more damning, when school choirs were invited to perform at the Grotto, they were explicitly told not to sing traditional holiday songs; rather, they were told to stick to songs about Jesus. Read more
Over the past couple of years, what began as a personal blog has turned into a hub with several contributors and multiple posts per day. As always, I’d like to continue expanding the reach of this site. That entails bringing on additional contributors with different voices, including more guest posts from people who can offer interesting and different perspectives, creating more YouTube videos, and making the podcasts sound more professional. In order to facilitate all of this, I’ve created a page at Patreon. (You can now see on that page a list of things I’ve been able to do thanks to your contributions.) Read more
