The courtroom analogy is an excellent one. There's a reason why courts only accept evidence relevant to the case and aren't big on rambling logical sleights of hand. Nor is belittling the jury's intelligence and biases particularly tolerated.
Now compare that to the old witch trials, which allowed "spectral evidence" that clearly couldn't be falsified and played directly into the biases of the time. When your best argument is the equivalent of "she turned me into a newt... I got better", you can be pretty sure that there really isn't anything of substance to examine. What's truly tragic in all this is that our friend might actually have a real argument; but he spends so much time smokescreening with trollish bluster about how stupid we all are, that I wonder if he realises his 'evidence' is even more delicate than he is.
Now compare that to the old witch trials, which allowed "spectral evidence" that clearly couldn't be falsified and played directly into the biases of the time. When your best argument is the equivalent of "she turned me into a newt... I got better", you can be pretty sure that there really isn't anything of substance to examine. What's truly tragic in all this is that our friend might actually have a real argument; but he spends so much time smokescreening with trollish bluster about how stupid we all are, that I wonder if he realises his 'evidence' is even more delicate than he is.
At the age of five, Skagra decided emphatically that God did not exist. This revelation tends to make most people in the universe who have it react in one of two ways - with relief or with despair. Only Skagra responded to it by thinking, 'Wait a second. That means there's a situation vacant.'
