Spider-Man fallacy

The Spider-Man fallacy is sometimes committed by Biblical literalists, and goes roughly like this:

  • Literalist: '"Sodom and Gomorrah have been found by archaeologists! This means the Bible is true!"
  • Non-literalist: "New York really exists, but that doesn't mean Spider-Man is real."
Cogito ergo sum
Logic and rhetoric
Key articles
General logic
Bad logic
v - t - e

From this it can be inferred that, since knowledge is power, it comes with great responsibility.[1]

Origin

It was bitten by a radioacti... no hang on, um... It seems to have bubbled up through the lower depths of the netosphere in about 2007, being mentioned in a blog on Myspace.[2] However, it was on Myspace, so nobody read it. It turns up next in 2010 as an entry in Urban Dictionary[3] (a reliable source if ever there was one) and in 2012 was being discussed in Christian blogs. One article, hosted by the Christian Post,[4] attacks an atheist for using the argument by using such time-honored apologetic nuggets as Luke was "a top notch historian",[5] that the New Testament and Spider-Man "are of two different genres" and it trots out the usual suspects of apologist scholars in support of these views. To no one's surprise, the article ends up with the equally tired claim that rejection of the New Testament is just based on an "anti-supernaturalist" bias.

gollark: What? That makes no sense.
gollark: I am not going to put in the effort to read tons of this and extract a coherent narrative which probably isn't there, because frankly it does not seem worth my time, or anyone's.
gollark: Well, it explains random facts about things, and in some cases non-facts, but it doesn't... actually say anything more than "here are some random facts about things".
gollark: It does not explain anything.
gollark: If you have an actual *idea*, or *theory*, ***EXPLAIN IT***.

References
  1. Spider-Man. Dir. Sam M. Raimi. Perf. Tobey Maguire, William Dafoe and Kristen Dunst. Columbia TriStar Home Entertainment, 2002. Film. Stan Lee. Unless it was FDR. Or Voltaire.
  2. Potential Forum Discussion II: the Spiderman Fallacy
  3. Urban Dictionary's Spiderman Fallacy entry
  4. Jesus and the Spiderman Fallacy
  5. Hear that sound? It's every non-apologist scholar of ancient history spontaneously Rolfing ROFL'ing.
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