(August 12, 2012 at 2:40 pm)DeistPaladin Wrote:(August 12, 2012 at 2:14 pm)catfish Wrote: Well, not all Christians believe that Jesus is God...
Special Pleading:
"None of the other gods can account for the laws of logic. They're not real. They're just made up. But Jesus, he's real."
It sounds to me like you missed my point completely.
It's in the nature of religious faith to indulge in special pleading, "my god is real and yours isn't, my scripture is the truth, yours is just made up fiction, etc". But the fallacy especially applies here because the line of reasoning is that only my favorite god can account for the logical laws of the universe yet no valid reason is ever offered by proponents as to why another god can't be substituted.
Waldork, who was especially fond of this line of thinking, was repeatedly asked why Allah, Nature's God or the Flying Spaghetti Monster wouldn't do just as well. His response was to summarily dismiss every other god as either being imaginary or having never communicated to humanity through revelation.
While my summation of the argument is intentionally comical to underscore the point, this is, in fact the line of reasoning offered by proponents of presuppositionalism. The other gods don't count because they're not real. But my favorite god, whether it be Jesus, Yahweh or the Flying Spaghetti Monster is real because I say so.
This is special pleading. Regardless of whether you call your god Jesus or Yahweh, you want special treatment for your religious claims that you would never offer to any other religious claim.
No, I didn't miss the point. I get it, I really do.
My point was that both "sides" do it. Albeit an atheist's presupposition is much smaller in scope.
