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 Staatkundig Gereformeerde Partij (SGP) is a Dutch political party known for its fundamentalist Christian beliefs. The SGP didn’t support women’s suffrage a long time ago and, more recently, they didn’t allow women to become a Member of Parliament on behalf of their party. The SGP professes the absolute authority of the Word of God over all areas of societal life. The SGP rejects the idea of absolute equality of human beings, which it sees as false teaching of the… Read more
In the wake of a mass shooting like the one in Aurora, Colorado this morning, it seems like the obvious response should be to keep the victims in your thoughts and not jump to any conclusions about who the murderer was and what his motives were until that information becomes available. In other words, don’t be Rep. Louis Gohmert (R-TX), who went on a radio show this morning and blamed the shootings on our nation’s increasing godlessness: Ernest Istook, the… Read more
The August/September 2012 issue of Free Inquiry is out and I have an article in it about how atheists can be pretty abrasive online… to other atheists. The backdrop of the issue is “the new activism,” one that looks beyond just the logic and reason and arguments and actually helps people get through the day. As editor Lauren Becker writes: Secular humanism should not be about defeating one’s fellow humans. Yes, of course we need to win arguments, but the… Read more
York University (in Canada) has been the site of several sexual assaults over the past few weeks and students are angry because they don’t feel the school has done enough to prevent future attacks. They’re really not going to like this. Al-Haashim Kamena Atangana, a Muslim cleric, wrote to the Toronto Sun to offer his own suggestions as to how these crimes can be stopped: I wanted to mention that the reason why these sex attacks are continuously happening is… Read more