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.
We’re making a push to get people to sign up for Light the Night teams and there’s good reason to do it by this weekend! If you’re registered by Sunday night, you’ll be entered in a drawing for a $25 Amazon gift card. Anyone who registers as a Team Captain has a chance to win a $100 gift card. Awesome, right? Right. Whether or not you walked last year, all you have to do is join a team and you can do that here (if you join my team in Chicago, I’ll give you bonus Internet points). [Click headline for more…] Read more
This is one of those stories that’s getting passed around on a number of websites, with very little in the way of information or details… so take it with a grain of salt. As it stands, two Muslim clerics who run phone helplines in India have said it’s not okay for women to post their pictures — veiled or unveiled, I don’t know — on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. [Click headline for more…] Read more
Not long ago, Hannah Gastonguay and her husband Sean concluded, for no rational reason, that the government was interfering too much in their religious life. They didn’t want to pay “taxes that pay for abortions we don’t agree with”… which doesn’t actually happen, unless you’re deluded enough to think that contraception amounts to infanticide. They also didn’t believe in “homosexuality… in the state-controlled church,” a statement that makes no sense no matter how you slice it, since homosexuals exist whether you want them to or not, and no church in the country has been forced to welcome them or honor their relationships. Also: state-controlled church? Who knew. So, a few months ago, the Gastonguays decided to make a break for it. They scooped up their kids, Rahab and Ardith, along with Sean’s father, and they set sail — literally — from San Diego to go to the island of Kiribati: [Click headline for more…] Read more
Just a quick heads-up: Barring some breaking news, like the Royal Baby burping, I’m scheduled to appear on CNN’s “New Day Sunday” at approximately 8:30a (ET) Sunday morning to talk about millennials and why we’re leaving church. Interestingly enough, the last time I was on CNN was a year ago to talk about why millennials increasingly doubted the existence of God: I’ll post the video when it becomes available! Read more
