(September 13, 2017 at 9:35 am)SteveII Wrote:(September 13, 2017 at 9:26 am)TheBeardedDude Wrote: 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).
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.
You have no reason to believe anything in the bible except that you have a strong emotional want to believe it.
"The last superstition of the human mind is the superstition that religion in itself is a good thing." - Samuel Porter Putnam
