Hi, my name is Shine--for the purposes of delicious Internet anonymity--and I want to major in English with a minor in Physics.



Unfortunately, I am not sure if this combination is even available at my university; to be honest, I’m embarrassed to ask my advisor. “Hello,” I will say as my fingers uncontrollably fidget with an indeterminate angst, “may I please change my minor from philosophy to physics?”



Am I really prepared for the potential mix of hilarity and condemnation… Continue

Recently, political commentator S. E. Cupp has been popping up on various media outlets in order to promote her new book, Losing Our Religion: The Liberal Media's Attack on Christianity. (She has been discussed here,… Continue

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Today, the Texas State Board of Education voted on curriculum standards of social studies for the Texan public school system. As I am sure most of you are aware, these standards will affect many other states as publishers will often tailor textbooks specifically to meet Texan requirements. This vote followed several days of debate as final amendments were proposed.



Cynthia Dunbar, one of the strongest voices for the SBOE's conservative voting block, decided that a nice, long… Continue

Today was the "Challenge the SBOE Rally" at the Austin State Capitol. (See Johnny's recent blog post, Action Alert: Stop Religious Extremists, for more information.) I got a chance to meet a few ThinkAtheist members, SilveryLox and… Continue

In 1995, Pope John Paul II wrote the “Evangelium Vitae,” a letter directed at the entirety of the Roman Catholic Church. The primary topic of this encyclical is the sanctity, value, and inviolability of human life. Along with discussions of murder and euthanasia, the Pope includes a lengthy section in which he condemns abortion as a “particularly serious and deplorable” crime against life (Hurley 23); he immediately lists abortion alongside infanticide with no justification for how… Continue

I started a blog last fall, Agnostic Innocence, which lately I have grown rather disenchanted with. To make a long story short, I started the blog specifically with the intent to better understand my own position on different topics; it was really an exercise in my own introspection that I published on the internet in order to force myself to adhere to the writing standards of the public sphere. At the time I began (and named) the blog, I was technically an atheist in that I did not… Continue

Warning: the following is a giant rant about Christians in a community college philosophy class in central Texas. If you are not in the mood to be mired in a massive pile of negativity, you may want to click your browser's back button.



I just got back from Ethics class, where the question of the day was, "Should same-sex marriage be allowed?" I wrote… Continue

The death penalty is a brutal hangover from primitive legal systems and has no place in modern society. The United States stands alone among the world’s democracies in its use of capital punishment. This form of punishment has no place in a nation founded upon reason, justice, and liberty. Reason dictates that the death penalty can only further incite violence in this culture as legal authority condones retributive killing. Justice sees nothing valuable in a punishment… Continue

Before answering this question, it is imperative to truly define murder. To me, “murder” is an intentional, malicious act which serves to terminate the biological functioning of an innocent individual. Of course, this definition then begs the question of what exactly constitutes an individual. Surely plants are not considered individuals, yet a coma patient is. I think that the easiest way to define an “individual person” is both the possession of an advanced central nervous system… Continue