(July 23, 2015 at 12:04 pm)MysticKnight Wrote:(July 23, 2015 at 11:56 am)Tonus Wrote: The change is made in order to provide an exception for god. Isn't that special pleading, by definition?
It's not special pleading. Special pleading is when the rule applies to it, and you point to an irrelevant difference. If however, you show the rule/premise/case doesn't apply to it, it's not special pleading.
But you cannot show that the premise doesn't apply to god, you can only claim it. By that reasoning, we can exempt the universe from premise one by claiming that it has always existed in some form. Presto, the first cause argument is broken.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould