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.
Earlier this month, 40-year-old Niloy Chatterjee (who wrote under the name Niloy Neel) became the fourth atheist blogger this year to be killed in Bangladesh. We knew the basics of how he died. Several assassins burst into his home and practically decapitated him. But we didn’t know the details. We didn’t know what Neel was doing in the moments before his death. We didn’t know his wife watched it all unfold, unable to stop it. The Globe and Mail spoke with Neel’s wife, Asa Moni, and they’ve published the very-graphic and highly-disturbing details of what went down. It’s not for the faint of heart. Read more
Our latest podcast guest is Dan Barker, a former minister and co-President of the Freedom From Religion Foundation (along with his wife Annie Laurie Gaylor). Barker was a teenage evangelist and longtime preacher before he stepped away from God for good. In addition to his work with the FFRF, he’s also the author of Godless (2008) and Life Driven Purpose (2015). I spoke with Barker about why he goes on The Daily Show even when the segments aren’t very kind to him, his next project encouraging people to read the Bible, and how all Christian ministers are “slaves traders.” (Yep.) Read more
This is Hamza Tzortzis, a Muslim apologist and lecturer for the Islamic Education and Research Academy: And here’s Tzortzis explaining how his name, address, birth date, and credit card number — all of which were found linked together in the Ashley Madison data hack — don’t implicate him at all, because identity theft. (Yeah, that’s the ticket…) Read more