Capital gains tax will ruin 'murka!

Indeed, you need one to get the other.

Any amount of evasion on any issue is possible, for sure. You can, however, disprove any specific idea about how the connection is made, and therefore any definition of soul that follows that pattern.

Also, I'm not sure how calling a soul a life essence helps. What the heck does that mean?

That doesn't address at all what a soul is, it just moves it do a different location. Also, it's easily dis-proven by looking for the process that creates and maintains the connection.

It's hugely educational. For instance, I just learned there are people who don't know how educational it is. Thanks, Internet!

"Of course you can argue that there is no such thing as a soul, but proving that could be rather complicated."

Only because people aren't being clear on what a soul is. Try to come up with a definition of "soul" that

a) can't be easily disproven

and

b) is more than just a collection of verbs.

Or, you know, he could have made child birth easy.

Your post is ironic since it's a pure straw-man attack. It's also just stupid. Can you find a school board anywhere that's pushing for astrology,etc. in the classroom?

It will, it's just been lucky so far. Don't live on Titan.

America's tech leaders want to reduce wages.

You don't get it. Mass murderers always have a pretext. Hitler had some justification or other, but we still hanged his generals for invading Poland. Starting an offensive war is a crime against the peace, even if you can find a piece of paper that says you were already at war.

"No one has ever argued that Saddam was co-operating with the inspectors."

The inspectors themselves argued this. You have been lied to. You should look into it and find out who lied to you and why. A lot of people died because of this.

Good story, but it assumes a competent CIA.

That's revisionist bullshit. You don't need a treaty between two nations to make the act of war illegal. US forces that were shot at were violating Iraqi air space and were firing on Iraqi forces. That's an act of war, alright, but not on the part of the Iraqis.

Not only was the invasion illegal under international law, but under U.S. law as well, since the congressional authorization was conditional, and the conditions were never met.

You must be an old one indeed to have learned to dissemble so smoothly.

> You've disingenuously defined "people of the United State of America" as being "everyone who agrees with me."

Really? Where? I'm part of that people and I've got a modicum of that power, and what I'm telling you is how I use my tiny little piece of it.

Either you have power or you don't. If you don't then you have to struggle to get it if you want it. If you do have power, then you must decide how to use it. I think those with power have the moral responsibility to use the power for the betterment of the people over whom they have power. You are right in that correctly judging what's best is really an impossible task, but that doesn't alleviate the powerful from the responsibility of making those judgements anyway.

"We" is the people of the United State of America. What makes us special is that we've granted to ourselves the power to govern the country. There is no question that we ought to govern the country, the only question is how. You'd give unrestricted rights to businesses to do what they want. Id restrict businesses from acting in ways detrimental to their customers or to the economy as a whole. This means forcing competitors to compete and not collude, and forcing businesses to avoid conflicts of interest.

Prison companies shouldn't be able to lobby for tougher criminal laws.

Giant agribusinesses shouldn't get together to set grain prices.

Big finance shouldn't be able to recommend buying a security while they short the security.

A company that controls Aluminum transport shouldn't be able to place financial bets that the price of Aluminum will go up.

These are all happening right now, and if we let this continue and grow we'll turn into a corrupt third world hell hole.