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.
Last week, the Department of Justice announced a new plan to combat domestic terrorism with the help of the Southern Poverty Law Center. Most of us are probably familiar with the SPLC because of their tracking of “hate groups,” so the alliance makes sense here. The SPLC knows quite a bit about which groups have violent tendencies. Read more
There are 17 candidates running for 5 spots on the Cleveland County Board of Education in North Carolina, and they all took part in a forum last night so the public could get to know them a little better. While most of the questions were randomly given to individual candidates, all 17 of them were asked whether they wanted prayer at school board meetings. (Because that’s really what matters.) Just to be clear, praying at school board meetings is illegal. It’s not like a city council where there can be a rotating cast of invocation speakers. So this was a dumb question to begin with. But they asked it. So how did the candidates respond? Every single one of them said yes. Some of them said they wanted to make sure it was legal first, but they all wanted it. Here’s just a sampling of their responses: Read more
On Friday night, Bremerton High School assistant football coach Joe Kennedy prayed on the field despite several warnings that he was violating the law by promoting Christianity while acting as a school representative. If he weren’t Christian, he would’ve no doubt been fired a long time ago. So has anything happened since Friday night? Nope. The District is “negotiating” with his team of Christian lawyers, whatever the hell that means: Read more
Now that Oklahoma has removed the Ten Commandments monument from outside the Capitol building, one Texas pastor is so angry, that he’s planning a protest. It’s gonna be a *big* protest, too. It involves a horse. Because this pastor is a cowboy. (This is the part where you all start shaking in your boots.) Read more