(September 15, 2017 at 7:19 am)Khemikal Wrote: You claimed that pauls stories were different than joes, in attempting to make an excuse for your special pleading.
God spoke to him privately, as he did to Joe Smith.
Are you now having trouble remembering the lies you've told about the stories you don't know?
No I did not. I have always discussed the entire body of information that we have is different than Joe's entire body of information. If you can't see that in post after post after post, you have real comprehension problems.
BUT...let's suppose we don't have the 50 or so posts where I was clear. Are the circumstances of just Paul the same as Joe's? Not at all:
1. Paul had been persecuting Christians and knew very well what they claimed for years.
2. Paul's vision led to a change of heart on whether these existing claims were true--not proposing/discovering a new set.
3. He spent years with the apostles and other early Christians--implying a training period to develop his knowledge/reasoning/etc. because
4. Paul's letters were on Christian living and were applications of the claims he did not make up and that his recipients already believed.
Joe? His claims went from not existing one day, to existing only in his head, to him sharing his writings with others. Where are the similarities again?
This is not rocket science. While you are often obnoxious, you are not stupid. Why play stupid here? You know very well that your statement "God spoke to him privately, as he did to Joe Smith" and therefore special pleading, ignores the actual circumstances that must be examined for a claim of special pleading to stick. Making statements like may work with the average ignorant-of-the-facts atheist on AF echo chamber, but are intellectually dishonest.
