(July 23, 2015 at 10:23 am)MysticKnight Wrote: Why don't you guys meet up with an Atheist Logician or philosopher (professor) in university, and ask him if this is special pleading. I think you guys misunderstand special pleading. When you make an exception that is IRRELEVANT then it's special pleading. If you make an exception, and it has notable difference that shows the case doesn't apply, it's not considered special pleading.
The change to the first premise is specifically re-worded to get us to god (sometimes disingenuously referred to as a "first cause" or "uncaused cause"). With the "begins to" part, god is as easily dismissed as any other explanation. The change is made in order to provide an exception for god. Isn't that special pleading, by definition?
"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