Hemant Mehta's Blog, page 1765

Franklin Graham Claims That President Obama’s Mother, a Secular Humanist, “Must Have Been a Muslim”

President Obama‘s father was an atheist. Obama once said in a speech that his father “was born Muslim but as an adult became an atheist.”

His mother was Agnostic (though Obama once referred to her as a “witness for Secular Humanism“).

But if you listen to Franklin Graham, the conservative who propels himself using father Billy Graham‘s name, Obama doesn’t really understand the religious beliefs of his own parents.

Yesterday, as a guest on the Family Research Council’s “Washington Watch,” Graham...

I Guess God’s Going to Decide the Winner of the Pacquiao/Mayweather Match

Even if you’re not a sports fan, you may have heard that Manny Pacquiao (below) will soon fight Floyd Mayweather, Jr. in what will surely be the most hyped (and lucrative) boxing match of all time.

But Pacquiao’s trainer Freddie Roach is a little concerned about his pupil’s religiosity:

For starters, Roach is a little concerned that his pupil’s conversion to evangelical Christianity has gotten in the way of his training and softened his killer instinct in the ring.

…

To that end, Roach has been s...

Jewish Community Center Tells Secular Employees To Eat Non-Kosher Food Outside

Redditor Sensualsanta works at a Jewish community center. This week, the center’s directordelivered the followingsurprise:

I was eating lunch inside the building when the director of the Chabad approached me and said I was not allowed to eat my food inside the building because it was non-kosher. I was pretty shocked at first and I asked, “where am I supposed to go?”My lunch break is 30 minutes and I am too far from any restaurants. Furthermore, there is no staff lounge or break room, so I was...

New Survey Suggests Americans with No Religious Affiliation May Soon Outnumber Any Single Religious Group

The General Social Survey is one of the most comprehensive data sets out there when it comes to the religious beliefs of Americans, and the 2014 results were just released last week.

You’ll be happy to know that the trend away from organized religion is still on the upswing:

When asked their “religious preference”, nearly one-in-four Americans now says “none.” Up until the 1990s, this group of so-called “nones” hovered in the single digits. The 2014 GSS showed that the so-called nones are 23 p...

Pastor Creflo Dollar Wants $65 Million from His Followers So He Can Buy a Plane

Pastor Creflo Dollar (his real name) has a net worth of $27 million. He owns a million-dollar home in Atlanta and a 2.5-million-dollar apartment in Manhattan. He drives a Rolls-Royce and travels via a private jet.

But it’s not enough. His latest get-rich-quick scheme is to ask donors for enough money to purchase a $65 million plane. (For Jesus.)

We are asking members, partners, and supporters of this ministry to assist in the undertaking of an initiative called Project G650. The mission of Proj...

New $50,000 Journalism Prize Will Be Named After Christopher Hitchens

A new journalism prize worth $50,000 will go to:

… an author or journalist whose work reflects a commitment to free expression and inquiry, a range and depth of intellect, and a willingness to pursue the truth without regard to personal or professional consequence.

Fittingly, it will be named after Christopher Hitchens, who never shied away from controversial topics and who didn’t give a damn what you thought about it.

Nominations — welcome through April 13, 2015 — should be sent to hitchenspriz...

Oklahoma Rep’s Amendment: If You Plan To Discriminate Against Gays, You Must Post a Sign Saying So

Lawmakers in why-is-this-still-happening Oklahoma are still ponderinga Religious Freedom Act, which would make it legal forbusinesses to refuse service to certain people, say,LGBT people or people of a different race, if serving them would violate their religious beliefs.

OklahomaDemocratic State Rep. Emily Virgin (below) has a perfect solutionto one-up this gross proposal: Businesses who plan to “exercise their religious freedom” by discriminating against certain groups of people must post ap...

Evangelist Kent Hovind Found Guilty on Contempt of Court Charge

This morning,

… the jury in the trial of Pensacola evangelist Kent Hovind returned their verdict convicting Hovind on one of four counts he was facing, and his co-defendant Paul John Hansen on two of five.

Hovind was found guilty of contempt for filing paperwork disputing the government’s right to sell his property.

The jury deadlocked on the other three charges that Hovind was facing.

Hovind is on the tail end of a nearly decade-long prison sentence for failing to withhold payroll taxes and “str...

Ali Rizvi Exposes Muslims’ Double Standard About “Hate Speech”

What if there wasa book that describedMuslims the way the Qur’an describes disbelievers?Heads would roll, says Ali A. Rizvi. Literally.

Rizvi is talking specifically aboutthis verseinthe IslamicGood Book:

“The worst of beasts are the disbelievers. They’re the ones you make treaties with, but they break those treaties every time because they have no fear of the law.”

If you flipped that, you’d get

“The worst of beasts are the followers of Allah. They’re the ones you make treaties with, but they br...

Simpsons Co-Creator Sam Simon Did Not Spend His Fortune on Atheist Billboards

A few days ago, Sam Simon, one of the creators of The Simpsons, died from colorectal cancer.

Simon had made hundreds of millions of dollars from his involvement with the show and he was a philanthropist in every sense of the word, giving away a large chunk of that money to causes that meant a lot to him. Causes like animal rights.

He was also an atheist and he gave some money to support the 2012 Reason Rally and to American Atheists for some of their billboard campaigns, including this one:

How...