Actual trials for election conspiracy have all failed. All failed. All of them. There is no conspiracy. Orange man lost. He lost. Actual trials in actual courts of law.

Everything else is smoke and mirrors. ... oh and actual attempts to keep holding on to power that he knew he lost.

America is built on the peaceful transfer of power.
If he knew he won, he didn't need to fight like hell for it.
If he knew he lost, he shouldn't fight like hell for it.
So why fight?

That's at least one crime.

But all that smoke is coming from Trumpsters ears because their brains can't handle the reality that Trump is considered one of the 10 most despised and horrific people in world history by most people and seen for the failure, convict, racist, rapist, and con man he is, not the successful business man character he plays on tv.

Smoke and mirrors, lies and angry ignorance, no real evidence of anything but a few republicans cheating and the blatant voter suppression campaign by Trump found whatsoever. That's why cases are thrown out as soon as they're heard....and unsigned and uncorroborated affidavits describing complaints about the food served aren't evidence of fraud. Fake news from sore losers.
Grow up and stop listening to people you know are liars lying to your face. They're pissing in your mouth and you're thanking them for the champagne.

What kind of balance are you speaking of? For the sake of argument, I'll assume that you mean spending somewhat equal time and effort on different sides of an argument.

That kind of balance can be expected from a news outlet. Many of them, especially American ones, overcook is massively by refusing to make judgements on the validity of opposing arguments. If argument A is backed by empirical evidence and argument B is smoke and mirrors, argument B should receive ridicule, not the same kind of respect that A receives.

Now, applying this kind of balance to individuals strikes me as wierd. They are not obliged to give a balanced view: they are obliged, as journalists, to present facts, and offer interpretations. The issues we're talking about here are not disputes between neighbours. We are talking about the war on terror, macroeconomics, propaganda, things of the utmost importance. And the media is doing a woeful job at presenting any dissenting view.

Thing is, you can get the major consensus narrative from countless news outlets out there. Want to here about the supposed benefits of multinational trade agreements? The NYT and the WaPo have dozens upon dozens of articles with praise of TTIP and TPP. If, however, you would like to hear about the consequences of previous trade agreements, or just some hard math on the numbers they like to throw in there, you won't find any. You'll have to go to Dean Baker at the CEPR, to Yves Smith at NakedCapitalism, you'll read Rick Wolff's take on it.

These people do everything in their power to restore the balance that the media drowned in buckets of party-line puff pieces. People recognise RT for propaganda, but somehow think propaganda stops when ownership is private.

Try to find proper articles about the global assassination program (drone warfare) and its effect on sovereign people abroad -- won't find anything in the media, you'll have to go to Jeremy Scahill.

Try to find proper articles about the desolation brought to communities in the developed world by (the current form of) capitalism, the epidemic of loniliness, the breaking apart of the social fabric, the monetarisation of every aspect of life -- silence. What about the slavery-like conditions it creates through indebtedness? The absurd inequality? Nothing.

What about the massive atrocities in Jemen? There was plenty about the atrocities committed by Russia in Syria, but when Saudis use US weapons to destroy an entire country, mum's word.

There is no balance in the media. They are the gatekeepers of knowledge, and anything outside the establishment's agreed upon consensus is ignored, marginalised, ridiculed, or straight up demonized.

CJ Hopkins had a great piece at Counterpunch the other day, titled Why Ridiculous Official Propaganda Still Works. He puts it more succinctly than I ever could. Reality doesn't matter, not for the mainstream media. The narrative matters.

And that's why I listen to dissenting voices like Chris Hedges, Abby Martin or Thom Hartmann, even when they are employed by a state propaganda outlet.

tldr: Actually, games do this all the time, but usually only for water surfaces!

The reason for this is that the way you render a proper reflection is to "flip" the camera to the other side of the reflective surface plane: looking down on a lake, you'd render the water reflection from the point of view of the camera looking up from under the water surface, flipped over. This is called "planar reflection". In order to do this, you render your entire scene again, so it's not cheap. Also, the reflection only works for that one plane: if you had two altitudes of water (or two differently angled mirrors) they'd be on different planes and so you'd have to render a reflection for each one.

You can't render curved surface reflections this way, though. For example it doesn't work on a car (what plane would you flip the camera over?). For that, the trick is called "cubic environment maps". I won't go into the details, but it only really works well for faking reflections on objects since it shows the correct view from a single point. You can create them dynamically for things like racing games, but they require 6 scene renders (one for each face of the cube) for each environment map.

Half Life offered both techniques for water reflections, so one could fire that up and compare them that way.

This demo seemed to use environment maps for the mirrors and I suspect all of the other shiny surfaces.

Note that these techniques are to get detailed reflections: specular lighting (where you don't reflect an image, but instead mathematically simulate simple light bouncing) is easier and cheaper, since it's just math to get a color and strength.

You could do planar reflections for every mirror, but it's a full scene re-render for each one so your frame rate would tank or you'd have to take out other features. Compromises!

Game graphics is all trade-offs and smoke and mirrors: it's our job to fake things and make you think the game is doing sophisticated simulation when actually it's doing as little as it can to get as much as possible.

Smoke and mirrors.

@bobknight33 it seems your viewpoint rests on the fact that minimum wage should be an "entry level wage where one can better oneself [..] to ask for a higher wage."

At least in my country, a lot of the time the vast majority of jobs vacancies are in places that deal with minimum wage - fast food, supermarkets, that kind of thing - because they usually deal with the "basics" that people can't do without. Hence basic, menial and minimum wage for minimum stress at work.

The people who are in better jobs over here have seen a lot of similarly positioned people get sacked so they know they've got to keep hold of their job. Everyone's been cutting back, there's less jobs, and those jobs are tightly held by people with better experience. And then, when better jobs become available, you have lots and lots of low experienced workers applying alongside a select few who used to work - who's more likely to get the job?

Finer points aside, i'd love everyone in the thread to agree that there are a whole bunch of people spending a whole lot of money at walmart - and every other scary-large company. If that money is not cycling around between people then it's stagnating somewhere and doing nobody any good.

Take soccer here in england for example. Soccer players are paid something like £20 000 per week at every top team. A lot of them are actually between £40 000 and £120 000 per week but let's talk approximate. Now look, we should all be able to see that a person couldn't possibly hope to spend that much money. If you want to go to a match, let's call it £40, 60 000 people are giving £40 to go and watch, so that's £2 400 000 and let's say it all goes on wages. Well what's happening is this entire wad of cash is ending up sitting in a bank account somewhere, because this guy can't physically go out and redistribute this cash, spending his money in the normal way and keeping the economy moving and the money spreading.

It's not just footballers and i'm sure we can agree to some extent that this can be seen in a lot of places - a select few are in positions allowing them to amass huge fortunes they can't possibly use.

"Trickle-down" has not worked, it isn't trickling anywhere, they've got the cracks sealed up. Maybe we should be thinking about "trickle up" - if cost us less to watch a soccer match, metaphorically speaking (as in cheaper bills, higher wages, less stagnation at the top), maybe people might feel less stressed, less scared, more generous, more free, the world might be a better place so that services would be better, people would be more dedicated at their job to improve because they stand to earn more, less stress less violence, more money less crime, etc. Is there something to that perhaps?

The problem is it's hard to interject whilst it's all ongoing and say "you're taking this cut, you're taking this cut, all this money is going here, just trust us the world will be a better place." It's not fair to suddenly tell people what they do is only worth half of what it was yesterday. But between the top and the bottom what you have is a rich billionaire smoking a cigar whilst some child in the poorest neighbourhood is sat in 5th-hand-me-downs on a filthy carpet listening to his mother selling her body? That's a guess, i don't know how to best represent poverty, but take any example you like. If the rich person was stood directly next to the baby he'd probably feel outraged and help, but there's a lot of smoke and mirrors that stand between him helping every baby that is every born in the future, because warlmart suddenly can afford to double their lowest wages by halving some of their highest.

To conclude - i don't think minimum wage is as you suggest.

So the devil's antics are based in human years? I don't understand how the greatest of ALL angels gets "willier" over the course of 2000 some years when his existence is outside the restraints of time and space.

Same thing with God and His evolution of ideals. The law and then forgiveness and blah blah blah; slaves, no slaves; anathema, no anathema; burn shit to the ground for sins, don't stone the "prostitute". It doesn't make sense. None. At all.

Unless God ISN'T omnipotent, omnipresent, and/or benevolent. He can't be all of those things and yet so ignorantly rule creation within the context of human civilization pre-information age. Sorry, but if you don't see this pattern, you're living in denial. Either that or the idea of these beings is true and the Bible is the Devil's work.

Oh SNAP, didn't think about that in all of your squabbling, did you? The arguments over what to canonize; burning of Biblical apocrypha; human courts judging anathema over naysayers who were believers in God themselves; King James' toying with the text; and the list goes on and on. Lies! If God be love, Jesus saves and by faith be known, these historical truths makes your "holy" text anathema!

My bet is that the Devil knows the Bible because the Devil orchestrated it. If I believed in that sort of thing, that's what would make the most sense to me. But I suppose reason plays no part in the smoke and mirrors of gods and monsters.

The "conspiracy" portion of our show has been brought to you by the framers of the system. The perpetrators either lauded with appointments or hidden, blameless to a large degree due in large part to the somnambulant and intellectually-challenged who are incapable or otherwise unwilling to see beyond the smoke and mirrors of a lifetime of delusional shit-think.

For me it's simple: I see firsthand the casualties of a pathetic education machine in recent university graduates but more-so the idiots pouring-out high-schools in the U.S. like bilge water. The US produces not critical thinkers or civilized humans, but an increasingly larger number of robots who regurgitate shit they've been told or heard (incorrectly) like trivial pursuit card quips and who are best-suited for the "real" world of wage slavery and compliance with authority when they "graduate."

Education/Indoctrination for the masses and rabble provided by the state, for the good of the machine...which is terminally broken.

The very idea of this dingleberry "scrambling a jet" should give civilians the world over pause. The sad state of affairs is that it took so-called intelligent folks 4 years to smell his shit and 1 more of smoke and mirrors to make him the lamest duck imaginable.

They need to confirm publicly that everything's fine, just fine. Maybe a slight bending of the law here and there, but that'll be fixed lickety-split. Then everybody can change back to American Idol.

Smoke and mirrors, just like Obama's speech in front of some 4000 claqueurs in Berlin today. I couldn't decide who I wanted to punch more, him or his frenetic drones. Probably my lickspittle government, most of all.

Did she just quote two different Radiohead songs in one line?

got so low you come up and get the bends it's all smoke and mirrors and
a house made out of cards.

LOL... oh, we're gonna play that game now.

So what do you call the stock market crashes post 9/11, 2007, 1987, all under your heroes - George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan? Guess your boys were... what did you call them... or, right... "clueless fking idiots".

Dude, seriously, check your facts before you post idiotic stuff like this.

Just to clarify, I'm not blaming Reagan or W. singlehandedly or even predominantly for those crashes. The drop today in fact has as much to do with European markets as it does the American markets. How exactly Obama could be blamed for that makes absolutely no sense.

About Bush's spending - completely laughable. The right was 100% on board with tax cuts (which contributed massively to the deficit, regardless if you want to count it as spending or not), and both the Afghan and Iraqi wars. About the only thing they were against was the senior citizens prescription drug benefit, and even then, I sure didn't hear a whole lot of opposition by them at the time. Compare that to Obama wanting to raise taxes on millionaires by a few percentage points and the right, including you, come out saying he's a communist or socialist, which is utterly ridiculous.

Name socialist programs that worked?

I define programs socialist in nature that cause the gov't to determine what is produced (related, how it is produced), who produces it, and/or who consumes it. With that said, here are the gov't programs that overall unquestionably the US is better for it.

Universal primary/secondary education
Federal grants and scholarships
Environmental regulation
Food and Drug Administration (before it, it wasn't safe to assume the food you bought from the grocery store wouldn't kill you)
Social Security (say what you want, but even critics have to agree Social Security has run very well, and benefitted the economy for most of its existence)
Medicare (seniors are happier with their health care than any other age group, and the vast majority are on medicare, medicare has been in existence for over 45 years)
Medicaid
VA hospitals

BTW, you can't say something has been a failure just because it's having problems today. If the program has existed for decades and was fine up to this point, it clearly can be run properly. Instead of questioning its existence, it's perfectly rational to look at how to reform it to allow it to work again.

And yes, public schools are underfunded. That's clear as day. And your rationale to not spend more is preposterous. Carried to its absurd conclusion, we should eliminate all funding for education in any manner whatsoever. Kids will learn just as much outside without shelter, books, or even teachers! Funding does matter. It doesn't determine everything about achievement. The #1 factor of student achievement is actually the socio-economic class of the students' parents. However, if the school is drastically underfunded, that child's performance will be inhibited.

See, I taught public schools, so I actually know wtf I'm talking about. You explain to me how routine classes of 37 8th grade students, 24 of them with learning disabilities, in a single class with no special education help (because there weren't enough special edu teachers to go around because it's impossible to find enough special edu teachers, because, oh wonder of wonders, nobody wants to go to spend the money to go to college to become a special edu teacher because their salaries are crap, just like every other teacher, and the job is even harder than other teaching jobs) doesn't qualify as ridiculous underfunding. This wasn't an inner city school, either. It was suburbia in a comparatively well off county in Virginia. Our textbooks were 15 years old and above reading grade level and falling apart. The county didn't have enough schools, so most of the schools had outside trailer classrooms. And no, there wasn't embezzling, or major issues with misallocation of funds. The area was heavily conservative; voters would rather have low taxes than well functioning schools, and it showed. Then you have idiots who claim the schools suck, and say it's because they're public schools, and the government can't do anything right. The government failed because it did what the people wanted - lowest taxes regardless of the consequences.

>> ^quantumushroom:

The Dow dropped 500 points today (04 Aug). Are you awake yet? People are voting with their $$$ and they have zero confidence in the Kenyanesque Hawaiian (a true label, as Papa was Kenyan and Barry is from Hawaii) who has proved to be a clueless fking idiot.
(If you don't want to believe Obama is clueless, a more terrifying conclusion awaits you: everything about his lifelong ideology, thinking America is the #1 threat in the world which must be stopped [or slowed down] is 100% true).
I know you want to believe this debt crap is a 'victory' for the right. It's nothing of the kind. We are in serious trouble and both sides ain't worth sh1t, but only one side is even trying to steer away from the cliff and rocks below.
The "spending cuts" are smoke and mirrors. Allow me to explain. Say you wanted to buy a car for 100K but instead buy one or 20K. The government would call that an 80K "spending cut". The government has NEVER cut spending.
As for your assessment of me, I don't remember enough about you to make a similar assessment, you seem to always be in attack dog mode but rarely do I see you drawing on facts for arguments. The left judges programs on what they're supposed to do, not how well they work (or not). That kind of insanity can only be measured in good intentions and resources wasted. You're standing on the edge of a cliff wearing Styrofoam wings, believing you can fly because that's the intent of the wings. Gravity says otherwise.

I've said it before and will again: I wish you lefties could prove me wrong with results: e.g. actual created jobs and prosperity, real evidence the (Bush created) scamulus worked, proof social programs work efficiently without counting good intentions, and stable financial markets attractive to investors the world over. There is no consumer confidence and zero trust now.

The left's incessant demonization of "the rich" is to win class warfare votes. It can do nothing else. Obama has already apent 3 trillion dollars in 3 years. Do you think "the rich" have more than 3 trillion hidden away? Democrat spending never stops and Republican spending barely slows down.
You can be pissed at me all day long, but I'm even more pissed at the disastrous results of this piss-poor excuse of an administration.

>> ^Yogi:
>> ^quantumushroom:
The Kenyanesque Hawaiian never met a spending cut he liked. He's overclocked this economy because he wants to cripple it. Here comes the broom to sweep the moonbats out of the belfry.

Did you not notice the economic bill he just fucking signed. Spending Cuts EVERY FUCKING WHERE...and Obama saying that it's wonderful...he didn't add any fucking taxes either. You've WON EVERYTHING by supporting the richest in the nation...and you're still bitching about something that's been proven COMPLETELY wrong.
This is my problem with you QM...you're just wrong, even using your own logic and facts, you're just always fucking wrong. I've met conservatives that were smart and made good arguments and I can have a conversation with...you could be one of those people but you're just fucking not. You're given a lot of shit on here but you're also given a lot of leash I would've banned your ass a long time ago just for being stupid.

The Dow dropped 500 points today (04 Aug). Are you awake yet? People are voting with their $$$ and they have zero confidence in the Kenyanesque Hawaiian (a true label, as Papa was Kenyan and Barry is from Hawaii) who has proved to be a clueless fking idiot.

(If you don't want to believe Obama is clueless, a more terrifying conclusion awaits you: everything about his lifelong ideology, thinking America is the #1 threat in the world which must be stopped [or slowed down] is 100% true).

I know you want to believe this debt crap is a 'victory' for the right. It's nothing of the kind. We are in serious trouble and both sides ain't worth sh1t, but only one side is even trying to steer away from the cliff and rocks below.

The "spending cuts" are smoke and mirrors. Allow me to explain. Say you wanted to buy a car for 100K but instead buy one or 20K. The government would call that an 80K "spending cut". The government has NEVER cut spending.

As for your assessment of me, I don't remember enough about you to make a similar assessment, you seem to always be in attack dog mode but rarely do I see you drawing on facts for arguments. The left judges programs on what they're supposed to do, not how well they work (or not). That kind of insanity can only be measured in good intentions and resources wasted. You're standing on the edge of a cliff wearing Styrofoam wings, believing you can fly because that's the intent of the wings. Gravity says otherwise.

I've said it before and will again: I wish you lefties could prove me wrong with results: e.g. actual created jobs and prosperity, real evidence the (Bush created) scamulus worked, proof social programs work efficiently without counting good intentions, and stable financial markets attractive to investors the world over. There is no consumer confidence and zero trust now.

The left's incessant demonization of "the rich" is to win class warfare votes. It can do nothing else. Obama has already apent 3 trillion dollars in 3 years. Do you think "the rich" have more than 3 trillion hidden away? Democrat spending never stops and Republican spending barely slows down.

You can be pissed at me all day long, but I'm even more pissed at the disastrous results of this piss-poor excuse of an administration.


>> ^Yogi:

>> ^quantumushroom:
The Kenyanesque Hawaiian never met a spending cut he liked. He's overclocked this economy because he wants to cripple it. Here comes the broom to sweep the moonbats out of the belfry.

Did you not notice the economic bill he just fucking signed. Spending Cuts EVERY FUCKING WHERE...and Obama saying that it's wonderful...he didn't add any fucking taxes either. You've WON EVERYTHING by supporting the richest in the nation...and you're still bitching about something that's been proven COMPLETELY wrong.
This is my problem with you QM...you're just wrong, even using your own logic and facts, you're just always fucking wrong. I've met conservatives that were smart and made good arguments and I can have a conversation with...you could be one of those people but you're just fucking not. You're given a lot of shit on here but you're also given a lot of leash I would've banned your ass a long time ago just for being stupid.

Perhaps I can be more clear. Christ existing is obviously a necessary condition for Christianity to be true - but it's not sufficient. I suppose some people might say "Oh, Christ never existed so Christianity isn't true", but I don't think anyone's doing that here - and that's why I thought it was an odd thing to bring up. I think most non-Christian people here would say something more like "Jesus probably existed, and probably said more or less the same stuff that's in the Bible - but he didn't do miracles, isn't the Son of God, and didn't come back from the dead".

The belief that Jesus is a myth seems to be more prevelent, actually, and many of the people I have debated here have claimed this. I think only a very unthoughtful and intellectually incurious person could actually believe it, as you'd be hard pressed to even find a secular historian who does. He is by far the most influential person in history, which continues to this day. That in itself speaks to His claims. Our great land was founded on judeo-christian values, and the freedom that we enjoy today was predcated upon those values of personal liberty.. Even the pursuit of science was founded upon Christian understaniding; It was thought we could determine the operation of the cosmos because the Universe is orderly and has regularity due to Gods oversight. Yet, even with all this some people close their eyes to the simple truth that Jesus Christ even existed. Yet, these are the same people who champion their own rationality as being superior.

This martyr argument is another one you come back to, but surely with any reflection you understand why it isn't convincing. Christianity doesn't have a monopoly on martyrs - there's been plenty of, for example, Muslims who've chosen to die for their beliefs in a great variety of circumstances, sometimes very pro-active ones. But even if Christianity has the most (or most spectacular martyrs), certainly there are many people who've died for all sorts of causes: religious, secular, or personal.

While it certainly says Christianity is a powerful idea that so many have died for it, I don't think an idea has to be true to prompt this level of conviction.

I think the martyr argument is very powerful when you consider the original disciples. They were the ones who truly knew if Jesus was in fact risen. If Jesus was not raised from the dead, there isn't any plausible explanation as to why they would all willingly die for something they knew to be a lie, when all they had to do was recant their testimony. It is also powerful for the early church because it was formed in the times of the living witnesses of Christ, and it was under very heavy persecuation. It was to a persons great disadvantage to follow Christ, socially, economically, and was often putting your life on the line. Being a Christian then was like being a Christian in Iran today. There is no good reason why the church should have ever survived under those conditions, but it did more than; it thrived and expanded expodentially. Yes, people martyr themselves today..most notably members of Islam. Islam isn't under persecution though..people are indoctrinated from birth and told if they even think one bad thought about Allah they will face eternal torment. There is no atonement in Islam, so if you screw up once you're done for. Under these conditions, and considering that Islam advocates exterminating all other religions and people, it isn't surprising it creates conditions in which people willingly martyr themselves. These situations however are night and day in regards to motivation.

First off, I should say that I appreciate the effort you're putting into legitimate debate here. I do. While I disagree with your recent points, I also accept them as honest reasoning and I think we're discussing things on a better level than we have in the past. So thanks, and I'll try to rein in my own douchebag forum persona.

Anyways, I'll (hopefully) explain what I was trying to get at better. It is my belief that religions often effectively "poison the well" for detractors by saying that the detractors are doing so for alternative motives, or that those detractors cannot understand the truth because of some flaw. To illustrate this, I was saying that Scientologists are quick to call out detractors (who are, to be fair, usually former members with a grievance) for their character flaws or crimes. Facetiously (because I don't actually know Scientologist beliefs), I was suggesting that they might also blame detractors' disagreements on confusing Thetans.

I was attempting to illustrate how awkward this attack is to refute for the detractor. The detractor certainly does have "crimes" (because, as I think we all agree, people all do things they aren't proud of). And he certainly can't be convincing if he says he has no Thetans. How can he make the case for that, when he doesn't even believe in Thetans anymore, and is definitely no longer being cleared of them?
From a perspective of a non-believer, a Christian detractor is in a similar position. Many (or even most) will have personal grievances that make their arguments sound suspect. And all will have sins. Many will have sins associated with their departure. Given that it's common Christian thought that sin clouds thought (or bars revelation or conscience or similar), we're left with a tidy way to undermine almost all detractors.

The most common objection I hear from someone is not that they haven't done evil, or that they aren't guilty of crimes against God. It's not even that they would disagree that they deserve to be punished. It's that they just defacto reject Gods authority over them because they don't want to stop living the way they do. In a very real way, they reject God over their preference to sin as they wish. This is exactly what the bible means in John 3:19-21 when it says:

This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil

Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed.

But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God.

Even Christopher Hitchens outright admits it. Skip to 6:26 for his confession.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AX1CswHCkA

A person who is railing against Christianity due to personal grievances is not only not rational, but is completely disingenuous. Such a person willfully avoids the truth, because their objection isn't based on rational grounds, but emotional ones. I have yet to meet a single person who has a legitimate gripe against Christianity as it is described in the bible. It is all due to the failings of men who didn't live up to Gods word. Yet, to the world you're a Christian if you say you are, and every evil thing man has done in the name of Christianity is ascribed to it, ignoring the fact Christ specifically taught against it.

I understand your argument..but you're basically saying it's unfair because the bible accurately describes the condition of man. That it's easy for a Christian to pigeonhole unbelievers because man is in fact habitually evil and hypocritical as the bible describes.. Man has a sin problem, but how is it any different when one might reference a scientific worldview. To blame the wickedness of human beings on animal instincts, or the "reptile brain" (serpent consciousness), or chemical reactions. Survival of the fittest. Science even says that people who believe in God have it in their DNA to do so, and even associate it to a certain area of the brain. There is no real empirical evidence for any of this, so how is it much different than saying man is corrupted by sin? It really isn't. They are competing worldviews. Science says it's a physical issue, but the bible says it is spiritual. Only one can be right.

So my overall point is an analogy. Both the Scientologist and the Christian believer have similar reasons to doubt the detractor. However, I think we'd both agree that the Scientologist detractor is right despite those reasons. So while I understand that you still would not accept the Christian detractor, my point would be that we can't completely refute him on these grounds because he could (in principle) be the same as the Scientologist detractor. The differences between the Christian and the Scientologist detractor (with regards to these ideas) are generally only differences from the perspective of someone who already believes Christianity and not Scientology (and certainly I think we'd agree that believing Christianity is more rational than believing Scientology - I'm just using it as a convenient analogy).

My point was that instead of looking at him (the detractor) in terms of his grievances, or in terms of factors (like sin or Thetans) that could cloud his judgement - it's safer to just consider his arguments, which will stand or fall on their own qualities regardless of the speaker.

Yes, I do understand your analogy. Yes, a scientologist might reject a detractor because they think he has thetans, but we know those are made up. There is a similarity in that basic approach, but since Scientology is easily disproven, there aren't any arguments to consider. In that case, people are rejecting his truth because its clearly not true, not because it isn't possible that people reject truth because they are corrupted by evil. It's still a strawman any way you look at it. The point here is, what is the best explanation for reality and the human condition. If it is true that everyone sins, and that people are hypocrites, then that is something you as an unbeliever have to come to terms with. If I can accurately portray the human condition better than you can, and give reasonable explanations for human behavior according to biblical truth, those are obviously points in favor of the bible and not some cheap tact. It's perfectly legimate to point out that the objective stance people claim to take (and the claim they lay to reason itself) is mostly just smoke and mirrors for their personal prejudices and very real rebellion against Gods authority.

He's right. But the pres nor congress is listening. Nor do they care to listen. It is all about cash. It is all about war profits. It is all about oil. It has nothing to do with terrorism or freedom. Smoke and mirrors. A kevlar curtain hung over the eyes of the average out of touch US citizen.