Is Accepting Christian Evidence Special Pleading?

[SteveII]

No there isn't, coward. For example Vorlon's citation of mormonism, where we have proof of the founder, his history, his religion's history, everythinghe wrote and quite a lot of what he said. As we have virtually nothing of christianity until well into its second century (and no three word fragments of single pages don't count) you cannot truthfully claim christianity has the same evidentiary basis as mormonism. Hell, even with islam, another religion bsed solely off legend we know most of the major players actually existed and did at least some of the stuff attributed to them. We can say this about exactly none of the founding members of christianity (unless you want to argue it was largely founded at Nicaea).

So your latest baseless assertion fails under even the most dilletantish of scrutinies.

And not only that, an examination of Early Christian History shows that from the very beginning they did not agree on the substance of who Jesus was.  The diversity of Christian theology was even more intense in the 1st and 2nd Centuries CE than even now.  A sect of Judaism, divided among Ebionites, Nazarenes, and Elkasites, each of whom had different versions (Christologies) of Jesus based on their theology (Docetism, Adoptionists, and Gnosticism).  It was the Proto-orthodox view, championed by Paul the Apostle, gained wider adherence throughout the Roman Empire as they gained more influence with the imperial throne, you know, Constantine and the Council of Nicaea, the oppression of Pagans, and all that.   You Christians really have a nasty habit of weeding out opposing views and killing them off.  Does not help your cause one little bit.

When you say "very beginning", what you are really talking about is 170 years later -- or 6 generations. That's like saying "at the very beginning when we had cell phones and the California Gold Rush was happening..."

Docetism -- 197–203
Adoptionists -- late second century
Gnosticism -- late first and second century - was a separate movement not compatible with Christianity even though they attempted to incorporate Christianity into its belief system for a time.

You imply that Paul's teachings won out of some subjective competition. There was not competition once it became easy to just go back to the original gospels and epistles (as they propagated throughout the church) and it became obvious that these were just heresies/misunderstandings that failed to stick.