Is Accepting Christian Evidence Special Pleading?

[Mister Agenda]

This charge comes up from time to on this forum. 

First, let's define our terms:

Special Pleading: Applying standards, principles, and/or rules to other people or circumstances, while making oneself or certain circumstances exempt from the same critical criteria, without providing adequate justification. Special pleading is often a result of strong emotional beliefs that interfere with reason. reference

Evidence: Evidence is not proof. It is a fact that supports a conclusion. For the purposes of this discussion, eyewitness testimony (from any religion) is evidence.  

Central Question: Is it true that other religions have bodies of evidence that can be examined in the same or similar way as Christianity's is and therefore are legitimate comparisons in which special pleading can actually occur?

Yes, all the supernatural claims of any religion can be examined in the same or similar way as Christianity's are. As far as I can tell, no religion has what could reasonably be described as a 'body of evidence' for their supernatural claims. Which are their most central and important claims, because their claim to authority depends on having a supernatural source for it.

Is there any debate that no major religion that has a fraction of the amount of evidence of Christianity to even examine in support of its main claims?

I'm not aware that this is the sort of thing that serious scholars of religion debate...if they did, I'm sure they'd have announced a winner by now.

If other religions do not have a body of evidence or there only exists one piece of evidence, then how could there be any special pleading in favor of Christianity?

When Christians use special pleading, they use it the same way as every other theistic religion: 'My God is the exception. My God is different. My God is unique. My God is the only explanation. Their God isn't real, my God is.'

 

If you are tempted to just answer there is no evidence for Christianity, they we are just arguing definitions of words. Whatever you call the material under consideration, there is more of it under Christianity and therefore no special pleading.

Christianity, of course, exists. There is ample evidence of that. If you think Christianity has special evidence for its supernatural claims that other religions do not possess, I would be interested in seeing it. If your definition of what constitutes 'more evidence' is arbitrarily picking some criteria that conveniently and arbitrarily favors Christianity, that would be some sort of fallacy, but I'm not sure it would be special pleading. I'm sure other religions would find which religion is the oldest persuasive, or which religion has the lowest body count, or which religion has the highest percentage of people willing to pierce themselves to show their faith. Whatever evidence you have that Christianity in particular is true, it should be something relevant to whether its supernatural claims are true.

---

The topic is the often repeated charge that somehow Christianity is no different than any other religion and to think it is different is "special pleading". I contend that it is different in that there is more information to weigh than any other religion (by far).

Christianity is quite unique. As are all the other religions. Of course it's different from the other religions.

But if you've got actual evidence of the supernatural, I'd like to know what it is.