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.
A couple of days ago, I posted about the cover story in this week’s TIME magazine, written by Joe Klein: … there was an occupying army of relief workers, led by local first responders, exhausted but still humping it a week after the storm, church groups from all over the country — funny how you don’t see organized groups of secular humanists giving out hot meals — and there in the middle of it all, with a purposeful military swagger, were the volunteers from Team Rubicon. I argued that that statement was not just a lie; it perpetuated a nasty stereotype often leveled against atheists: that we’re immoral people, incapable of doing good things for other people. … After I posted about the article, a *lot* of you wrote letters to TIME magazine and sent tweets to the magazine and Klein. No word yet on whether TIME will issue an apology or retraction, but today, Klein issued a statement of his own. In short, he tries to get off on a technicality… and still gets it wrong: [Click headline for more…] Read more
I’ve known for a while that the percentage of people who pray doesn’t necessarily make sense given the percentage of people who are non-religious, but I always reconciled that discrepancy by reminding myself that a lot of non-religious people still believe in a higher power. Now, the Washington Post’s Michelle Boorstein profiles an atheist who prays to a fictional deity: [Click headline for more…] Read more
Last November, the voters of New Jersey agreed to spend $750,000,000 (PDF) on construction projects at the state’s institutions of higher learning. Combined with other technology and infrastructure funds, that number later jumped to $1,300,000,000. What we didn’t know was which schools would get how much money. Last month, Governor Chris Christie’s administration proposed a list of 176 projects at 46 different universities. The problem was that two of the universities, slated to receive $11,000,000 in taxpayer-approved money in total, were religious: [Click headline for more…] Read more