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 nun originally from El Salvador and working in Italy went to the hospital earlier this week complaining of stomach cramps, only to give birth to a child hours later: “I did not know I was pregnant. I only felt a stomach pain,” Italian news agency ANSA quoted her as saying. It appears the child was conceived during a trip back home last year — cue a joke about “indulgences” — though the nun hasn’t admitted to any sin. But there’s a major upside to the birth: Read more
Given that religious conservatives look down upon divorce and fight against LGBT rights in part to protect what they call the “sanctity of marriage,” you would think their rates of divorce would be pretty low. But a new study scheduled to be published in an upcoming edition of the American Journal of Sociology suggests otherwise: Demographers Jennifer Glass at the University of Texas and Philip Levchak at the University of Iowa looked at the entire map of the United States, going county by county, to examine where divorces occurred in 2000 and what the characteristics of those counties were. Their work confirms that one of the strongest factors predicting divorce rates (per 1000 married couples) is the concentration of conservative or evangelical Protestants in that county. Read more
The video below, part of The Atheist Voice series, answers the question: Why do atheists always seem to pick on Christians? 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
