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.
For the past few days, in Orlando (Florida), the RetailNOW conference has been taking place for those interested in the latest developments regarding retail technology (credit card machines and the like). Michael Gerber, a “small business guru,” was the speaker Monday morning. So far, everything I’ve said should be putting you to sleep. Really, there’s no reason I should be writing about this at all. But in the middle of an otherwise uneventful talk, Gerber decided to trash atheists just for the hell of it (9:27 mark): Read more
To those who may not know the origins of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (a.k.a. The Mormons), nor have seen The Book of Mormon musical, nor viewed the “All About Mormons” episode of South Park, here’s an ultra-quick history: In the early 1820s, New York resident Joseph Smith claimed that an angel came to him and told him of the existence of golden plates, upon which were engraved the account of ancient Jews who came to North America via boats. According to Joseph, the angel (Moroni) revealed that the plates were conveniently buried in a nearby hill. Joseph dug up the plates and promptly set about translating them. According to Joseph, the plates were written in something he called “Reformed Egyptian,” so he needed divine assistance in order to accomplish the magical task of translating them into a version of English that sounded very much like the King James Version of the Bible. For this purpose, he had the help of special “seer stones” called the Urim and Thummim, which were buried along with the plates. The stones gave him the help he needed, so the story goes, and the resulting translation was eventually published as The Book of Mormon. Read more