What are the adequate reasons that one should allow special pleading? Why a claim of god should be treated differently than the claim of a dragon? My sense of the thread generally is that the only reason that has been put forth is 'because the stakes are so high' or some reworded version thereof. Apologies if I missed where you specifically stated these reasons.
Yes, with adequate justification for an exception, special pleading, in theory, would not necessarily be fallacious.
GStan: Thank you! That was single, focused point in that post. Obvious, but necessary to spell out at that juncture.
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Now, why I believe god "deserves" this greater precision, and the effort that that entails : that'll take more words than I can manage now, and I'll get to that when I return, and get my hands on my computer again.
Now that I am back at my computer, and can type with all ten fingers again, let me now get on, as I’d promised, to the reason why I’m saying that this greater precision (greater than what we accord to other issues in general) is justified when it comes to God.
Actually I’ve already discussed this in this thread, as you may have noticed me saying in
my post #1763 that you’ve yourself already read and reviewed. But rather than have you troll through all my early posts here, let me simply try to clearly re-state my case here.
There are two reasons that occur to me.
The first reason is this: There are more than six billion people who believe in (some form of) God.
No, this isn’t some appeal to popularity. I’m not saying people’s beliefs make this thing true, or even likely to be true, or anything like that.
But because these people believe this God thingie, therefore the existence of this God is of overwhelming importance to these folks.
Now: Do I want to engage with these people about their God beliefs?
Had only ten, or ten thousand, or ten million people believed in God(s), then the answer would likely have been “No”. But given that six billion people believe in God, then the answer is likely to be “Yes”. Not always, obviously, but occasionally (that is, I’d probably occasionally engage with them about this question). Perhaps even often, depending on what circles I frequent.
With six billion theists all around me, my girlfriend might happen to be one, or my parents, or my work colleagues, or my friends, or my extended family, as well as those who lay down the policies and the laws that impact me personally; and that directly makes it likely that I might want to engage with something that is so very important to them. And of course, given their sheer numbers, that abstract faith of the abstract ‘populace’ may itself be of importance to me, not in personal terms but in general terms, in as much as it impacts the world at large, so there’s that as well.
So then, we have established this much: God is very important to theists; and, given the overwhelming number of theists, it is very likely that I will want to engage with them about their God. (Not me personally, I meant a generic “I”, much like a generic “you”.)
Now obviously, when I do engage with them, given how important this is to them (the theists), they will demand of me the greatest precision that I can supply, given how important this subject is to them. And nor is this a really unjustifiable demand, after all. After all, all they’re asking of me is greater rigor, greater precision, when dealing with something that is so overridingly important to them. Why would I not give that to them?
Obviously, at the individual level, whether I myself do engage with this at all, that cannot be predicted. That’s up to me, personally, up to my own likes and dislikes and availability (or otherwise) of enough leisure for this. But in general, for the generic “I”, given the sheer number of theists, it is likely that I will engage with this, and that I will give it a great deal of importance, and treat it with a very high degree of precision.
That sounds perfectly reasonable to me. Do you agree, do you also find my reasoning thus far, well, reasonable?
So that was my first and main reason. Because the God subject is so very important to so very many people, therefore the subject assumes importance, and therefore also demands a great deal of precision, even at the cost of a great deal of effort. More importance, more precision, and more effort than many/most other issues.
The second reason is trivial, but nevertheless valid, or so I believe.
This is simply: one’s interest, one’s predilection, that’s all. One’s stand-alone, arbitrary interest, that is not necessarily tied to anything else at all. I personally am drawn to this subject, the subject of gods, including exotic gods, all of that. Which does not make me a theist, nor does it even make me gullible. After all, you can have people with an interest old coins, old maps, some particular kind of literature, even some genre of cinema. And when you are interested in something, you put in more effort than the normal man in studying that something, and you arrive at a greater precision in your views about that thing. (Be that thing some minutiae of Tolkien’s Middle Earth, or God.)
Sure, others may not share that predilection. And that is fine. No one is demanding that people who lack interest should necessarily join the aficionado in poring over Tolkien for the umpteenth time to check some small detail, or in analyzing the intricacies of the strategy followed by some football team, or in checking out the lyrics of some particular song that they’re interested in, or in analyzing Gods to some fine level of precision. Not if they don’t want to.
As with any other subject, those intricacies matter, and that level of precision is warranted, only for those who are interested in them; on the other hand, the fact that some people may not be interested in some particular subject, does not render unwarranted the intricacies and the heightened precision within the subject that the aficionado finds meaningful.
So then you have two reasons, that I can think of, to justify the greater-than-normal precision accorded to religions. One of those reasons is impersonal, and important; and the other is personal, and trivial (but nevertheless valid, far as I can see).
