CBEB’s

Plenty of bloggers have written about logical fallacies, so I’m not going to do a detailed series on the subject. I would, however, like to address one of my favorite fallacies (if it’s at all possible to have a favorite): The Special Pleading Fallacy.

Imagine you’ve signed up for a course on American History. On the first day of class, the teacher begins lecturing on the benevolent aliens who rose up from Atlantis to secretly guide the Founding Fathers during the course of the Constitutional Convention.

Of course, your natural reaction would be, “What the hell?!? This is bullshit!”, to which the professor replies, “Unless you really love America, none of this will make any sense”.

That, my friends, is the Special Pleading Fallacy. I’ve always found the use of the Special Pleading Fallacy by Christians to be odd, especially those Christians who claim to be in possession of some sort of “Absolute Truth”.

I was reading Ray Comfort’s blog, and found this bit of “wisdom” from the master of the Argument from the Banana:*

As we have seen in the previous chapter, atheists approach the Bible with a “darkened understanding” (see Ephesians 4:18) and try to make sense of it. But just as the Bible says, they cannot understand it (see 1 Corinthians 2:14). The only way the Scriptures can make sense to us is for us to read them with a humble heart that is searching for truth. God promises to resist those who are proud.

In addition to being a Special Pleading Fallacy, this is thinly veiled circular reasoning, as Comfort is essentially saying, “These Bible passages prove that you pretty much have to believe that the Bible is true before you can see that it’s true.” I’m sure there’s three or four other fallacies hiding in there somewhere, but the special pleading rings loud and clear; in Comfort’s beady little eyes, skepticism is good when it’s applied to science, but asks that you put it aside when reading about talking snakes and zombified Jewish carpenters.

The Special Pleading Fallacy is also a popular way to CYA: Cover Your Ass. All too often, people use special pleading as an excuse for their actions, when in reality, they are giving reasons they should have never acted in the first place. Common example: Someone has posted a controversial topic at a blog or message board. The first response to the post is something unbelievably stupid, and several people immediately post scathing rebuttals, causing the initial commenter to concede that his opponents are indeed correct. 300 comments later, someone who’s never before posted at the site replies to the first comment, rebutting the claim that has already been retracted. When it’s pointed out that he should have read the entire thread - or at the very least, read enough of the comments to see that his input was no longer relevant - the newbie might say, “Sorry guys, I’m too busy to read the entire thread. Unlike you losers, I have a life.” It stands to reason that if you’re too busy to properly follow a discussion, you’re too busy to offer anything useful to the discussion.

To a certain extent, we all fall back on the Special Pleading Fallacy at times. (How many of you have ever said, “you really need to see [insert band name here]’s live show in order to fully appreciate them”?) It’s easy to overlook special pleading when it comes to someone defending their favorite band or TV show, but it’s a very poor way to argue for religion (or against atheism). When someone tells you that their argument will make more sense if you’d only be so kind as to set aside the rules of logic, it’s a strong indication that they know what they’re selling doesn’t pass the sniff test.

*One might argue that it’s not fair to continue raking Comfort over the coals because of the infamous Banana video, seeing that he has since admitted that it’s a bad argument. But so long as he keeps making other bad arguments, the Argument from the Banana will serve as the prime example of Comfort’s inadequate argumentation methods.