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.
Now that Congressman Pete Stark has lost his re-election bid and Congresswoman-elect Kyrsten Sinema is running away from the A-word like it’s some kind of disease, there are no members of Congress who openly deny the existence of a higher power. When Pete Stark’s campaign was in trouble, a lot of readers of this site pitched in to help out. It didn’t ultimately protect his seat — and one could argue it’s a good thing that money didn’t sway this election — but Stark wants you to know how much he appreciated our support. Read more
In the summer of 2009, I had an idea that I couldn’t get out of my head. I was a campus organizer for the Center for Inquiry On Campus at the time, and we were about to host dozens of secular college leaders from around the world for our annual summer leadership conference. The students who came to the conference each held within them a personal story about how they had gotten there: perhaps their flight from dogma came through a moment of clarity late at night while reading a website analyzing the Bible; maybe they had experienced religiously-inspired misogyny or discrimination in their youth and chose to forge a new path; perhaps they had lived through years of their prayers going unanswered and had concluded that God does not exist. Read more