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.
Governor Chris Christie’s administration in New Jersey recently proposed how to spend more than $1,300,000,000 in “construction projects at colleges and universities.” What’s not up for debate is the amount of money — the voters approved funding the state’s institutions of higher learning for most of this amount (later combined with other technology and infrastructure funds) back in November. What is up for debate is how all that money should be doled out — which schools should get how much? That’s a conversation the people of New Jersey need to have with their representatives and it’s one that state representatives are having with the Governor’s administration. What’s particularly noteworthy to those of us who support church/state separation are two of the 46 proposed recipients. They’re both religious schools: [Click headline for more…] Read more
Last fall, the Minnesota Atheists and American Atheists teamed up to sponsor a minor league baseball team for a day. Seemed like the worst promotion ever, given that it’s a team not even affiliated with Major League Baseball, but the beauty came from the name-change. For one evening, the St. Paul Saints became the Mr. Paul Aints 🙂 [Click headline for more…] Read more
Last year, young science advocate and activist Zack Kopplin was honored with one of four “Hugh M. Hefner First Amendment” awards (named after the Playboy founder) and accepted it at the famed mansion… They just announced one of this year’s winners and she, like Zack, is well known to the atheist community and very deserving of the honor. So congratulations to Jessica Ahlquist 🙂 [Click headline for more…] Read more
CNN’s John Blake has a controversial article up about the strange idea that Christians may constitute a “hated minority.” It’s a strange idea because Christians (as a whole) aren’t hated and they’re in no way a minority. What’s Blake’s referring to is the Martyr Complex Mentality displayed by conservative evangelicals like Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council, a group that routinely disparages homosexuals, spreads lies about them, and prevents them from getting equal rights. They say they’re hated because people disagree with them and say so out loud! [Click headline for more…] Read more
Elizabeth Smart, who was kidnapped and raped for nearly a year when she was 14, never thought about running away from her captor despite having opportunities to do it, and part of the reason had to do with her religious upbringing. The 25-year-old said as much as at a recent forum about human trafficking at Johns Hopkins University: [Click headline for more…] Read more