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 civil unions are legal in Illinois, groups that receive public money cannot discriminate against gay couples. So when a few Catholic adoptions agencies were faced with the prospect of giving children to gay parents, they decided to shut down instead. In their view, only straight couples and single-people-who-are-not-cohabitating are worthy of being adoptive parents. In these Catholics’ eyes, having no parents is better for the children than having gay ones… (Thankfully, the secular, non-discriminatory Youth Service Bureau of… Read more
If you’re seeing this, then we’ve successfully migrated over! We’re still working on importing all the 200,000+ comments from the old site, so many of the comments from the previous week may be missing from their respective posts. The Friendly Atheist Forums will be up and running shortly! The official site URL is now http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/ You can subscribe to the full RSS feed with this link (or keep using whatever you had before if it still works). Take a look… Read more
In the comments on Hemant’s announcement to have this site hosted by Patheos, several readers have expressed apprehension about being “overrun by fundies.” It would be unfortunate if people here instantly reacted with hostility to the first religious visitors who comment after the move. Many of them will be visiting out of simple curiosity rather than seeking to antagonize, and we should not throw a punch the first time they open their mouths. We should model the behavior that we… Read more
I’ve been blogging at this website for a little over five years now. And it’s time to move on… kind of. This is a big part of my life and it takes up a lot of my time (outside of teaching and coaching). I have no desire to stop blogging, though. The opportunities it has provided me with are wonderful and I learn so much from the commenters here and throughout the blogosphere. A couple months ago, I started having… Read more
It’s not uncommon for religious people to post Jesus-y messages on their Facebook wall, but last night, KTBS 3, a news station in Shreveport, Louisiana, posted this regarding the Casey Anthony verdict: What?! Why is an ABC affiliate endorsing Jesus? Why is a news station still talking about the verdict? Why did they feel the need to capitalize all the letters in GOD…? It starts with a commentary by reporter Rick Rowe that aired Sunday night. You can watch it… Read more
