Hemant Mehta's Blog, page 1971

Stop Living for the Afterlife

The video below, part of The Atheist Voice series, discusses the importance of making the most of this life instead of waiting for the afterlife:

We’d love to hear your thoughts on the project — more videos will be posted soon — and we’d also appreciate your suggestions as to which questions we ought to tackle next!

And if you like what you’re seeing, please consider supporting this site on Patreon.

Panic! at the Disco Turns Westboro Baptist Church Protest Into an HRC Fundraiser

When the band Panic! At The Disco (below) — you might remember them from their 2006 hit song “I Write Sins Not Tragedies” — visited Kansas City, Missouri for a show on Sunday night, they had special guests waiting for them: Westboro Baptist Church members, complete with their “God Hates Fags” signs. (The band’s lead singer Brendon Urie said last year that he had experimented with homosexuality, though he’s married to a woman.)

The WBC even recorded a homophobic cover of the band’s hit song, called “You Love Sin What A Tragedy” in anticipation of the concert.

Rather than ignore them, the band responded in a wonderful way. They turned the protest into a mini-fundraiser for the Human Rights Campaign:

That’s how you make lemonade out of lemons.

WBC, always declaring victory regardless of the situation, said they would just protest 20 times for every dollar raised. So that’s 20,000 more protests than usual.

Good luck with that. I suspect it’ll be tough to pull off when so many people in the church are either dying or escaping…

(Thanks to Damian for the link)

Breaking Free from the Church

In 2010, Pastor David Hayward (a.k.a. nakedpastor) left the ministry after 30 years. He didn’t become an atheist, but he was tired of so much of what Christianity had become and his personal theology didn’t match that of other church leaders. In the midst of his cartoons, many of which I’ve featured on this site, he also began drawing “Sophia,” a woman who represented his own journey away from the church. I’m thrilled that he’s compiled those drawings, along with his own “meditations” in a book called The Liberation of Sophia:

It’s just a beautiful collection of poetry and imagery, and I’m sure it parallels the journey of so many readers of this site. I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say there’s a happy ending to this book. The hardest part just is taking that first step.

Check out the book.

Friendly Atheist Podcast Episode 6: Sarah Pulliam Bailey

Our latest podcast guest is Sarah Pulliam Bailey, a national correspondent for Religion News Service:

Sarah previously served as online editor of Christianity Today, where she interviewed people like Barack Obama in the midst of his 2008 campaign, Mike Huckabee, Malcolm Gladwell, Condoleezza Rice, and Tim Tebow. She’s also a former contributor to the excellent Get Religion blog on Patheos, a site that critiques stories about religion in the media.

We spoke with Sarah about the state of journalism, what it’s like to run a newspaper at an evangelical Christian college, and why Democrats seem afraid to reach out to non-religious voters.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on the podcast. If you have any suggestions for people we should chat with, please leave them in the comments, too.

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, get the MP3 directly, or just listen to the whole thing below.

And if you like what you’re hearing, please consider supporting this site on Patreon and leaving us a positive rating!

Another Pastafarian Gets His Drivers License with a Colander on His Head

When Chris Vannote went to get his driver’s license earlier this month, he just had one request: He wanted to wear his religious headgear in the picture, following in the footsteps of his fellow Pastafarians.

He receive a few stares during the two hours at the DMV, but I’m happy to say they gave him no trouble! And this is now a real license in California:

rAmen!

Christian Candidate for TN County Commission Slams Muslim Opponent for Not Being Patriotic Enough

Zak Mohyuddin (below) is running for a seat on the Coffee County Commission in Tennessee, but his opponent Mark Kelly is using Mohyuddin’s Muslim faith as a weapon against him, claiming he’s not patriotic like the good Christian Kelly:

In a July 16 letter asking District 15 constituents for their vote, Republican Commissioner Mark Kelly made the following claims about his Democratic political opponent, Zak Mohyuddin:

“My opponent has expressed his beliefs publicly that the United States is not a Christian nation; that the American flag should be removed from public buildings because it is a symbol of tyranny and oppression; that public prayer should be banned because it insults non-Christians; and that the Bible should be removed from public places.”

Wow. How does he know all that?! Is there a secret recording somewhere?

… Kelly was unable to cite any specific instance when Mohyuddin made such statements. He said he had heard it during private conversations with him.

Sure he did.

Mohyuddin denies all of this, of course. In fact, he says public prayers are legal (within the Supreme Court context) and public displays of the Bible are fine. He even led the Pledge of Allegiance at a rally last year. I wish he would be a lot less accommodating — but you see where that gets him already.

Kelly, whose faith apparently gives him license to lie about other people, doesn’t care. He freely admits this is all just a ploy to fire up the conservative base before Friday’s vote:

“I am a Christian and have been and will be. Zak isn’t, and he has a different faith and there are a lot of different faiths,” Kelly said. “I am standing on my values and my record. The point of the letter was to encourage the conservative base to get out and vote. It was simply to show the difference in views between two people, not that one is right or wrong, just a difference.”

In a just world, those admissions would cause voters to throw their support in another direction. This is Tennessee, though, so Kelly’s slander will probably carry him to victory.

(Thanks to Chris for the link)

Creationist Ken Ham: We Should Stop Exploring Space Because the Bible Says Aliens Would Go to Hell

One of the criticisms of Creationism (besides the whole “it’s wrong” thing) is that it stifles curiosity. “God did it” not only doesn’t answer anything, it stops you from seeking out actual answers.

Science, on the other hand, is all about searching and explaining the unknown. The answers we seek may not be discovered anytime soon, but that’s part of the process. That’s why we explore space and search for extraterrestrial life. Who knows what we’ll find?!

Creationist Ken Ham doesn’t understand any of this. He thinks he knows the real reason we go into space:

Of course, secularists are desperate to find life in outer space, as they believe that would provide evidence that life can evolve in different locations and given the supposed right conditions! The search for extraterrestrial life is really driven by man’s rebellion against God in a desperate attempt to supposedly prove evolution!

That’s… so obviously not true. We don’t need to prove evolution anymore. It’s as verified as it needs to be. We’re good. And if we ever were to discover alien life, the one thing we know is that those creatures would be the product of evolution.

Ham says it’s all just a waste of money since the Bible already has the answers. We even know what would happen to aliens after death:

… I do believe there can’t be other intelligent beings in outer space because of the meaning of the gospel. You see, the Bible makes it clear that Adam’s sin affected the whole universe. This means that any aliens would also be affected by Adam’s sin, but because they are not Adam’s descendants, they can’t have salvation. One day, the whole universe will be judged by fire, and there will be a new heavens and earth. God’s Son stepped into history to be Jesus Christ, the “Godman,” to be our relative, and to be the perfect sacrifice for sin — the Savior of mankind.

Jesus Christ, Ken Ham is talking about the eternal damnation of alien life forms. They’re all going to hell, apparently, and why go in search of life on other planets if they’re all doomed to a lake of fire?

We’re lucky people like him weren’t working at NASA 45 years ago.

To whine about the pittance we spend on space exploration because “Christians certainly shouldn’t expect alien life to be cropping up across the universe” has to be a new low even for him.

(Image via Shutterstock)

Rapper Hopsin’s Latest Single, About the Problems with Christianity, Has Gone Viral

A new music video by rapper Hopsin, all about his religious doubts, amassed nearly 2,000,000 views on YouTube over the weekend.

Check out the “Ill Mind of Hopsin 7” (totally NSFW lyrics):

Now I’m dealing with this backlash because Marcus isn’t a Christian

And I’ve been told that my sinful life is an addiction

But I can’t buy it, it’s just too hard to stand beside it

I need an answer and humans can’t provide it

…

I hate the fact that I have to believe

You haven’t been chatting with me like you did Adam and Eve

And I ain’t seen no fucking talking snake unravel from trees

With an apple to eat, that shit never happens to me

I don’t know if you do or don’t exist, it is driving me crazy

Send your condolences, this is me reaching to you so don’t forget

If hell is truly your pit of fire and I get thrown in it

I’mma probably regret the fact that I ever wrote this shit

It’s even more fun to read the lyrics on Rap Genius.

You can download the new single right here.

(Thanks to Matthew and Aaron for the link)

You Won’t Believe the Advice This Christian Minister Gave to Married Women on Twitter

Tony Rapu, a Christian minister from Nigeria, is the kind of guy who gives sermons on Twitter with a series of short messages grouped together with a hashtag. Last week, he spoke about married men with tweets such as this:

That’s nice. That’s pleasant. That’s powerful.

Today, Rapu decided to give advice to #MarriedWomen… but it was a very different kind of advice. It boiled down to: “Obey your husbands because he can do no wrong, you inferior objects, you.”

Have a look at Rapu’s four hour-long Bible-inspired train wreck:

I’m sure women everywhere can’t wait to fix all their problems.

Stephanie Drury‘s response was just pitch-perfect:

What’s scary is that this isn’t the work of some fringe radical. This is the same sort of men-rule-over-their-wives thinking advocated by people like Pastor Mark Driscoll. It’s not at all uncommon in Christian culture.

Not all of Rapu’s retweets came from his critics, after all.

Black Skeptics Los Angeles Announces Winners of ‘First in the Family’ Scholarships

A few months ago, I mentioned that the group Black Skeptics Los Angeles was raising money for its fantastic “First in the Family” scholarship fund:

Last year, Black Skeptics Los Angeles (BSLA), a 501c3 organization, spearheaded its First in the Family Humanist Scholarship initiative, which focuses on providing resources to undocumented, foster care, homeless and LGBTQ youth who will be the first in their families to go to college. Responding directly to the school-to-prison pipeline crisis in communities of color, BSLA is the first atheist organization to specifically address college pipelining for youth of color with an explicitly anti-racist multicultural emphasis.

Their goal was to give away at least four scholarships worth $1,000 each — just as they did last year — and I’m thrilled to tell you they were able to raise the money.

Check out the descriptions of the scholarship recipients and you’ll see some fantastic current and future activists. Huge thanks to BSLA, the Freedom From Religion Foundation, and all the donors who made the scholarships possible!