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.
Sam Harris’ next book will take a scientific look at spirituality. His first task might be convincing atheists to come along for the ride despite their shortcomings about the “S” word. He writes this in defense: We must reclaim good words and put them to good use — and this is what I intend to do with “spiritual.” I have no quarrel with Hitch’s general use of it to mean something like “beauty or significance that provokes awe,” but I… Read more
The Supreme Court’s decision this morning declaring the Affordable Care Act constitutional, was the right one. One of the bright spots of the decision is that women will now be able to have access to birth control without needing a co-pay. It’s bad for Christian groups who want to take away that access from women, like Liberty Counsel, a group that doesn’t understand that the ACA doesn’t fund abortions…: ObamaCare is the largest funding of abortion in history. It will… Read more
The Republican Party of Texas recently adopted their 2012 platform (PDF)… it’s full of all sorts of horrible ideas (faith-based drug rehab, repealing the minimum wage, no gay people in the military), but one portion of it really sticks out if you care about educating children: “We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification… Read more
Today marks the launch of a new national organization called Secular Women, “dedicated exclusively to advancing the interests of atheist, humanist and other non-religious women.” Through strategic partnerships, Secular Woman will also advocate for equal pay, reproductive choice, and marriage equality, addressing political trends the group sees as ideologically-motivated threats to its members’ freedom of conscience. “The ‘War on Women’ dovetailing with the rise of secular activism showed us the time had come for secular women to form our own… Read more