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 couple of weeks ago, First Baptist Villa Rica (a church in Georgia) posted a video of a pastor showing up at Villa Rica High School right before football practice in order to conduct a mass baptism that included players and a coach. The Freedom from Religion Foundation sent a letter to the Carroll County School System and the District said it would investigate the situation. Read more
Jehovah’s Witnesses have long believed that 1914 is the year Jesus began ruling in heaven. They also believe the people who were alive and baptized and witnessed the events of that year represent an “anointed” generation. You may be aware of a belief among Christians that Jesus will return soon. Some of them say it’ll happen at some undetermined time in the future… but since 1975, the JW Watchtower Society has interpreted Matthew 24:34 to mean that Jesus will come back at some point during the lives of that “anointed” generation. Maybe you can see the problem with this. There aren’t many people (much less JWs) left who were alive in 1914 and old enough to understand events like the outbreak of World War I. So what do you do if you’re a religious leader? You reinterpret everything… even if your current interpretation is already stretched very thin. Read more
I thought it was pretty bad when, last year, a Catholic Bishop testified under oath that he wasn’t sure if raping a child was a crime. I just heard something worse. In 2011, when Syracuse, New York Bishop Robert Cunningham (below) was testifying in a lawsuit against another priest in his diocese who was accused of sexually abusing a child, Cunningham was asked the simplest question in the world… and botched it in the worst possible way: Read more
Earlier today, Democratic Presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders delivered an address at Liberty University, the school founded by the late Jerry Falwell and the place where Sen. Ted Cruz announced his entry into the Presidential race earlier this year. That seems like an odd venue for Sanders given that people like him are why Liberty University was created in the first place. But Sanders rose to the challenge, side-stepping more polarizing issues and focusing instead on income inequality. Read more
