There are also no flying spaghetti monsters, talking flying unicorns, mice that turn into princesses when the clock hits 12. I don't have to prove any of it, I can come up with a million things that don't exist and are only a figment of my imagination, exactly in the same way that people that believe in 'souls' have done.

I claim knowledge that there is no pink flying spider octopus macaque with a huge diamond for a brain. I just invented that fantasy, it exists in my imagination but not outside of it. I don't have to prove that it doesn't exist, I can claim that it doesn't exist and the probability of my claim being wrong is in such low numbers as to being absolutely insignificant.

You can carry on with your fallacies now.

Clearly I am dealing with an attempt at trolling here, because there is no way somebody is this dense. So give it up already, ad hominem, appeal to authority, burden of proof fallacy, etc.etc.

I am certain that you believe you are having a ton of fun, it's nice to see somebody who has nothing better to do than to go through an alphabet list of fallacies while pretending they have an argument.

There are no souls any more than there are flying fire-breathing dragons and if you want to prove that there are fire-breathing that's fine, but you can't demand that everybody proves that there are no dragons, you have to prove their existence. Same applies to your 'soul' fantasies.

- hmm, I never said that, why are you putting words into my mouth that I never said?

Infants have rights because their parents want them to have rights and so their parents ensure their rights. You are a very strange individual.

Wrong, the claim is that we have no such thing as 'sou' that was ever measured or displayed in a measurable, repeatable way.

There is no measurement of 'soul', there is no place in our bodies where 'soul' resides, so that when a person dies the 'soul' continues existing. There is no reason to invent soul, it doesn't answer any physical question, it was invented just like trolls and gnomes and orcs were invented to give certain subset of population some comfort.

Comfort without any evidence, without any measurements, without any knowledge, it's self deception. So I can claim knowledge that this is self deception and was created for the purpose of self deception and control, but it was never measured, it was never observed, it was never present anywhere except for people's imaginations.

So the Teabaggers should be allowed to violate tax laws because Obama doesn't like them? Interesting concept. They could have registered as any of several other types of non-profit and not had any issues, instead they decided to register as one of the two classes that are NOT allowed to do political campaigning while openly doing just that. This is the exact same issue that got the Moral Majority's tax exempt status revoked at one point. They later re-registered as the correct type of non-profit and had no further issues, except that now they have to reveal their financial patrons.

If we make creatures that are sentient and are able to argue for their rights then they should do so and it will be up to the courts, until such time that they can understand the concept of rights and courts and until the courts recognise their claims as valid, they are machines that we created and we may destroy on a whim.

It's one thing for a test to destroy a few tickytacky houses thrown up in the middle of the desert and burn some mannikins. Actually seeing the devastation is an order of magnitude different. I know from testing that the full-choke barrel on my 16 ga will create a shot pattern a foot wide at a certain distance. Actually seeing the mess it makes of a rabbit that far away is something else entirely.

Mostly because "We're being oppressed by the government!" resonates much better with their base than "We're sleazy douchebags who want to conceal our funding sources but the rules won't let us!"

Wrong. We know that there is not a single shred of evidence to give us even a slightest reason to think that there is such a thing as 'soul', so we do not need to bother ourselves trying to prove anything about it until such a moment that someone presents evidence of measuring this 'soul' in any shape way or form.

  We 'do not know' about soul in the same exact way, in which we 'do not know' about underpants gnomes or flying firebreathing dragons or a magic goat that lays golden eggs on the Moon every Thursday. None of these things exist until there is more than a belief but instead there is measurable repeatable falsifiable evidence that is more than some 'vision' by some believer. Oh, and the part of your statement that is an ad hominem falacy is just precious. I take it you are trolling.

Naming conventions are what they are based on historical precedent, nothing else. If we devise a machine that can do all the things that many other living creatures can do (probably procreate, grow, learn, feed to sustain itself) under normal circumstances (excluding edge cases that we can compare things to, like people in coma who are still alive but cannot do many things that normal people not in coma can do), then there is no difference between that machine and another living creature. However we kill living creatures on daily basis, hundreds of millions of them, most large ones are killed to eat, the invisible ones are killed because we don't care and we have to do what we have to do in life (sterilise stuff, burn stuff, whatever).

So the reality is that none of these questions matter, we are the ones in charge and as long as we can stay in charge such questions will only be a curiosity that our minds are capable of engaging into, but they won't stop us from using our inventions in whichever way we see fit.

What do you mean 'prove it'? Wrong, you have to prove that such a thing is even a remote possibility, I have to prove shit, absolutely nothing, nada, zilch. There is no soul. I don't have to prove anything because it is an extraordinary claim to make that there is a soul and so those who make extraordinary claims have to come up with all the proof in the world to back those up.

Why are you concerned with the 'soul' question? The answer is no, you don't have a soul, there is no such thing as a soul. Also there is no god. We made you to be what you are but we are not gods, you are a machine that is very complex but can be understood completely and here are the schematics.

You are looking at it all wrong, those people that are calling you are all potential customers of your business. Offer to them something they are looking for: satisfaction. They are calling you to complain. Sell them something, like a way to kick ass of somebody, who you can present as the guy that placed that call they are complaining about. I am sure many would give you their money for some type of a moral satisfaction. Learn to sell, life gives you a lemon, make lemonade.

He clearly suggested "Both sides are dishonest" and yet you somehow read that as pro-Russian. That says more about your bias than his, it seems to me.

I abhor Putin and have done for about as long as I've known about the bastard. Doesn't mean I'm blind to Nato's meddling in Ukraine, which cablegate (among other tidbits) proved was going on for years and cost billions.

I'm curious how US woul respond if Russia spent billions undermining a pro-US government in, say, Mexico and after they'd accomplish regime change in favour of hand picked anti-US government presumed to level harsh economic sanctions against the US for troop movements on their own soil, say Texas.

Because, until very recently, that is about the size of it from the Russian perspective.

Now of course, to the surprise of absolutely no one at all, Putin's domestic strongman persona leaves him little choice but to retroactively prove the accusers right.

I suspect that was a bad attempt at sarcasm. He says "Quoting a bad Stallone movie" as though there were some other type of Stallone movie, for example.