page_title: Hemant Mehta
section_title: Activism
hierarchical_section_title: Hemant Mehta / Activism
caption_attribution_description: English: Jerry Coyne and Richard Dawkins (seated, left to right), with Hemant Mehta (at podium), at "An Appetite for Wonder - An Evening with Richard Dawkins (with special guest Jerry Coyne)." October 3, 2013. Event held at Pick Staiger Concert Hall - Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, USA.
context_page_description: Hemant Mehta is an American author, blogger, and atheist activist. Mehta is a regular speaker at atheist events, and has been a board member of charitable organizations such as the Secular Student Alliance and the Foundation Beyond Belief.
  Mehta runs the Friendly Atheist blog on Patheos, in which he and his associates publish articles several times a day, and also co-hosts a weekly podcast called the Friendly Atheist Podcast.
  On April 1, 2020, Mehta won his first appearance on the television game show Jeopardy!
context_section_description: Hemant Mehta established a secular student group, Students WithOut Religious Dogma (SWORD), at the University of Illinois at Chicago while earning dual degrees there. Later, still in college, he served as board chair for the Secular Student Alliance. He interned at the Center for Inquiry where he became familiar with a lot of the national organizations and leaders in the activist world at that time. Now, he serves on the board of directors for the Foundation Beyond Belief, a non-profit charitable organization. 
  Mehta is a regular speaker at freethought and skeptical events around the U.S. He attempts to build bridges of understanding between believers and non-believers through his blog, The Friendly Atheist. Due in part to his positive message, he is also invited to speak at atheist events such as the one he presented at The Reason Rally or  at the American Atheists Annual Convention in March 2012.
  A vocal advocate of building an atheist community, Mehta's activism includes fundraising for charitable causes. He helped establish and serves on the board of the Foundation Beyond Belief, which has raised more than $2,400,000 since it launched in 2010. He also established a church cleanup fund in response to reports of church vandalism in Bend, Oregon, in 2012. The vandals tagged the church with allusions to the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, and Mehta's readers contributed nearly $3,000 in one day to help clean up the damage.
  Mehta writes for the "On Faith" column in the Washington Post and has been featured in a New York Times debate on prayer.
  When asked about his beliefs his response is clear: "Simply put, I have never seen any evidence of 'God's work' in action. I've seen what people think is God's work, but which actually has perfectly natural explanations. I believe that most people are good, even when nobody's looking. I believe our best path to discovering the truth lies in science, not religion."
  Hemant Mehta continues to challenge religious believers with straight talk in a non-confrontational fashion. In June 2013 he wrote for the "Room for Debate" series in the New York Times, where he argued that "There’s a very real downside to praying. It lulls believers into a false sense of accomplishment." In July 2013 he held an open discussion at the Oak Hills Church in San Antonio, Texas, where he explained his frustration at being confronted time and again with the same arguments for believing in God. He also commented that "Many Christians had negative stereotypes about atheists that prevented fruitful conversation."
  Mehta was a guest on CNN on August 20, 2013 to discuss the rise of atheism among the millennial generation. Also in 2013 he began publishing "The Atheist Voice" series of video discussions on YouTube, which had over 190,000 subscribers in October 2017.
  Mehta is the co-host, with Jessica Bluemke, of a weekly podcast named the Friendly Atheist Podcast, which has produced over 270 episodes as of June 2019.
caption: With Jerry Coyne and Richard Dawkins at "An Appetite for Wonder - An Evening with Richard Dawkins October 3, 2013. Evanston, Illinois, USA
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