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.
Education writer Jon Fortenbury interviewed a student who lost his faith while in the middle of his undergraduate education at a Christian college — and offers a few tips for other students who may find themselves in similar situations: 1. College students are generally friendly and accepting Even though [Justin] Mart didn’t make his non-Christian views widely known, most people he told or who found out didn’t rebuke him for it. “A lot of people were more curious than they were condemning,” said Mart, who has since finished a nuclear engineering master’s degree at Oregon State University. “I was lucky to have quality friends who didn’t judge me. Fellow Bible majors asked questions but didn’t try to convert me at all. They were largely respectful. I also spoke to professors about my views and they were all very respectful and didn’t rat me out.” [Click headline for more…] Read more
Last night, Ricky Gervais appeared on CNN’s “Piers Morgan Live” to talk about his new Netflix series “Derek” but the conversation — as it always seems to do when someone interviews Gervais — moved to religion. Fine by me, though, because Gervais got in a wonderful line about why the lack of an afterlife drives him to do even more in this life (beginning at the 2:44 mark): [Click headline for more…] Read more
By now, you better have seen Every Young Man’s Battle, the Christian anti-masturbation movie. If you haven’t, the full version is right here: Dusty Smith has watched it, too. In his latest video, he takes on the role of your mind as you watched that horrible film. And it’s awesome. (Just about everything you’re about to hear is NSFW. You’ve been warned…) [Click headline for more…] Read more
The Atlantic’s James Hamblin published a wonderful piece yesterday about the Secular Student Alliance’s Safe Zone program and why it’s necessary: Earlier this year, while no one was looking, Gage Pulliam took a photo of a plaque that listed the Ten Commandments, as it hung on the wall of his Oklahoma high school’s biology classroom. Pulliam emailed the photo, anonymously, to the Freedom From Religion Foundation. They then sent a complaint to the school district, which asked Muldrow High School to take down the plaque. … The protesters began speculating as to who was responsible for the instigating photo. Speculative whispers became cries. When some of Pulliam’s friends — who were among the cohort of openly areligious students at Muldrow High — started feeling heat, Pulliam outed himself on an atheist blog. Sacrificing himself to so that he might save others, Pulliam admitted that he was the one who sent the photo. Pulliam later said that in the wake of his confession, his mother worried for his safety. She also worried that his teachers might grade him differently. His sister, an eighth-grader, said other students wouldn’t look at her, and “in one instance she couldn’t even get a class project done because her group members refused to talk to her.” Other students “told Gage’s girlfriend that he should stay from them or else they’ll punch him.” That’s the sort of antagonism atheists can encounter in certain schools in many states. That’s what the program is designed to counter. That’s why I’m a supporter of it. [Click headline for more…] Read more
Today, in San Francisco, the 5th Atheist Film Festival is taking place at the Roxie Theater. (Tickets are still available at the theater if you haven’t purchased them already.) While most of the movies have been seen in other venues before, there’s one film making its premiere today that I’m particular excited about (only in part because I was interviewed for it). It’s called Hug an Atheist: [Click headline for more…] Read more