Hemant Mehta
| Hemant Mehta | |
|---|---|
Mehta in 2014
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| Born |
February 25, 1983 Chicago, Illinois, U.S. |
| Pen name | The Friendly Atheist |
| Citizenship | United States |
| Education | M.S. in Math Education, Biology |
| Alma mater | University of Illinois at Chicago, DePaul University |
| Notable works | I Sold My Soul on eBay, Friendly Atheist blog |
| Website | |
| www |
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Hemant Mehta (born 1983) is an author, blogger, and atheist activist who gained fame for "selling his soul" on eBay. Mehta is a regular speaker at atheist events and has sat on the boards of charitable organizations such as the Secular Student Alliance and the Foundation Beyond Belief. He also runs a blog on Patheos, Friendly Atheist, in which he and his associates publish articles several times a day.
Hemant Mehta was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1983. He graduated from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2004 with a double degree in math and biology and began teaching in 2007. He acquired a master's degree in math education from DePaul University in 2010 and a national board certification in teaching in 2012. He taught high school math in Naperville, Illinois until 2014 when he announced on Facebook and his blog that he had submitted his resignation to the school, citing that "As much as I love being in the classroom, the opportunities online are just a lot greater right now, and I don’t want to have any regrets down the road about not taking this chance while I have it." After his resignation, he stayed on as the head coach of the school's speech team.
Mehta was raised in the Jain faith, which purportedly led to his current vegetarian diet. He became an atheist as a teenager. Seeking to learn more about what motivated many Americans to be religious, he decided to attend and take notes at a number of churches across the United States. He based his choice of churches to attend on the results of an eBay auction in which he offered his bidders, ”I am an atheist. You can bid on where I go to church or a temple or a mosque, etc." Mehta's experiences at the churches became the basis for his book, I Sold My Soul on eBay.
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.
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