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.
Some cities in Canada haven’t been receptive to atheist advertising, but the Sudbury Transit Authority (in Ontario, Canada) just approved an ad that’ll go up for the next month. It took three weeks for them to give it the green light, but an ad campaign with the message “Don’t believe in God? You’re not alone!” will officially be launched today as will the Sudbury branch of the Centre for Inquiry: Read more
On Friday, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints issued a formal declaration of how Mormons should respond to the recent court decision to allow gay marriage in the state and the Supreme Court’s decision to halt those marriages temporarily until further legal action. The gist of it was that gay marriage is awful, awful, awful, and church leaders should not perform same-sex ceremonies, and church buildings shouldn’t be used for any activities related to gay weddings, and the church has to remain moral in the face of rampant immorality, and good Mormons should oppose gay marriage… but gay people deserve respect. I guess they don’t see the inherent contradiction between saying gay people deserve “respect” while simultaneously trying to deprive them of their civil rights. Read more
There’s a church controversy brewing in Alexandria, Indiana. The leadership of the United Methodist Church there can’t seem to figure out how much they hate gay people. It’s one thing to ban them from church leadership — but what about non-pastoral members of the staff? It looks like the church leadership wants to block gay people — even those who are celibate — from joining any part of the staff. The church members disagree and they’re leaving in protest: David Steele said his family has stopped attending the church, which has been difficult. They aren’t alone either. About 80 percent of the congregation left because of the situation with [fired gay choral director Adam] Fraley. “They all embraced him,” Nancy Steele said. “They’re upset about the way he was treated.” Of course, the church members have the moral and logical upper hand here. It makes no sense to ban gay people because of a narrow interpretation of certain parts of the Bible when the church has no history of barring gluttonous people, divorced people, shellfish eaters, or those who mix their linens and wools. Read more
If any newspaper article began that way, it would make no sense at all, but that didn’t stop The Times (UK) from saying something just as silly: Almost a tenth of babies and toddlers in England and Wales are Muslim, a breakdown of census figures shows. The percentage of Muslims among the under-fives is almost twice as high as in the general population. In an indication of the extent to which birthrate is changing the UK’s religious demographic, fewer than one in 200 people over 85 is Muslim. Richard Dawkins, echoing what he wrote in The God Delusion, rightfully called them out on it in a letter-to-the-editor today: Read more
