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.
If you saw the official Republican response to President Obama’s State of the Union speech tonight, then you heard the pleasant-sounding Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) talk about her vision of America, her son with Down Syndrome, and her uplifting personal story. I thought the speech was pretty well done — heavy on emotion, light on substance, free of gaffes. It was kind of like what Republicans expected, but never got, out of Sarah Palin. But the most interesting thing you may not know about Rodgers is that she attended Pensacola Christian College. Why is that a big deal? PCC may be the most fundamentalist Christian schools in the country, rivaling places like Patrick Henry College and Liberty University. Read more
A few days ago, several Facebook groups for Romanian atheists and agnostics, including two that were parody pages about God and Jesus Christ, were shut down without warning to any of their administrators. Some of them are simply inaccessible to Romanians while available in other countries — it’s unclear whether that’s Facebook’s doing or that of Romanian Internet service providers. Combined, these pages had upwards of 100,000 Likes/followers. There’s reason to believe the censorship stems from Patriarch Daniel, the leader of the Romanian Orthodox Church, who may have been upset about this image posted to the “God” parody page: Read more
When the Affordable Care Act went into effect, it exempted religious organizations from having to fulfill the contraceptive requirement. In other words, if you were a pastor of a large church, you didn’t have to provide your employees with birth control if it went against your religious “conscience.” The ACA did not offer the same exemption to public, for-profit companies owned by religious people — as well it shouldn’t have. Just because the owner of a huge company like, say, Hobby Lobby, is an evangelical Christian, why should he be able to withhold contraception from those who work for him? The company’s purpose isn’t to promote Christianity. But Hobby Lobby’s CEO David Green felt he should be allowed to dictate the kind of health benefits his employees received and he took his case to court. In November, the Supreme Court decided it would hear that case, deciding in essence whether corporations could be religious. There is about more than just birth control (which Green unscientifically and ignorantly equates with abortion). If the Supreme Court rules in his favor, where would the line be drawn? What if a business owner was a Jehovah’s Witness who doesn’t believe in blood transfusions? Or a Christian Scientist who believed in the power of prayer over medicine? Would they get to force their employees, whose insurance comes through the workplace, to live by those rules as well? Today, a group of 19 Democratic Senators filed a brief urging the Court to deny the Hobby Lobby exemption. Read more
One of the readers of this site (“co—“) recently sold her Kindle on eBay, but the buyer (“lu—“) wasn’t happy with the product she received. She claimed it wasn’t working. So the two of them had a quick back-and-forth exchange until the conflict was resolved. But just wait until you read how it was resolved (click image to enlarge, or read the text below): Read more