Your weekly logical fallacy: special pleading

This one is a personal favorite of my wife. When we would watch Atheist shows together she would always call out people who had special pleading arguments. Even though there were a few other arguments mixed in there. Also, sometimes what she called special pleading wasn't actually special pleading. So I am really glad to present this week's fallacy of special pleading!

You moved the goalposts or made up an exception when your claim was shown to be false.

Humans are funny creatures and have a foolish aversion to being wrong. Rather than appreciate the benefits of being able to change one's mind through better understanding, many will invent ways to cling to old beliefs. One of the most common ways that people do this is to post-rationalize a reason why what they thought to be true must remain to be true. It's usually very easy to find a reason to believe something that suits us, and it requires integrity and genuine honesty with oneself to examine one's own beliefs and motivations without falling into the trap of justifying our existing ways of seeing ourselves and the world around us.

Example: Jenny a self proclaimed faith healer went to a nudist resort and offered her services to make old scars that would normally be covered with clothes disappear. Robert, a skeptic, came up to her and demonstrate her claims by making an old scar on his hand go away right there and then. Jenny said that how her abilities work is she will heal the scar but it doesn't take affect until he was sleeping and because he questioned her, it likely wouldn't work as he has to have faith in her powers.

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