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.
Back in October, Christopher Schaeffer announced his candidacy for election to the Pomfret Town Board in New York. He was elected the following month and was sworn in Thursday. Why is any of that relevant to the rest of you? Because of how Schaeffer took his oath of office: With a strainer on his head as a representative of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster: When the OBSERVER asked afterward why he wore a colander on his head, Schaeffer said he was a minister with an even more unique organization – the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. “It’s just a statement about religious freedom,” he said. “It’s a religion without any dogma.” Fantastic 🙂 Read more
You may recall the story of Margaret Doughty, the 64-year-old who was denied citizenship in America because she was an atheist. When asked if she would “take up arms in defense of the United States,” she told them she would not because her moral convictions as an atheist prevented her from fighting in a war. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) initially told her that if she had a “conscientious objection,” it had to be on religious grounds and not moral ones. But they eventually caved in after an internet uproar and some help from a Republican representative from Tennessee. The Humanists of Houston invited Doughty to speak about her life and the controversy at an event in November and her speech is now up online: Read more
How many times have we heard people argue atheists don’t give to charity? Or that we fear death? Or that we’re just rebelling against God’s authority? Russell Blackford and Udo Schuklenk have heard those false claims many times before and they’ve responded to them (and several other nasty stereotypes) in their new book 50 Great Myths About Atheism (Wiley-Blackwell, 2013): In the excerpt below (which has been adapted for this site), the authors respond to the myth that “Atheists want to ban teaching religion to children”: Read more
James Dobson, the one-time poster-boy for evangelical bigotry, now lives in what I can only assume is the sealed-off basement of the Focus on the Family headquarters where he runs his new Family Talk ministry in between rounds of coming up for sunlight. In an end-of-the-year letter to supporters, he asks them to send him money and explains why donations have been pretty stagnant this year: Read more
