Is Accepting Christian Evidence Special Pleading?

[Minimalist]

No, it is not an argument...it remains just...obvious that more testimony is better than less.

To Stevie's mind if I take a document and run off 500 xerox copies of it it becomes 500 times more true.

I don't think he is that stupid.  I think he is locked into a mindset where any questioning of his holy horseshit cannot be tolerated.

True of most religitards, no matter what invisible sky-daddy they profess to worship.

[LadyForCamus]

No, it is not an argument...it remains just...obvious that more testimony is better than less.

As in, more testimony means, "better evidence"?  Yep, just keep on asserting that despite demonstrations to the contrary.

The contents of the testimony is irrelevant. Believing a claim because of more testimony over one with only one, is no longer special pleading--because, for the last time, it is a justification to treat the circumstances differently.

For the last time, you simply asserting that it's a justification does not magically make it so, lol.

-but you wont be engaging in "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.

You would be if you failed to provide such adequate justification, which is why you had to shoehorn "for the sake of the argument, testimony is evidence," into your OP.  You might as well have just said, "for the sake of the argument against special pleading charges, it's not special pleading." Without someone giving you that assumption of evidence, you literally have NO argument.

Just substitute 40,000 testimonies against one. Would you still claim special pleading to believe the 40,000? No, a normal person would not and it's the same principle--just a difference in scale.

Are you speaking of just Mormonism now?  Why is that?  What about everyone else?  Do you believe the testimony of those who saw the sun dance at Fatima?  Or those who claim parallel universe collisions are the cause of the Mandela effect?

For the last time, my list of letters a through k are examples of information-

Stories about magic.

-not available to support other religions.

Their books contain fewer magical stories; so what?

It is quite a bit of information and context prior to any testimony.

You mean the the first few times the stories were told before they were told to thousands more?  This legitimizes their supernatural claims how, again?

The stories do agree with each other in ALL meaningful ways (to say otherwise is just buying into silly atheist propaganda and makes you sound ignorant of the facts)

Atheist propaganda?  Really?  

The early church--of which 100% were witnesses to some or all of the public events (another differentiation to all the other religions) of Jesus' ministry-

According to the stories in the Bible.

-did not believe because of hearsay.

You're just assuming stories about people witnessing the supernatural are true.  Why would you do that?  Do you have any external, corroborating evidence to substantiate them?

Not at all. Rationalization is reasoning. It is not  pieces of information. My entire list was pieces of information.

You mean a list of unverifiable claims of witnessing the supernatural...from 2,000 years ago, that you have rationalized as true in the absence of any evidence.

Testimony is an assertion of fact. To deny that it is evidence of something is just plain stupid.

I agree.  It is evidence that Christianity exists.  It is evidence of what the followers of Christianity believe.  What it is not, and never will be, is evidence for the truth of its supernatural claims.

One last attempt. John saw Mary run out of the house, around the tree, and back into the house and writes it down in his diary. Are you really going to say there is no evidence that Mary ran out of the house around the tree, and back into the house? I didn't say proof, I said evidence. Of course there is.

We have evidence of Mary testifying that she ran around the house, around a tree, and back inside.  But of course, we wouldn't treat mundane claims same as we would treat supernatural claims that defy what we know about the laws of physics and biology, would be?

The 'no evidence' thing makes you sound really stupid.

And you saying:  "Let's assume for the sake of the argument that I have evidence for my religion," as a way of escaping special pleading makes you look fucking idiotic.

[I_am_not_mafia]

Yet you still haven't acknowledged that the majority of people can be wrong and this is why asset bubbles happen. All you responded with was that it was a horrible comparison without saying why. If an increasing number of people are making the same mistake then it doesn't make what they are mistaken about more likely to be correct.

If a large number of people believe the same thing then all it tells us is that a large number of people believe the same thing.

You can't get around that just by ignoring it.

That the majority of people can be wrong about events (not personal opinions) they personally saw that changed their behavior and life forever? No, I don't acknowledge that that happens.

So you're specifically referring to the number of first hand eye witnesses to events rather than opinions. Good, we can hold you to that.

Exactly what events are we talking about here? Jesus' miracles or current day living Christians interpreting their own feelings and senses using their own subjective brains? Who were these people? What were their names? How many are we talking about? What exactly did they see? And more importantly how do you know all this?

Either way you're screwed with this argument. There are no reliable eye witness accounts of Jesus, just a few fictional and implausible books that do not concur with archeological or scientific evidence. And if you are referring to the testimony of living Christians then you can disregard those because you specified events rather than opinions.

[SteveII]

That the majority of people can be wrong about events (not personal opinions) they personally saw that changed their behavior and life forever? No, I don't acknowledge that that happens.

May I reasonably conclude then that you're a Fatima Miracle believer, despite not being Catholic?

I don't know if it happened. I doubt because of 1) the lack of context of every other miracle ever performed (they had a specific purpose), 2) there are some rebuttal witnesses that said no, it did not happen, and 3) there was nothing on the line when people said "I saw it"--it did necessitate a call to action or any required change of belief.

[LadyForCamus]

That the majority of people can be wrong about events (not personal opinions) they personally saw that changed their behavior and life forever? No, I don't acknowledge that that happens.

May I reasonably conclude then that you're a Fatima Miracle believer, despite not being Catholic?

If he was, at least he'd be consistent. 😏

[Succubus]

A wiki article written by christians, and able to be edited by anyone pulls little weight when we've seen how dishonest believers can be when defending their faith.

I like how you guys dismiss wiki articles when it's convenient

You don't see the list of sources at the bottom of the page?

Did you, are you familiar with those names? As I pointed out in another thread most of them are Christian apologists.

[Minimalist]

According to the stories in the Bible.

And you put your finger on the heart of the problem, LfC.  People like Stevie insist that his holy horseshit was written by "eye-witnesses" in spite of the fact that the documents themselves make no such claim.

The idea that the names were attached in the late 2d century is anathema to Stevie.  But even church tradition which led to the attribution of anonymous works to specific "apostles" fails as "Luke" was said to be a companion of "paul" who never met fucking jesus except in his dreams.  "Matthew" derives from a tradition ascribed to Papias except we have no writings of Papias and only the word of that noted fabricator of horseshit, Eusebius, that it was so.  "Mark" (Marcus?  Odd name for a Jew)  has so many traditions ascribed to him that even the fucking church can't sort it out and "John" is again based solely on xtian "tradition" ( tradition in this case being a euphemism for bullshit ) that he was one of the so-called "apostles" even though the author manages to get through the whole text without ever mentioning such a fact.

But that won't even slow Stevie down in his headlong quest to demonstrate that this bullshit is the real mccoy!

[Whateverist]

I don't think it is possible to have a serious discussion about why the hype surrounding the xtian religion is to be believed, while that surrounding other belief systems is not. I think what we have here is 50+ pages of people being flabbergasted by Steve's -from our POV- impudence, but we also realize it his blind faith that blinds him.

[Simon Moon]

May I reasonably conclude then that you're a Fatima Miracle believer, despite not being Catholic?

I don't know if it happened. I doubt because of 1) the lack of context of every other miracle ever performed (they had a specific purpose), 2) there are some rebuttal witnesses that said no, it did not happen, and 3) there was nothing on the line when people said "I saw it"--it did necessitate a call to action or any required change of belief.

Because of course, 1000's of people that can be interviewed moments after an event, are no where near as reliable as, 500 anonymous people, whose stories are not recorded for decades or more after the alleged events.

Move those stories 1800 years in the past, and somehow they become even more reliable.

That is a textbook example of special pleading. What is the title of this thread again?

Intellectual honesty is not quite your thing, is it Steve?

[LadyForCamus]

According to the stories in the Bible.

And you put your finger on the heart of the problem, LfC.  People like Stevie insist that his holy horseshit was written by "eye-witnesses" in spite of the fact that the documents themselves make no such claim.

The idea that the names were attached in the late 2d century is anathema to Stevie.  But even church tradition which led to the attribution of anonymous works to specific "apostles" fails as "Luke" was said to be a companion of "paul" who never met fucking jesus except in his dreams.  "Matthew" derives from a tradition ascribed to Papias except we have no writings of Papias and only the word of that noted fabricator of horseshit, Eusebius, that it was so.  "Mark" (Marcus?  Odd name for a Jew)  has so many traditions ascribed to him that even the fucking church can't sort it out and "John" is again based solely on xtian "tradition" ( tradition in this case being a euphemism for bullshit ) that he was one of the so-called "apostles" even though the author manages to get through the whole text without ever mentioning such a fact.

But that won't even slow Stevie down in his headlong quest to demonstrate that this bullshit is the real mccoy!

 He will say that all of the above are just, "fringe theories."  AKA, facts that make him feel uncomfortable. 😉