I'm neither a Christian nor a theist but I think by "Christian skeptic" people mean that they take the essentials of Christianity to be true (i.e. there is a God, Jesus was his son) but sensibly don't have to swallow things like Adam and Eve as literal truth.
To amplify your statement a bit by narrowing the scope of "supernatural" a bit...
It is the very definition of "divine intervention" that the event cannot be performed "at will" of the experiencer/beneficiary.
There is a difference between what people call psychic or supernatural abilities and divine intervention by (a)god.
Psychics quite happily put on paid-for shows, seances or whatever and produce their alleged powers more or less at will.
They're not generally parting the Red Sea which is the sort of thing I understand by divine intervention, and which I agree would be impossible to reproduce at will by a specific person, since it is not an act by a human being at all.
NB I don't believe in gods or divine intervention, but even if I did I wouldn't be able to prove it scientifically, as all the religious arguments on slashdot show.
It would be scientifically incorrect of me to say that jumping from the 10th floor of a building will definitely result in death. That doesn't mean I don't have a pretty good grasp on how dangerous it would be to try. This is how scientists talk.
But you could give a pretty good scientific prediction of the dangers of jumping from the 10th floor of a building based on evidence obtained to date, e.g. that 99.000% of people died, 0.999% were seriously injured and 0.001% walked away unscathed (or whatever)
Henry James, a major philosopher and Harvard professor at the turn of the 20th century, was talking about radical empiricism were unexplained phenomena should be studied with the scientific method. It seems that you are taking a leap of faith that this is not necessary. Am I right?
No you're wrong, you're thinking of William James. Henry was the novelist brother.
The first character that came to MY mind in this question is Doctor Who. A good chunk of storylines start off with the local populace being terrorized by ghosts/vampires/curses/etc. and the Doctor always shrugs off these ridiculous superstitions in order to find out what's really going on.
I think you're confusing Doctor Who with Scooby Doo.
He'd have gotten away with it if it weren't for you pesky nerds.
Most practitioners of CMA (Chinese Martial Arts) and non-Western medicine , with few exceptions, believe in the idea of an energy that suffuses all matter, and can be stored and increased in living things.
Grasshopper, wise man say that bullshit always sound better if done in Asian accent by man with long white beard.
Even if that is technically true where you live, are you seriously suggesting that someone who (say) forces fellatio on a woman (or man) is not committing an act of extreme sexual violence? But that because there is no penis in a vagina it isn't rape, and so it's not that bad? Really?
Are you honestly claiming that taking off your clothes in front of a web cam is indistinguishable from someone forcing you to have sex with them?
Just because it's distinguishable doesn't mean that it's totally different.
A rape on a ten year old where the rapist uses a knife is distinguishable from a rape by a drunk husband on his wife. The former is worse, but both are bad.
I believe in the UK, it's 7 years for theft, so you could get 105 years for stealing 15 candy bars.
You believe wrong, mate. We don't do consecutive sentencing, and you wouldn't get 7 years for stealing chocolate bars unless you did it by hijacking chocolate lorries (lorries carrying chocolate, not Eddie Stobart replicas made from chocolate).
I don't think anybody (except maybe the victims families) has suggested he should be executed.
I don't consider life in prison to be significantly different from execution. I would prefer execution, and I don't think I am the only one. Life in a cage is not a life at all.
No one (apart from journalists and headline-seeking prosecutors) is seriously suggesting he should get life in prison for this either.
If we come back to this story in 6 months or a year's time, I really doubt we'll be talking about this guy having just started a 105 year prison sentence. More likely, he'll be out on parole.
However this person only seemed to steal pixels, so one could argue about how much harm was actually done vs being robbed at gunpoint, or some other real world crime.
Well if you want to be stupid about it, he didn't even "steal" pixels, he just copied them. That doesn't mean he did nothing wrong.
A collection of pixels is not just a string of 1s and 0s, in the case of a naked photo it means something personal to the owner.
First rule about the internet: it's all open; the only question is as to how open.
If that were true, it would make the internet unusable. Fortunately, it's bollocks. Do you really think that there would be any e-commerce if the internet was essentially open? Would you give your credit card details to Amazon or whoever if there was an expectation that they would be available to the whole world?
Yes, but you and your fellow art students CHOSE to display yourselves naked. Whether you think nudity is a good/bad/neutral thing, there is still a world of difference between choosing to do something, and being blackmailed into doing it.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think you're taking this seriously. See me after class.
Sorry for the down tone, but I have plenty of experience in failing to convince people of the falsehood in astrology
You Capricorns are all the same!
I'm neither a Christian nor a theist but I think by "Christian skeptic" people mean that they take the essentials of Christianity to be true (i.e. there is a God, Jesus was his son) but sensibly don't have to swallow things like Adam and Eve as literal truth.
Scientists usually have a degree behind their authority so that they have credibility and are recognized as authoritative experts in their domain.
What degree(s) (Bachelor, Masters, Doctoral) do you have? If none, why not?
Taking a wild guess, there aren't many degree course in "debunking fraudsters and con men" so I don't see your point.
To amplify your statement a bit by narrowing the scope of "supernatural" a bit...
It is the very definition of "divine intervention" that the event cannot be performed "at will" of the experiencer/beneficiary.
There is a difference between what people call psychic or supernatural abilities and divine intervention by (a)god.
Psychics quite happily put on paid-for shows, seances or whatever and produce their alleged powers more or less at will.
They're not generally parting the Red Sea which is the sort of thing I understand by divine intervention, and which I agree would be impossible to reproduce at will by a specific person, since it is not an act by a human being at all.
NB I don't believe in gods or divine intervention, but even if I did I wouldn't be able to prove it scientifically, as all the religious arguments on slashdot show.
Or do you mean it in the sense that we know what gravity is, but haven't found the graviton yet?
It is still better to try and have a rational discussion about something rather than dismissing people as idiots.
Human beings, may make mistakes, but will always be rational creatures, because they are capable of rational thought
That is simply begging the question.
the fact that they chose to act irrationally is a rational choice
And that is simply nonsense. The whole point about irrational behaviour is that you are not using your rational mind, and are not thinking straight.
human beings are by their very nature rational creatures
I'm not sure whether to admire your bright-eyed optimism, or despair at your ignorance of reality.
It would be scientifically incorrect of me to say that jumping from the 10th floor of a building will definitely result in death. That doesn't mean I don't have a pretty good grasp on how dangerous it would be to try. This is how scientists talk.
But you could give a pretty good scientific prediction of the dangers of jumping from the 10th floor of a building based on evidence obtained to date, e.g. that 99.000% of people died, 0.999% were seriously injured and 0.001% walked away unscathed (or whatever)
Henry James, a major philosopher and Harvard professor at the turn of the 20th century, was talking about radical empiricism were unexplained phenomena should be studied with the scientific method. It seems that you are taking a leap of faith that this is not necessary. Am I right?
No you're wrong, you're thinking of William James. Henry was the novelist brother.
The first character that came to MY mind in this question is Doctor Who. A good chunk of storylines start off with the local populace being terrorized by ghosts/vampires/curses/etc. and the Doctor always shrugs off these ridiculous superstitions in order to find out what's really going on.
I think you're confusing Doctor Who with Scooby Doo.
He'd have gotten away with it if it weren't for you pesky nerds.
University of Bologna, who did he expect to fall for that? :-P
Yeah, like anyone would believe there's a country called Turkey?!
Why are carrots oranger than oranges?
Because they were selectively bred to be orange-coloured by the patriotic Dutch.
This is true, at least according to Stephen Fry on QI.
Most practitioners of CMA (Chinese Martial Arts) and non-Western medicine , with few exceptions, believe in the idea of an energy that suffuses all matter, and can be stored and increased in living things.
Grasshopper, wise man say that bullshit always sound better if done in Asian accent by man with long white beard.
If there's no intercourse, it's not rape.
Even if that is technically true where you live, are you seriously suggesting that someone who (say) forces fellatio on a woman (or man) is not committing an act of extreme sexual violence? But that because there is no penis in a vagina it isn't rape, and so it's not that bad? Really?
Are you honestly claiming that taking off your clothes in front of a web cam is indistinguishable from someone forcing you to have sex with them?
Just because it's distinguishable doesn't mean that it's totally different.
A rape on a ten year old where the rapist uses a knife is distinguishable from a rape by a drunk husband on his wife. The former is worse, but both are bad.
I believe in the UK, it's 7 years for theft, so you could get 105 years for stealing 15 candy bars.
You believe wrong, mate. We don't do consecutive sentencing, and you wouldn't get 7 years for stealing chocolate bars unless you did it by hijacking chocolate lorries (lorries carrying chocolate, not Eddie Stobart replicas made from chocolate).
I don't think anybody (except maybe the victims families) has suggested he should be executed.
I don't consider life in prison to be significantly different from execution. I would prefer execution, and I don't think I am the only one. Life in a cage is not a life at all.
No one (apart from journalists and headline-seeking prosecutors) is seriously suggesting he should get life in prison for this either.
If we come back to this story in 6 months or a year's time, I really doubt we'll be talking about this guy having just started a 105 year prison sentence. More likely, he'll be out on parole.
However this person only seemed to steal pixels, so one could argue about how much harm was actually done vs being robbed at gunpoint, or some other real world crime.
Well if you want to be stupid about it, he didn't even "steal" pixels, he just copied them. That doesn't mean he did nothing wrong.
A collection of pixels is not just a string of 1s and 0s, in the case of a naked photo it means something personal to the owner.
I unfortunately am jaded and now assume that most females I talk to online that are into girls are just men.
What you have to do is to get them to send you a fully naked picture as proof they're a girl. What could possibly go wrong?
105 years jail for nudie pics.
If he did this in New Zealand and raped the women as well he'd be out of jail in 5 years.
He'd still have had to spend 5 years in New Zealand though.
First rule about the internet: it's all open; the only question is as to how open.
If that were true, it would make the internet unusable. Fortunately, it's bollocks. Do you really think that there would be any e-commerce if the internet was essentially open? Would you give your credit card details to Amazon or whoever if there was an expectation that they would be available to the whole world?
Same with personal pictures.
Second, your suggestion that possessing nude photos of one's self voids one's expectation of privacy is sexist and objectionable.
How is it sexist? He could have just as easily been blackmailing men here...
We live in a sexist society, and there are more repurcussions to having nude images of yourself floating around if you're a woman.
Yes, but you and your fellow art students CHOSE to display yourselves naked. Whether you think nudity is a good/bad/neutral thing, there is still a world of difference between choosing to do something, and being blackmailed into doing it.