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.
This is a guest post by Seráh Blain. Seráh is the Executive Director of the Secular Coalition for Arizona. … At the heart of Humanism is the idea that human beings deserve to be treated with dignity, to have their autonomy respected, and to be regarded equally regardless of immaterial differences that have no bearing on one’s value — such as color, class, gender, and so forth. After several recent interactions with people experiencing homelessness in Phoenix, where temperatures are frequently well over 100 degrees, I have come to realize that homelessness is a vile affront to all of these principles — and as a result, with the help of my Humanist community, the Flagstaff Freethinkers, and several other collaborating organizations, I am spearheading a unique and provocative project to work toward ending homelessness in Arizona. [Click headline for more…] Read more
Some of you know Ray Comfort because of his latest movie “Evolution Vs. God.” Most of you know him better for his video “The Atheist’s Worst Nightmare”: Nearly four years ago, I interviewed him for this website and he was gracious enough to answer all the questions I asked. So, given the opportunity to do it again, and with some of your submitted questions in the mix, I asked Ray about everything from his selective-editing of videos to the infamous banana routine. His answers are reprinted below in their entirety. (I have edited the exchange only for grammar/clarity and added links to Ray’s responses when I felt they were helpful.) [Click headline for more…] Read more
Last year, I wrote about how, in Toronto, the Gideons wanted to distribute Bibles to fifth grade students and how the District School Board of Niagara was letting them do it. Rene and Anna Chouinard, who have three kids in the district, attempted to put a stop to that for years, beginning in 2009. They told the school board that if the Gideons could distribute Bibles to children, then they should be able to distribute copies of Dan Barker’s Just Pretend: A Free Thought Book for Children and Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist. That year, the school board ended up saying no to both kinds of books. The year after, the board changed their policy to allow for the distribution of all religious materials. The Chouinards said Fine! Let us distribute our atheist books!… and the school board said no. Huh?! The Bibles were okay, but the atheist books were not? What gives? Only last year did a court finally agree to look at the case. It took a year, but the Chouinards have finally prevailed! [Click headline for more…] Read more
In March of 2012, former pastor Teresa MacBain came out as an atheist for the first time. Since then, she’s been about as public an atheist as you can get, holding positions as the Public Relations Director for American Atheists and the executive director of the Humanists of Florida Association: Now, she’ll begin the next step in her journey away from religious dogma as the brand new director of the Humanist Community Project at Harvard University, a position just announced by the Humanist Community at Harvard (HCH). Given Teresa’s background in building and leading churches, this is an ideal fit. [Click headline for more…] Read more