Err, you do know what this thread is about right? The FCC regulations that allow exactly this?

Bullshit. The expectation of available anonymity is one of the things that makes the internet work. The only way to ruin your life on the internet is not availing yourself of this.

One day they may welcome you to post under your real name, AC.

Well, if new players can lay fiber now, we might start to see one.

In the definition I proffered in the GP, all of the above scenario's present no difficulty. The brain is, itself, a biological machine anyhow.

Sorry, I had to correct your math. :P

Put another way: aren't humans just robots made of organic material. Are our brains not merely (incredibly elaborate and intricate) FSM's? My then should a self-thinking robot not have as much of a soul as we do?

The Greek word for soul in the N.T. is psyche, I believe. A soul assumes the ability to think, and in mainstream Christian theology is a function of our corporeal existance (for instance, "souls" don't go to heaven until judgement day, when the dead rise from their graves, body and all). It can be argued that, if a soul exists at all, then it must exist for all self-aware entities with physical manifestations.

Depends. If the robot is a Calvanist, he'd say that humans were predestined to design him. Furthermore, by transitivity, the robot is created in the image of God, since man created robots in his own image.

When Slashdot users post from Lynx...

If you have air conditioning and have been malaria-free for any extended stint of your life, you know exactly what it's like.

I can access medicine fine. What's in it for me? Alternatively, how will you make me?

Does this mean my barekeeping idea is still free and clear?

Considering this is the first time I've ever heard of the Iowa Freedom Summit, and having been linked to it, still do not know what it is, I am not going to accept this as evidence of some mainstream republican demand for Palin as a presidential candidate. She's got a tiny cult of personality, but no draw outside of it.

Dude, I just gave you a concrete example of how it was theater, and you're giving me hand-waving and name-calling. Does that mean we're done here?