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.
Earlier tonight, American Atheists’ Dave Silverman appeared on The O’Reilly Factor (with guest host Laura Ingraham) to discuss how religion has influenced Obama’s policies as well as the latest Gallup poll showing how only about half of Americans would vote for a qualified atheist for President. Mediaite has the clip: Silverman called the trend “a progression towards tolerance,” or “the de-bigoting of America.” It doesn’t mean we’re going to become an anti-religious nation, he said. “But you would prefer that,”… Read more
Katherine Stewart, author of the frightening and important book The Good News Club, recently did a couple of interviews with folks from the Richard Dawkins Foundation. The first, with Elisabeth Cornwell, talks about what Stewart discovered about the group’s parent organization, the Child Evangelism Fellowship: The second, a shorter video with Sean Faircloth, explores more of the legal issues with letting Christian groups into public schools: If any of the parts stand out to you, please leave a timestamp and… Read more
Finally, some welcome news from the Supreme Court: The Mount Soledad cross in San Diego — a huge cross on public land — is still unconstitutional. The controversy has been going on since 1989 and it’s finally over now that the Court declined to hear a challenge to its unconstitutionality: It’s been a long wait for justice. Steve [Trunk] won his legal challenge before the appeals court in January 2011. The lawsuit actually began in 1989, when Philip Paulson, a… Read more
Last week, I mentioned that the results of the 2011 Australian census had come out and the percentage of people marking “No religion” had shot up to 22.3% of the population, making them the second largest demographic group. Sounded pretty awesome. But there may be good reason to doubt those numbers. In fact, non-religious Australians may be the largest demographic. The bloggers at Humans in Design have a great explanation as to why that could be the case. Here’s the… Read more
So I’m sitting in the airport yesterday, heading back from Oklahoma, and CNN is on the TV. I’ll admit I wasn’t expecting to see Leah Libresco getting interviewed, but that’s what I saw when I sat down at my gate: I’m really curious why so many articles about her conversion describe her as “one of the most prominent atheist bloggers on the Internet” (as the CNN host said). I think they’re putting it in there because they don’t have a… Read more