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.
The Creation Museum recently added zip line courses to its property and an insect exhibit inside the building. Both of those things, on the surface, seem to have little to do with Creationism. So… what’s up with that? The Associated Press’ Dylan Lovan writes about how it’s all about increasing attendance: Museum co-founder Ken Ham said he knew when it opened to big crowds in 2007 that new features would need to be added from time to time. Total attendance since the opening is approaching 1.9 million, he said. … Ham said the museum is welcoming of people seeking fun without a creationism lesson. “That’s what we wanted to see, because it will bring in a broader range of people in here and provide something for the community as well — they don’t have to go to the Creation Museum, they can just come for the zip lines,” Ham said. I appreciate that Lovan added my own perspective to his piece: [Click headline for more…] Read more
A couple of days ago, I posted a story about 19-year-old Katie Lentz, who was hit by a drunk driver, got dangerously pinned down in her own vehicle, and came ever-so-close to death. The interesting thing was that the firefighters’ equipment wasn’t working properly — they could do some stuff but not fully extract Katie from her car — and as they waited for backup, a mysterious Catholic priest seemed to come out of nowhere, even with the perimeter blocked off (!!!), prayed with Katie, used some anointed oil, and left before anyone could get his name. Suddenly, the backup equipment arrived and was able to get Katie out of harm’s way and into a hospital. Crazy, right?! So who was that priest? Firefighters and friends assumed he was an angel: “I think that this time I’ve actually witnessed a guardian angel at work,” Jeremiah See of the New London Fire Department told ABC News. … “Whether it was just a priest as an angel, or an actual angel coming down,” Lentz’s friend Travis Wiseman said, “he was an angel to everyone and to Katie.” [Click headline for more…] Read more
I was going to skip this, but Pastor Steven Anderson of the Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, Arizona was talking about how all sins are not equal and this was the screengrab: How could I resist that?! Most of it was uneventful, but toward the end, Anderson spoke about virginity and fornication… and we got this gem at the 45:43 mark: [Click headline for more…] Read more
It’s the age-old question: Are atheists smarter than the religious? Let’s get the major caveats out of the way: There are brilliant religious people. There are really dumb atheists. “Smarter” is a vague term. And IQ is only one of many ways to measure it. Anyway, psychologists Miron Zuckerman and Jordan Silberman of the University of Rochester and Judith Hall of Northeastern University have published a paper in Personality and Social Psychology Review that aggregates the results from 63 studies on the issue done between 1928 and 2012. What did they find? Turns out the data supports the idea that religion and intelligence don’t always go hand-in-hand — and the researchers have some suggestions as to why that is: [Click headline for more…] Read more
Jaleesa Martin and her son’s father went to court on Thursday expecting the judge to settle their 7-month-old child Messiah DeShawn Martin’s last name. Instead, Judge Lu Ann Ballew changed the baby’s first name, too: Judge Ballew ordered the 7-month-old’s name be “Martin DeShawn McCullough.” It includes both parent’s last names but leaves out Messiah. “The word Messiah is a title and it’s a title that has only been earned by one person and that one person is Jesus Christ,” Judge Ballew said. Ballew went on to say this was best for the baby since the family lived in such a religious area. [Click headline for more…] Read more
