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.
In 2009, Cormac Flynn, Paul Dunbar and Gráinne O’Sullivan began a website called CountMeOut.ie which gave step-by-step directions for how to formally leave the Catholic Church: They published a sample “declaration of defection” (PDF) that you could download. You just had to get it signed, witnessed, and sent to the Church where you got baptized, and that was it! You could finally wash your hands free of Catholicism. Obviously, if you were already a former-Catholic (like the three guys starting the site), this sounded like just a mere formality. But it made a strong statement, and more than 12,000 people downloaded the form. More importantly, it removed your name from the Church’s roster, a list the Church frequently touted as it got involved in government-run things like education and health care. You would think the Church would support such a declaration of defection — why keep people who are no longer Catholic on your rolls? Wouldn’t you want an accurate count of how many people were truly in your Church? Wouldn’t it be deceptive to inflate those numbers with people who really wanted nothing to do with you? Well, it’s not like the Church is known for taking the ethical high road… [Click headline for more…] Read more
I have some advice for Christians (if they want it): When someone says that “kindness” is important, don’t argue against them. You won’t win. You won’t look good. And you’ll just give people like me blog fodder. This all stems from writer George Saunders’ viral commencement address in which he said the following: What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness. Those moments when another human being was there, in front of me, suffering, and I responded… sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly. Or, to look at it from the other end of the telescope: Who, in your life, do you remember most fondly, with the most undeniable feelings of warmth? Those who were kindest to you, I bet. It’s a little facile, maybe, and certainly hard to implement, but I’d say, as a goal in life, you could do worse than: Try to be kinder. It’s nothing you haven’t heard before, but c’mon, it’s a beautiful sentiment. And hard to disagree with, right? Of course. Unless you’re Christian. Jen Pollock Michel writes at Christianity Today that Christians would be misguided if they followed Saunders’ advice: [Click headline for more…] Read more
This is a guest post by Chantelle Moghadam. [Hemant’s Note: For the sake of disclosure, I wrote a blurb for the back of the book. This review, however, was written independently] … PZ Myers writes the first half of The Happy Atheist (Pantheon, 2013) with all the bound-up angst against religion that most atheists hold and, as an atheist myself, I completely understand where that frustration comes from. I can’t help but wonder, though, what a religious person might think of atheists if they read this book. The most convincing arguments against religion are not always the ones telling religious people how ridiculous they are, but ones that make valid criticisms of religion itself. Even someone who is on the fence about religion may be offended within the first few pages and unable to finish the rest of it. The Kirkus Review held nothing back when it said of the book: “Unlikely to change a single mind or cause even the slightest shift in perspective.” [Click headline for more…] Read more
