Hemant Mehta's Blog, page 1761

A Controversial Ten Commandments Monument in Fargo (ND) Could Come Down Due to City Council’s Folly

Back in August, I posted about a Ten Commandments monument in the city of Fargo, North Dakota.

(Image via Secular News Daily)

It was donated by the Fraternal Order of Eagles in 1958 and was the only religious monument of its kind on city property. Long story short, it remained there even after two separate legal challenges.

The most recent one involved the Red River Freethinkers offering to pay for their own secular monument to be erected nearby the Ten Commandments one. But rather than allow th...

Get Your Vilification Here! Five Memes Posted By the Freedom From Atheism Foundation

Out of curiosity — and because it’s good to know what the other side is up to — I occasionally visit the Facebook page of the Freedom From Atheism Foundation. The groupis getting close to its 500,000th “like.”

Below is asampling of what all those fans see. Which memeis your favorite?

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P.S.: I caught the FFAF in anegregiouslie last year, afterthe adminsdeliberately falsified another publication’s headline.

Shouldyou needmore evidenceof the organization’s methods,let mere...

Schocker: Rep. Aaron Schock Resigns In Expenses Scandal

Aaron Schock, a conservative Baptist,went down in ignominytoday, after a journalist caught the Illinois congressman and GOP Boy Wonder doctoring his expense report.

Illinois Rep. Aaron Schock resigned Tuesday, less than 12 hours after Politicoraised questions about tens of thousands of dollars in mileage reimbursements he received for his personal vehicle.

Schock billed the federal government and his campaign for logging roughly 170,000 miles on his personal car between January 2010 and July 20...

Snake-Handling Pastor Andrew Hamblin Is Arrested for Terrorizing His Family With a Gun

A year and a half ago, Tennesseepreacher DavidAndrew Hamblin,who handles venomoussnakes as part of his faith, got in trouble with the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency. TWRA agents raided his Tabernacle Church of Godand took thedozens of illegal snakes they found, including rattlesnakes and copperheads, to the Knoxville Zoo.Hamblin wascited forpossession of“wildlife inherently dangerous to humans,” but a grand jury, deferring to his “religious rights,” declined to indict him.

Now Hamblin, 23...

It’s Worth Taking a Full Minute to Learn How to Add 9 and 6: A Response to the “Common Core” Critics

Quick: What’s 99 + 47?

No calculators.

It’s 146. Of course it’s 146. You know how I know that?

Because I rounded the 99 to 100… and then subtracted one from 47 to make up the difference.

I sure as hell won’t do this:

That would be a waste of time when rearranging the numbers in your head is a lot faster. That’s what’s the math teacher in the video below is trying to explain to a news reporter using the numbers 9 and 6:

9 and 6 aren’t the best numbers to use to show why this method is so powerful, I...

Ted Cruz Thinks NASA Spending on Earth Sciences Should Decrease; NASA Administrator Tells Him How Wrong He Is

On Thursday, Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), noted science denier and chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Space, Science and Competitiveness, voiced his concerns with NASA spending allocation during a committee meeting. Of particular concern to the senator was an increase in Earth sciences spending. Presenting a chart that showed an increase from the 2009 budget to the 2016 budget of 41% in Earth science spending, coupled with a decrease over the same period in space exploration of 7.6%, Cruz (be...

I’m a Presbyterian Minister Who Doesn’t Believe in God

This is a guest post by John Shuck, a Presbyterian minister.

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“How can you call yourself a Christian, let alone a minister?!”

I get asked that question frequently and the questioner is hostile more often than not. Still, I like to answer it if I believe the questioner is sincere.

Though I self-identify as a Christian and I am an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), I raised eyebrows a few years ago when I posted an article on my website about how my personal beliefs don’t align...

Arabic Billboard Goes Up in Memphis to Promote Atheist Conference

American Atheists has its annual convention this Easter weekend in Memphis, Tennessee. They’ve already purchased a couple of billboards to advertise the gathering, leading to controversy after the initial billboards were rejected for including the words “Easter” and “church.”

But their latest billboard, aimed at ex-Muslims (who can read Arabic), should receive a whole different kind of reaction:

The billboard features a young girl wearing “bunny ears” with accompanying text reading, “An atheist...

Rick Santorum Wants the Bible Back in Public Schools (Not That Anyone Removed It in the First Place)

Over the weekend, ever-hopeful presidential candidate Rick Santorum told a conservative audience at Liberty Counsel’s The Awakening conference that the Supreme Court could be ignored; if they wanted Bibles in public schools, dammit, they could have them!

We are on a crossroads in American history, a crossroads that looks like we are heading down in a direction that, let’s be honest, no civilization has ever been able to recover from…

The left cannot be successful in a country of God-given right...

Friendly Atheist Podcast Episode 46: Nancy French, Best-selling Author and Ghostwriter for Bristol & Sarah Palin

Our latest podcast guest is Nancy French, a four-time New York Times best-selling author who has written books with Sarah Palin, Bristol Palin, The Bachelor star Sean Lowe, and Olympic gold medalist Shawn Johnson.

We spoke with Nancy about whether liberals misunderstand Sarah Palin, why she came to support Mitt Romney (who doesn’t share her faith), and how all of her collaborations have the same starting point.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on the podcast. If you have any suggestions for peop...