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.
He hinted at it more than a year and a half ago, so it’s about time that The End of Faith author Sam Harris announced his next book. It’s called Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion (Simon & Schuster), it’ll be released this September, and it’s already available for pre-order. I love the cover. When you zoom out, you can see the face… … and when you zoom in, you can see a cloud giving the middle finger to God. Read more
Just a couple of days ago, I wrote about how Georgia Republican State Rep. Dustin Hightower (below) was introducing legislation that would legalize student-led, administration-supported proselytizing at football games, during morning announcements, graduation ceremonies, and anywhere else where students had a public forum. The same law was passed last year in Mississippi, as well as Texas and Tennessee. And the same kind of bill is currently going through the state legislature in Virginia. Read more
11 months ago, there was a clash in Bangladesh over the writing of atheist bloggers that left at least two people dead, including blogger Ahmed Rajib Haider. No one was charged with the crime. The country’s 12 Islamic parties called the protests after Friday prayers in nearly half a million mosques nationwide, demanding the execution of bloggers whom they say blasphemed Islam and the Prophet Mohammed. Tensions have risen in the Muslim-majority nation over allegedly anti-Islamic blog posts by Ahmed Rajib Haider, who was hacked to death last week near his home in Dhaka. In recent weeks Haider and fellow bloggers had launched huge protests demanding a ban on the largest Islamic party Jamaat-e-Islami, and the execution of its leaders for alleged war crimes in the 1971 independence conflict with Pakistan. Since Haider’s death, Bangladeshi social media has been flooded with his alleged blog posts and with those by other bloggers mocking Islam, triggering protests by a number of Islamic groups and clerics. Yesterday, we saw the first step toward some semblance of justice. Read more
The video below, part of The Atheist Voice series, offers 11 pieces of advice to Bill Nye in anticipation of his upcoming debate against Creationist Ken Ham: We’d love to hear your thoughts on the project — more videos will be posted soon — and we’d also appreciate your suggestions as to which questions we ought to tackle next! Read more