Is Accepting Christian Evidence Special Pleading?

[SteveII]

Here is the question


The answer is yes... there are a number of other people who wrote and others corroborated what Paul taught (both from Peter, and the early Church)

This is the point that was being made.  The core of the Gospel doesn't rely on the single testimony about something that happened hidden away in a cave for it's source.    Would you agree, that it is different in this respect from most other religious accounts?

Other people who wrote about Jesus...long after Jesus supposedly lived. There are no contemporary accounts. So while there are many people who believed the same things as Paul and/or believed Paul, that doesn't corroborate the claims coming from Paul's head. So no, there is no more reason to believe Saul of Tarsus than Joseph Smith, and yet some do choose to believe one over the other (special pleading).

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Since the answer is of interest to others...

Paul refers to events that happened to other people in public. He names them. Those people wrote stuff down too. People mentioned him in their writings. He wrote letters to people who already believed the gospel story. There is a web of details, content, timing, location, and corroboration to consider.  

Joseph Smith wrote down a bunch of things that happened only to him. No one else was there. This is actually a good comparison (for a change) to the alien abduction example atheists are so fond of.

So, the comparison is so bad as to be nonsense.

And there is the special pleading. So while the delusions of one man are unacceptable, they are acceptable for another. This is an excellent example of Christian special pleading.

Perhaps a refresher...

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.

The only circumstances that were similar in this situation were that something was written. Everything else was different. So, we have one similarity and hundreds of dissimilarities. Therefore the circumstance were not even close to being similar and therefore no special pleading can occur.