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.
Tyler Francke isn’t a fan of Ray Comfort’s new movie “Evolution vs. God” and he lets us know it in a blistering critique: Of the many, many possible ways to make an effective documentary, perhaps the last one you would choose would be to go up to random people, put a camera in their faces and ask them a series of leading questions about an incredibly complex topic (interspersed with non sequiturs like “Are you a good person?”), until you get at least a few of them to arrive at your preconceived conclusion. You wouldn’t use this technique, because it’s not very convincing. And it’s dishonest and unfair and fallacious and other even more colorful words. Unfortunately, this sums up the basis of “Evolution vs. God. There’s a reason that this particular review is special… [Click headline for more…] Read more
The video below, part of The Atheist Voice series, discusses the 15 things you should never say to an atheist: If you have additional items to add to the list, please leave them in the comments! 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
Since 2008, the Christian-owned chain Hobby Lobby has run full-page ads in newspapers across the country on Independence Day. The ad features quotations from our Founding Fathers and others discussing our country’s “Christian heritage”… and, as you might expect, it takes all sorts of liberties in the process: Now, the Freedom From Religion Foundation’s Andrew Seidel and Chuck Roslof have done what Hobby Lobby refuses to do: Tell the truth about what all those people actually meant and, in some cases, said. The quotes are meant to give the false impression that the U.S. is a Christian nation and that our nation “trusts in God.” But, just like Hobby Lobby’s god, the quotes aren’t very trustworthy. They are wildly inaccurate in some cases. They have created a beautiful website that picks apart all of the quotations used in the Hobby Lobby ad — they explain how distorted or irrelevant the statements are, what the actual quotations were (in context), and offer links so you can check it all out for yourself. For example, Hobby Lobby quoted the French observer Achille Murat in 2009 this way: [Click headline for more…] Read more
Here’s a simple rule: When you work at a retail store, you’re not supposed to be a walking billboard for your faith. At a CVS (pharmacy) store in Orange, Virginia over the weekend, a woman went to go pick up her medication and realized that her pharmacist was no longer wearing his usual Bible-verse-patterned tie. She asked him why he wasn’t wearing it and he told her his superiors had told him he couldn’t promote his religion that way during work hours. She flipped out, called corporate offices, and then left this Facebook note that has racked up more than 129,000 shares since Friday night: [Click headline for more…] Read more
At the Atheist Alliance of America 2013 National Convention this past weekend, Dr. Steven Pinker received the annual Richard Dawkins Award. Below is Dawkins’ introduction to the award presentation along with Pinker’s acceptance speech (with admittedly awful sound quality): Can anyone explain the unusual animal heads behind Dawkins…? Read more