The Spider-Man fallacy, if accepted as true, becomes a universal acid against all written material. Anything presented as fact can just be dismissed and the historical consistency and accuracy of the writer doesn’t matter. Any modern biography can be dismissed. Any historical work can be dismissed, any scientific paper can be dismissed. So what if rows 1-55 in your data table are accurate, it has no bearing on whether row 56 is accurate. I can just dismiss it by saying Lol Spider-Man. Just another case of the skeptic-meter turned to 11 for the Bible. “But it’s a scientific paper!” Lol appeal to genre. “They wrote their instead of there” lol dismiss the whole paper as a fabrication “The paper was attributed to Dr. W” lol other editors might have changed it or the journal only attributes it to him. “The paper was published in English” lol Dr W speaks Hindi he could never have written in in English. Their arguments against the Bible erode all human knowledge when applied consistently to other areas. That’s why I don’t take them seriously.
You know theres a difference between attribution of authorship to an ancient text is different than attribution of authorship by a public and contemporary scientific press that you can contact, right?
The BEST rebuttal to Spiderman is that Spiderman has multiple conflictng versions of the stories that cross different eras and ages. They're MUCH more like pagan stories where the key detains mutate. Also, Spiderman says its fiction. And it does NOT give the same level of location detail. Where did that robbery he stopped take place? Why is that police station fictional? Why is it referencing fake events that are huge? Why does nobody believe it at the time, and why is Jesus backed up external sources from the time but Spiderman not?
In a lose sense you can at least say the Spiderman comics can be used as a cultural reference for any historian analyzing it 300 years from now. In the same way we can use pottery, furniture, poetic writings and paintings, to analyze cultures that are no longer with us (i.e. Rome)
Also it has many more things that are provably wrong, like a giant green demon possessed goblin flying around on a metal saucer terrorizing NYC... oh wait that was Governor Andrew Cuomo
@@vohloo9797 the biggest issue with the Spiderman fallacy IMO is the fact that if it was fiction, people wouldn't have believed it bc who would believe in a god, who was a jewish carpenter, who was then crucified and they say he came back from the dead. If they wouldn't have had proof I would honestly laugh my ### off at such a story and tell them that's a good one. If it was fiction, people would have noticed or not believed it bc it's so stupid. And if it was Seen as fiction, when did it transition from fiction to historical beliefs. Along with that let's not Also forget the fact that there was a constant flow of information talking about Jesus Christ like he was real and even the biggest early skeptics of Rome didn't refute, that he did miracles and that he was real.
@@inukithesavage828 My favorite example are the multiple explanations of who shot JFK. Imagine the historians 2000 yrs. from now trying to prove that it actually happened with all the different, contradictory claims of how it happened. Then add up the other individuals who died in similar ways within the same period of time (from the future historians' POV): Lincoln, JFK, RFK, & MLK. The parallels between Lincoln's death and JFK's have been remarked upon. What will future historians make of those? Just as skeptics do today, they'll try to pass them all of as Cultural Mythology.
Kind of a weird comparison considering we have video of Stan Lee detailing how he came up with Spider-Man and never once does he claim that Spider-Man is a real historical person
@@SkepticalMantisCHANNEL10 We have the names of the authors, their professions, their stories of how they knew Jesus or how their sources knew Jesus, character witness accounts of the authors (to the point that we know they died painful and torturous deaths without recanting), as well as a lack of any competing claims of authorship. We don't have as many details as we have of Stan Lee, but neither do we have as much detail about, say, Xenophon. We obviously have an advantage with Stan Lee being in our era, and if we demand that level of background information we will have to throw out everything we know of ancient history, medieval history, the renaissance, and even a ton of the industrial revolution. On the other hand, I don't even need any details on Stan Lee or the making of Spiderman to know Spiderman is fiction, because the comics are stated to be fiction right in their pages. Now, how much do we need to know about the authors of the Gospels before it is reasonable to think they were written as genuine histories by people involved in the events or on behalf of such people?
Kicking a dead horse at its finest. Edit: “The Spider-Man fallacy should be more dead than Peter Park’s uncle Ben,” 😂 you didn’t have to do Peter like that.
The trend in the UA-cam Atheist Echo-chamber is to misrepresent apologist's arguments so that it makes the creator's argument seem like a big "gotcha". The reality is that it tends to just be click bait for that camp and they don't have to present opponents' arguments honestly, because they know their viewers won't actually pay any attention to the other side. This isn't an error; it's an intentionally misleading representation to make sure they get subscribers and viewers.
@@dachristiangamer I share your view, it is unreasonable to ponder the same subject every day and never come to a conclusion. So let me challenge you to consider this fact from your opponents' point of view: the evidence doesn't seem convincing to them, and when they hear stories about talking snakes, floods, towers, sun's stopping in the sky, dead people walking back into Jerusalem, etc. they don't want to wade through immense amounts of apologetics to try to explain and harmonize the bible stories. It seems almost elitist to ask the average person to be so studious. Yet they are damned to hell for their unbelief because they were satisfied with thinking these are just stories and not interested in studying theology or apologetics.
@@dachristiangamer You wrote a lot, which seems to mean you have thought a lot about this. Thanks for taking the time to do that. At this point, you and I disagree. I have read a lot on both sides, but I tend to agree with evolutionists because to me it seems more consistent with the evidence. In your opinion, I would assume I am wrong. Assuming I am just trying to make sense of all this information, should I be damned to hell for all eternity for coming to a different conclusion than you?
@@dachristiangamer It sounds convincing to those who believe, but can you step outside that for a minute and consider that to those who don't already believe expect it to mean what it plainly says? Should everyone who doesn't have this belief and who can't read Greek or study apologetics go to hell?
@@dachristiangamer I an not a scientist, so I won't waste time refuting your points with my opinion. I read a lot of science, and I think you are misinterpreting what has been established. If you are satisfied with your current understanding of evolutionary science, it's not my job to change your mind. But I would like to know how you explain the existence of endogenous retroviruses and Chromasone 2 apart from evolutionary processes.
So the extra-biblical content such as Josephus' writings should be regarded as fiction as well because we weren't there, so how could we know? The spider-man fallacy is such a bad argument, I thought atheists were supposed to be the "intellectuals"
Atheism is a highly emotional ideology, you never once hear of an Atheist who says "The evidence in favor of Atheism convinced me" not a single one will tell you that. They will all point to issues they take with Theism. If you can't tell why that shows Atheism is pure emotion, let me set it up simply. Between two metaphysical positions, one we will call "X" and the other "Y", if we have tons of evidence for X and X has explanatory power but also some counter evidence for X, do we then accept Y? Obviously not, because Y has no evidence, no explanatory power, which means anything with either evidence or explanatory power are by default more likely to be true. To use a more practical example, imagine Hannibal crossing the alps. We have evidence for it in the form of attestation from his enemies, but we could say that we have counter evidence due to the logistical problem of doing so never being solved by anyone. So naturally a totally rational person would look at the counter evidence, and conclude nothing at all happened. Of course this would be absurd, the explanation that Hannibal crossed the alps is most likely, but even rejecting it the attestation makes it clear something happened, such that nothing happening is absurd. Atheism is the emotional ideology that because someone doesn't like *insert some form of Theism* that they must accept something that has no evidence or explanatory power. There is a reason why even the Deist insisted that Atheism is nothing more than intellectual drivel.
Paulogia should stick to the cartoon; I could see the tears well up as he hears how easy his spiderman analogy is to debunk. Something most people don't realize, but in order to appeal to the spiderman fallacy, the speaker assumes a state of illiteracy, that they don't know there are different genres or how to differentiate between them. If there was any legitimacy to the spiderman fallacy, then the Romances of Alexander should be considered historically accurate.
@@dachristiangamer I saw his video “refuting” the resurrection of Jesus. I didn’t realize how unconfident he was of his argument 😂 his face betrays a lot
I'm fine with applying this logic to any other historical character because I approach historical characters with something between indifference and mild interest. Christians approach Jesus with a very different mindset.
@@UnconventionalReasoningformer atheist here, your wrong. And it only works if you assume what we are doing here is pure I BELIEVE SO we are litterraly comparing jesus to other historical figures, litterraly paulogia says well its different because its super natural ! It can be boiled down to that, its literraly being intelectual disonest, and some times he appeals to well it should be this way instead to be absolutely true, thus making criteries if applied to 9/11 no fireman would be an actual martyr or sacrifice, its like dude cmon what world you live in? If i applied the same criteria to anything ever i could "disprove" The whole world, and the only way to prove ir true us with a time machine and witnessing it, but it would be also proof of nothing, even apllying those criterias because he will say ofc i hallucinated! Time machines dont work, what is he gonna do next? Flat earth apologism?
"I believe that the stories of spiderman were written closer to the year 2200 rather than the 1960s." "Actually, there are many locations and people who would be relevant to the late 20th and early 21st centuries, so it's safe to say that the stories of spiderman *were* written in the 1960s."
Spider-Man comics also include a TON of other fictional material. The Daily Bugle, Oz Corp, specific types of technologies that couldn’t exist and STILL have not been developed yet. Not to mention MAJOR crimes that would be recorded in the annals of history through more reputable documents that aren’t comic books. Let’s also include the number of fictional characters and organizations of political significance. Different US Presidents, fictional nations, fictional wars, etc. The Spider-Man analogy is absurd in every way.
@@authenticallysuperficial9874 Earthquake can definitely be a natural phenomena Thallus in 50 AD reported the darkness at the time of the crucifixion though he insisted the timing was accidental and was natural phenomena When atheists portray Matthew's account on saints rising in Jerusalem they misrepresent it in the manner of a World War Z scenario No, what Matthew is most likely reporting is an undetermined number of recently passed godly saints rising from the dead and interacted with locals who didn't necessarily know them personally and the reason there appears to be a lack of extra biblical mention is because informations weren't spreading quickly and not many may have known about it
@@authenticallysuperficial9874 Surely you're not ignoring the VAST difference in the way people used to keep information and the availability of those ways. Are you really lowering your intellect to make this dumb argument work or do you really not see a problem with it?
And historical novels did not exist to be distributed and read to common people then. Writing a historical narrative meant to be read as fiction in Rome or Nazareth in 50 A. D. doesn't seem to make much sense. Dying by torture rather than admit you wrote fiction seems even more unlikely.
The contradictions of rulers are so strong, none of the early opponents to Christianity, who lived in the Roman Empire and outlawed the religion mentioned them? See, argument from silence goes both ways. For the record, that new objection about contradictions has been answered hundreds of times.
He doesn't accept the gospels because they were written 40 years after the events? When something has impacted your life in such a tangible way, you're going to remember in detail. I guess this guy doesn't appreciate memoirs and other historical documents written about people in the past 🤷🏼♀️
When atheists try to invent childish arguments against the existence of Jesus, I kindly remind them the same theories can be applied toward the existence of their own grandparents.
The "Strawder-Man Fallacy" is when someone uses the Spider-Man analogy to debunk arguments noone ever makes, like "it contains verifiable details therefore the unverifiable details must be reliable no matter what".
Bottom line, its a silly analogy: comic books don't claim to be true, in fact quite the contrary. It is a very unserious rhetorical device. I honestly can't fathom how its survived this long.
The fact that Paul of all people is even using this argument shows just how terrible atheist arguments really are against Christian belief. Even what I was an agnostic I could see the problem with the use of this argument and especially the way that Paul particularly uses it. It's fallacious on both sides of its assumptions. This is why Christians all need to think these arguments through and not just accept that atheists have actually taken time to conceptualize these things properly to their fullest extent.
@Zheng Fuukusheng Destroyer of religions that's quite an irrational standard you have sir. You do know that Paul was himself a high pharisee named Saul prior to his conversion right? These are his own words. The only people contesting the validity of his words are only very recently. It seems to me like you have no problem with eye witness testimony until the person claims something that you don't agree could ever happen. That's a personal issue rather than an issue with the historical data.
@Zheng Fuukusheng Destroyer of religions when you have 2 witnesses or more to any event you can infer that where their testimony overlaps that the event played out as much. It appears that you are not dealing in the realm of historical science but in speculation and cynicism rather than skepticism. We have Roman authorities who wrote about many of the same things these individuals wrote about. They at the very least confirm that they existed and that they believed what they said because of their willingness to die for said belief. You need to rethink your epistemology concerning these accounts because by your standard we could never trust anything ever written even in scientific journals. After all, you and I are not the ones conducting these experiments and therefore cannot ever reproduce what is written in their accounts. Please stop undermining your position for your own sake.
@ramigilneas9274 your statements are patently false. It's a known fallacy to use fiction and equivocation it with historical events that were written down. You do realize that all of history is based upon testimony, and the vast majority of it isn't even from eye witnesses, right? So, if we can accept it for the rest of history, then we can accept it in the case of the gospels whose veracity has surpassed all historical documentation by far. If you can not understand the problem, then it may just be you.
I think this is one of your best videos in a while (that’s not to say your other recent videos have not been good). It’s just that this one was very satisfying because it got to the heart of what makes the Spider-Man fallacy such a weak and unconvincing argument. Great job!
In the future people aren't even going to know what a fallacy is, let a lone a Spider-Man fallacy. We sure will know what glazed dounuts are Toy Story 15 are though!
The fact is that the NT accounts for all the data we see in the historical record and no other hypothesis yet has. But for some reason I'm supposed to defer to other ad hoc hypotheses? No thanks.
Another great video! I've been thinking about making a video analyzing one of Paulogia's videos myself. I love how easily you disassemble the view and explain why it's flawed and then do a concise recap at the end.
As a Christian who loves the Spiderman comics, I'm kinda upset to see them being used to "debunk" Christianity like this. Glad to see the debunking be debunked, though.
6:04 totally underrated point that I find very convincing, the Spiderman fallacy feels like a damage control tactic, why can’t skeptics just argue on other grounds against the reliability of the Gospels instead of denying the basic reality that we have incredible documents in our hands that have marks of truth all over them???
@@adamcosper3308 Ok so the synoptic problem is enough evidence for you to dismiss what exactly? The EVIDENCE of the content of the Gospels is quite impressive in my epistemic view. If you would like to elaborate, tell me how they are not good enough for your epistemic standard of truth and reliability.
@@adamcosper3308 Ahhh so you dont even care about the truth signs of the Gospels because you just a priori assume they are false due to your metaphysical commitments…looks like we are done here.
The point, it seems to me, is that the details in the Gospels are merely evidence of authorship by people who knew the time and place intimately. The details in Spiderman prove that Stan Lee knows New York City.
It’s so exhaustive that Paulogia really doesn’t see his error in using the Spider-Man fallacy. At like 10:28 he says, “it’s simply to say, that if you think because it gets names and places right, the stories must be true, I think that’s why it works” it’s like, no one is saying that?? In fact apologists aren’t even remotely close to claiming that. It’s simply just to say, this is evidence that the gospel writers were likely very close to the facts, even eye witnesses, and this is what they’re claiming actually happened. Of course that doesn’t mean this is proof that the claims are true. But it’s an evidential chip in favor of christianity, specifically of the reliability and eye witness nature of the gospels. I just don’t get why that’s so hard to grasp.
I think that is the problem for Paulogia though. He said that he presents a view that the accounts were embellished over time into legend. I think it is hard to keep that view and admit that the historical details are right there next to the miracles.
@Zheng Fuukusheng Destroyer of religions in case you didn't know this papyrus was very difficult to come by back then and it took weeks to make by hand. Only knowledgeable people skilled in doing such would have done so let alone write because not many people were educated in writ. We would expect someone like Luke a physician and historian to be able to. We would expect Matthew the Tax collector to be able to and of course Paul who was once a high pharisee to be trained on this. It's also possible that the method was taught and passed to John or he grew up in such circumstances that he knew how to do it himself. The 500 witnesses were contemporary and obviously christianity spread like wildfire across the Roman empire during a period when people had every reason to reject it unless what was written about it was true. Can you point to a single religion that has survived massive persecution to its original followers that has survived to this day? I'm not aware of any. Can you explain how so many people concluded that Jesus was God, including his mother and half-brother James? What would it take to convince you that your family member was God in the flesh? Please think more carefully about this than it appears you have.
@@zhengfuukusheng9238 it’s almost comical that you could comment such a thing. Could I have the contact details of Alexander the Great’s Greek soldiers? I’d like to interview them myself, oh I can’t interview them?? They must not have existed. ^^ that’s what your comment sounds like
Spider-Man is a stated fiction. It's written in a fictional genre. But most importantly, there's so much counter-evidence against Marvel Comics being an accurate representation of reality that it's not a comparable situation to the Gospels. Also, as Erick points out, the particulars of the situations are important here. Spider-Man authors referring to a well-known fact like New York's existence doesn't mean much, unlike the subtle historical confirmations of the Gospels. And the motive is different. The Gospels were written as tools of evangelism in a context where they could have been easily refuted. A better comparison would be to something like the "Hitler Diaries" which ended up being exposed for the fraud it was in a relatively short time.
Bottom line getting those mundane historical details correct lends to the timeliness and credibility of the New Testament and its authors, not count against - as they try in vain to do.
@@Swiftninjatrev okok, if you're on the same page about what most historians say then yeah and Paul isn't wrong because he's going with the consensus here. looks like the original commenter is saying he's wrong though, I was wondering if he thinks it's obvious they were written before or something
The Spider-man fallacy is one of those that immediately falls when you think about it for a bit. First of all, the genres are different, one is being passed off as a historical biography the other as fiction. Spider-man's contents while having some elements grounded reality have far more fictitious elements where our non oral culture would have recorded them as newspapers, videos, books etc. Also outside material for NT confirms SOME historical aspects of the material, (e.g. Romans confirming the crucifixion, Jewish sources claiming that Jesus learned magic in Egypt), while outside material for spider-man all show that it is a deliberate work of fiction. A better analogy would be historical fiction, as a writer would want to ground their story in history, however the surrounding context of the work would still show its fiction. Unless somehow all documentation about the work are lost to time, which is unlikely.
It's so nonsensical, especially when you consider that the person that CREATED the stories existed during our life time and that in every comic book ever made there is the credits of the people that comprised it. Essentially making it so that we can obviously say it's a work of fiction. As you said there is historicity for the existence of Jesus in different historical sources, that prove his influence was so great that he had a multitude of people following him and the people that knew him/believed in him were willing to risk their lives so other people learned of his message. Even non christian sources talk about his miracles, though attributing it to magic, since they don't want say it's from his divinity. At best what you can say about the web slinger is that they are great stories that talk about the human condition, but the writing can easily be attributed to Stan Lee or whoever wrote that issue/run.
Some people are always going to argue that if it involves a miracle or something supernatural then no amount of evidence or accounts or logic or reasoning will ever suffice. And, I can't say that's a totally insane position. It isn't really. Which makes my next point even more salient: why do these people make an entire career or persona around not believing in something? It's so odd to spend so much of your life and your thinking life on stating in 1,000 different ways how and why you don't believe something. It's so strange. Even when they don't believe in it, they still have to have it in their lives. Kind of telling.
Ad hominem. But interesting question, most of them see christianity as a kinda hurtfull ideology and are fighting a cultural battle, it has a lot of power over peoples lives, others have more personal reasons againts christianity and because its a hot topic that gets a lot of views (it applies to both sides). But still funny, something that you dont see as truthful to play such a big role in your life...in my case, i consume a lot of this class of theological and skeptic content because i am very skeptic my self but it's still very dificult to drop something as influential in my life and enviorioment as christianity, i just dont want to blindly believe or not believe... probably just my undecisive personality...
I find it interesting that atheists will often argue that people from New Testament times were easily fooled into believing miracles and did not fact check the gospel writers. But then why did Luke, etc. take the time to get all of these trivial details right? This is generally the way I present the argument. Paulogia is misrepresenting how Christians use this argument...a strawman logical fallacy.
But even if you use the specific names & places as your case in 2000 years no one will find any evidence for JJ, MJ, & PP (Peter Parker). But there is evidence for the characters in the gospels.
7:52 "While there was fiction, it was often crudely written." _Shows Homer's Iliad_ There are many things you can say about the Iliad. "Overly dramatic" could even be argued. But crudely written? The epic of Troy and Greece spanning 24 books? 15,693 lines in dactylic hexameter? This is crudely written?!
It certainly can't be classed as historical fiction. According to Chat GPT, while Homer's "The Iliad" is a work of epic poetry and mythology, it is not typically categorized as historical fiction in the modern sense. Historical fiction, as a distinct genre, involves the use of historical settings, events, or figures as a backdrop for fictional narratives. The term "historical fiction" is more commonly applied to novels or stories that are specifically created with the intention of blending fictional elements with historical facts. "The Iliad" is an ancient Greek epic that centers around the mythical events of the Trojan War, featuring gods, heroes, and legendary figures. While it may contain elements inspired by historical events or cultural memories, its primary purpose is not to present a historically accurate account but rather to convey themes, values, and the heroic tradition of ancient Greece. The concept of historical fiction, as a genre with a deliberate blending of history and fiction, developed much later in literary history. Some consider works like Sir Walter Scott's "Waverley" (1814) or Jane Porter's "Thaddeus of Warsaw" (1803) as early examples of historical fiction in the modern sense. These novels are set in historical contexts and feature fictional characters and events against a backdrop of real historical events. While "The Iliad" may have historical elements, it is not typically classified as historical fiction because it lacks the intentional blending of historical facts with fictional narrative that characterizes the modern genre.
This was helpful, Erik! Could you make a longer video explaining how a dis-unified or schizophrenic view doesn't make sense? I'm still thinking through this. What's to stop the gospel authors from mixing in nuggets of misinformation knowing that they've been pretty truthful for the most part? Or if you know a good article that covers this, I'd appreciate that too.
I've stated it elsewhere but I'll answer it briefly here. In short, if they're mixing in nuggets of misinformation it's going to be where there are miracles, right? That would be Jesus' resurrection and so forth. Well, if Luke is a traveling companion of Paul's (and I've argued at length that he is) then he must have some sort of willingness to suffer and be persecuted along with Paul. I mean, he's with him during a shipwreck and being chased from town to town. Mark is a companion of Peter, there's like a similar thing going on there as Peter was arrested, beaten, almost killed and eventually martyred. John and Matthew are apostles (and I'm happy to make a case for traditional authorship), and they were called on the carpet by the Jewish leaders and beaten. John's brother James was beheaded. Also the mixing in clever lies is just less unified, and more complicated. It's unlikely that they're going to be willing to suffer for things they know are false.
I think that even to take the example of spider man at face value it does help the apologists case because it establishes Stan Lees knowledge of New York from his firsthand experiences of having lived there and being familiar with the setting. This corroborates with the Christian claim that the gospel authors, or their sources were familiar with the region and time that they were writing about.
Idk I’ve always regarded the Spider-Man analogy and others like it as intending to show that an author’s familiarity with the setting of the story (whether firsthand, sources, etc.) doesn’t necessarily indicate familiarity/ accuracy with/ of the details of the story themselves. I understand the counter is something like “but it should raise our credence with respect to the details,” to which I think the response is “perhaps, but how much?” I certainly grant that someone with knowledge on the details of the story is more likely to have knowledge of the setting, but is someone with knowledge of the setting significantly more likely to have access to accurate narrative details? Especially when we’re talking about a story (at least initially) as eyebrow raising as the gospels from the atheist perspective? I’m not so sure. Probably should go up a little, but not much for someone with the worldview of a non-Christian. I think this is tangentially related to the point Eric made when eluding to a potential inconsistency in evaluating accuracies v inaccuracies (heads I win, tails you lose). A piece of evidence may count in favor of one position if present, but not count equally against it if absent. An example might be if I said a prayer and Jesus appeared in front my me, shook my hand, and then wrote down a 100 digit decimal expansion of pi. Surely this would be incredible evidence that Christianity is true (at least for the witness), but I don’t think we’d want to say that the fact this did not occur when I said my prayer just now means that Christianity is almost definitely false.
Yeah, but Christians aren't basing their conclusions entirely on these accurate details like many skeptics dishonesty imply. I couldn't make sense of ur pi prayer analogy, but at any rate I doubt that alone would be conclusive either way. The Bible is deemed reliable because of the evidence that is stacked in its favor vs the evidence stacked against it. The documents still stand the test of time, and anti theists 2000 years later are still looking for a silver bullet. Since they can't find one, all they can do is dismiss, which is exactly how they use the spider man fallacy.
@@arcguardian Well the spider-man analogy is intended as a response to appeals to accurate geographical/ cultural/ broad historical details as reason for regarding the gospels as reliable with respect to the Jesus narrative. So if we have independent reasons for trusting this narrative that's fine, but it doesn't really support the idea that the spider-man analogy is flawed. In my experience people seem to think the analogy is meant as a rebutting defeater as opposed to an undercutting defeater. I largely agree with the thrust of the analogy was my only point, whether the gospels are reliable is a separate question.
@@chipperhippo the analogy seems to be completely flawed in this context. To bring it up as something to nullify the credibility of documents listing accurate things seems a bit absurd, seeing as if it were absolutely it would still have to pass those tests lol. Not to mention the genre of scripture, you'd have to assume the Bible was hundreds of years ahead of its time in literature genre, but then again the skeptic is willing to go anywhere that isn't toward God. It's as credible as suggesting the disciples maybe made it up yet were still willing to die for it. The other reasons for why it's flawed in this context are already covered in the video.
@@arcguardian I don't know if you're understanding what I'm saying, as you seem to have done the thing I warned against in my previous message. Also I think it's just kind of lame to accuse an entire group of people of delusion and/or dishonesty for arriving at a different conclusion than you; just as shallow as asserting the disciples were simply lying imo. I'm just talking about the application of this analogy, idk why you keep bringing up "skeptics" to disparage them.
@@chipperhippo you make a good point here. It all comes down to the way the analogy is applied. The analogy itself is sound, but it has unfortunately been misrepresented and misused to defend a position that was never under attack. The truth of the supernatural elements of the gospel narratives is not strengthened by the accuracy of the historical detail contained within those narratives. They are part of a standalone category. That's the crux. That's the point of the analogy. It's been blown out of proportion to look like something it was never intended to be.
9:00 the way he so smugly acts as if the late dating hypothesis is fact, in addition with not bothering to find out micheals actual position on the matter (that at least the synoptics were written before 70 A.D)
If they did then it's some rock solid oral tradition that did not let many details slip through. At which point it hardly matters whether It was written right after, or 100 years after, if they're getting all these details right anyways.
If we are taking the entirety of the spiderman series into account, textual criticism would show that spiderman was indeed fiction, even if we didn't have the knowledge that spiderman is intended to be fiction. For example, Kingpin and his businesses in spiderman would not be reflected in business records in NYC (the setting of spiderman) during the time, nor the heavy power draw on the grid when he opened the doorway to the multiverse in Into the Spiderverse. Older Spiderman comics that make mention of the Twin Towers, or the Empire State building being the tallest, would be only applicable at their time, but other spiderman comics set contemporaneously after such locations and information being valid.
check out testimonies to the truth by lydia mcgrew, or can we trust the gospels? by peter j. williams, or living footnotes in st luke by luuk van de weghe
Are you suggesting that if there were it would somehow make them more true? Is there some connection between the truth and the amount of people willing to die for it? You wouldn’t want to start keeping score with Islam if you are...
@@insanelogical8996 Sure, I’ll play. Yes, because it’s true, just like Islam. Because as you said, a willingness to die for a belief is a reliable indicator of how true that belief is.
@@mookiewilson4166 and why u don't willing to die for moslem book or Bible if u willing to die for Spiderman comic book ? Is it mr. Dillahunty argues that Bible or moslem book are same with Spiderman comic book ?
I wouldnt exactly call the illiad crudely written its not a modern novel but it is really good Other than that its really good and historians use acts as a historical source all the time.
Hmm, you are wrong. According to Chat GPT, Homer's "The Iliad" is a work of epic poetry and mythology, it is not typically categorized as historical fiction in the modern sense. Historical fiction, as a distinct genre, involves the use of historical settings, events, or figures as a backdrop for fictional narratives. The term "historical fiction" is more commonly applied to novels or stories that are specifically created with the intention of blending fictional elements with historical facts. "The Iliad" is an ancient Greek epic that centers around the mythical events of the Trojan War, featuring gods, heroes, and legendary figures. While it may contain elements inspired by historical events or cultural memories, its primary purpose is not to present a historically accurate account but rather to convey themes, values, and the heroic tradition of ancient Greece. The concept of historical fiction, as a genre with a deliberate blending of history and fiction, developed much later in literary history. Some consider works like Sir Walter Scott's "Waverley" (1814) or Jane Porter's "Thaddeus of Warsaw" (1803) as early examples of historical fiction in the modern sense. These novels are set in historical contexts and feature fictional characters and events against a backdrop of real historical events. While "The Iliad" may have historical elements, it is not typically classified as historical fiction because it lacks the intentional blending of historical facts with fictional narrative that characterizes the modern genre.
Like a thief in the night He arrives just in time. Spiderman! Spiderman! ... Here comes the Sliderman! (I had to add that. Now we can go back to being serious.)
Paul really shows a lack of knowledge here with regards to a number of things, not least the qur'an. The qur'an is not a historic document. It is a document of nonsense crap cobbled together in a way that makes no sense. If you actually read it, there is nothing that makes sense and it makes the Gospels look like the amazing work they are. If you want the history of Islam you have to go to the sunnah and haddith. They are equally bad being a random collection of sayings compiled about 200 years later. Again, the Gospels look absolutely great in comparison. Perhaps Paul really needs to learn about things before spouting nonsense abiut stuff he clearly does not understand.
@@adamcosper3308 Interesting. I don't tend to find it of the ones I watch, but there are definitely some I don't watch specifically because I feel the same way about them as I do about every atheist UA-camr I have come across.
I think the writings of einstine are false. Not because they can be proven incorrect but because spiderman could potentially be interperated in the future as earths history.
the analogy really doesn't make sense and the fact he has to switch to the criminal analogy defeats his main point that the author wasn't contemporary or local to the time and place. simply put the authors of Spiderman have easy access to data on new York, he is proposing that the authors did not. so yes using the Quran as an analogy would be a sustainably better choice for what he is arguing. heck even Josephus gets facts wrong, facts he lived though but he knew details that only a person who lived though it would have known. yet to my knowledge he nor anyone else really argues that Josephus wasn't a native to Israel, or didn't live though the revolt. But it would make much more sense for him to argue that the Gospels were written by people who lived though those events but are propagandistic in nature.
I feel like the easiest way to debunk this is just how the apostles died. Really, why would the apostles let themselves be burned, skinned, boiled, stoned, etc for their superhero? Would Stan Lee let himself be skinned alive for spiderman?
The Spider-Man argument only works if they had a couple years of issues--assuming future historians view all fiction like the aliens in Galaxy Quest--because otherwise, it would be very simple to point out that he's a teenager for years, then a twenty-year-old for decades, then a teenager again.
Let's talk about the facts we don't have. We don't know where the tomb is, nor can we find it from the stories in the new testament. We don't see miracles happening on camera, ever, but we have plenty of stories from around the world of heroes in the past doing these kinds of things. What seems to be the only thing common between them? The ability to convince people of fascinating stories? Do you think that people did not sincerely believe in Zeus? Or the Aztec gods? The spider man comparison is not about setting tropes, or those tropes being right, its about the insistence by the Christians that this story cannot be fictional. Well, all the setting details being right are equally useful to a historian, and a con man, so they cannot be evidence that this is a historical claim. What we can compare is the mythical things allegedly happening via "miracles", and say, there is zero contemporary witness accounts offered by a non religiously motivated person that can attest to any of these claims, miraculous or not. We have a man Paul who is admittedly "advanced beyond his years in the knowledge of the scriptures" who is in a position to combine the ideas of the cultures that have dominated them, with his own. In a time period where mystery religions were popping up, because there was an audience for these ideas. When I read Paul describing himself, it makes me think of that kid in school who is wicked smart and does not want to wait for his own grey beard to be an authority on things. Seems to me just the kind of guy that would do the L Ron Hubbard thing and have a miraculous revelation. The fact that Paul does not refer to the events in the Gospels regularly should be a concern. If they are later tropes added, this is problematic. The fact they get increasingly mythical, and seem to address problems in previous writings kind of damns the claim these are independent witnesses. The Spider Man analogy suffices here. You have details about the setting that are irrelevant as we expect them in fiction and history. We have claims of miracles that happen off camera, and are not recorded by any other source. Seems to me, you Christians want it both ways. You want to say there is this entity that manufactured the cosmos, and ID demands that it be this particular being. Then you let it off the hook for being such an inefficient communicator it has to use the same trappings as those used by con men before and since.. Who get to make up religious stories and pose themselves as representatives because they had a revelation or "speak" for the gods. The things needed for this to be history, just are not there.
Pauls conversion to Christianity after years of hunting Christians is a miracle itself and a contemporary source highlighting the validity of the faith by one of its oppressors
@@rayzas4885 Is there any evidence of this other than his say so? What if he not only made up a story, but made up a story of his being a persecutor to make his transformation sound more magnificent? Why does Paul get special exemption from this criticism when you happily apply it to Mohammed and Joseph Smith?
@@insanelogical8996 you are not contradicting my point. My question is why be fully skeptical of them making up religious messages and NOT Paul? To say Paul oppressed others, do we have anything other than his say so? Do we have letters from the Christians he oppressed saying why are you listening to him, he killed my auntie? No, we have his say so, and he happens to be the one claiming spirits were speaking to him. How is he any different than Mohammed and Joseph Smith as far as the claims of revealed knowledge?
//1:08 "... because everyone knows that Ironman is a fictional character ..."// In 500 years though, many people might be claiming that Ironman was a real character while many others may deny it. If the supporters of 'real character' Ironman in that 500 year future claim that the use of real names, real dates, and real places are evidences for the reality of Ironman, then the deniers in that future time will point to fictional literature of their own day in 500 years time to make the obvious point. The obvious point will be that real names, dates and places mean nothing, and they will point to the fictional literature of their own time to demonstrate that this is so. In both fiction and non fiction, real names, places and dates are easily used, just as in both fiction and non fiction, false names, dates and places can be used. The deniers are simply showing how real names, places and dates can be useless as evidence when context is not considered.
Intellectually “schizophrenic” is a great way to describe the anti-eyewitness textual criticism: the author of Luke-Acts is simultaneously 1) so careful to align his account with much earlier, widely circulated Pauline epistles and the other Synoptics, while also 2) so incredibly careless and ignorant of Paul/Mark as to allow so many readily apparent (supposed) “contradictions.” Which is it? Are these guys copying from each other decades later (and thus with access to the epistles + Mark & possibly Matthew) to make their stories line up OR are their independent accounts laden with inconsistencies such that we must doubt all of them and everything in them? It can’t really be both. (it seems to me that skeptics like to combine the negative implications of both views without acknowledging the implicit contradictions and conflicting implications on early dating, extent of independence, etc. IMO #2 is the stronger skeptic’s view. It’s just that in that case you do have to grant that these are independent, pretty darn early lines of data from different places telling, *at least almost* entirely the same story, implying much greater levels of historicity than the easier but weaker “they made it all up decades/a century later” view.)
I liked this video, but Testify you seem to make one big error here about 4:40 in. You say that "you're not saying that because the Gospel authors got a lot of difficult things right that therefore the miracles are true. That definitely would be silly." And then the funny clip saying "Ah, nobody says that". Love that clip btw. So maybe YOU'RE not saying that, but I hear it a lot. There are definitely A LOT of Christians out there that say that exact thing. A lot of them. To say "nobody says that" is to completely ignore why the Spiderman analogy is used in the first place. It's used for these people. And you seem to agree that it's a good argument against people who say that. You're simply just denying that there are Christians that say that. And that is simply not true. I know I only use it against people who say that. And contrary to what you say there are a lot of them. I have no doubt that there are atheists out there that misuse the Spiderman analogy. Probably a lot of them. But for you to claim that there are NO Christians out there that use the factual things in the Bible as evidence for the miraculous things is just being disingenuous. Atheists can make mistakes here, but "nobody" on your side does. This is where your argument fails here.
Thank you for responding to the analogy video. Can you make a video on how exactly the early church navigated the different theological decisions? For example the unitarian view vs trinity, there were early debates on both sides.
Paulogia - enough said. His arguments are so bad that I can barely make it through half of one of his videos without getting thoroughly disgusted. I leave comments with timestamps calling him out, and he never responds. Only his faithful trolls barf their typical name calling, etc.
Right. The entire point of these videos is not "because of these historical details the Gospels are completely true" but rather "this particular argument that the Gospels aren't credible because they were written decades later doesn't hold water. It's kind of like how Thor Heyerdahl sailed across the pacific on an ancient-Peruvian-make raft to prove ancient Peruvians could have populated Polynesia. His theory wasn't completely correct, but not for the reason of Peruvians COULDN'T have make the voyage.
The thing is Spider Man was made by one person that's favorable to him. While King Jesus' existence was proven by even those who are not Christians like Josephus and Tacitus
To say that people in 2000 years have less information about our time so they can confuse spiderman with being real is wild. That's intending that in 2000 years there is no internet, no comic left over or any other account of information that confirm spiderman is fiction
Let's take a neutral look at this. For example the book Dracula. Much of what is written is historically true. The people the cuisine, the geography. This is all done to make us suspend disbelief about Dracula. But it's all backwards. In terms of belief, there is only one item. Dracula or vampires in general. We have to focus on the burden of proof. What physical evidence is there that Dracula is real? And of course zero hard evidence. No vampires to examine, or vampire bones, etc. Thats the point of Spiderman example. No amount of background detail helps when it comes to proving amazing claims.
Ironically Atheists arguing for an infinite multiverse to refute fine tuning DOES imply spider man in some tiny tiny portion of them. Also pink unicorns in some of them...and since we can't see these other universes Atheist's are thus proving the existence of Invisible Pink Unicorns with this supposed rebuttal against fine tuning.
@@grubblewubbles Not surprising. The polemics of Atheism requires two distinct systems of Epistemology. One system to debunk what they don't like and in this system they can use absurd techniques like appeals to multiverses to explain observations in this universe. But the other system is just to assume they are right for being the "null hypothesis". If any grounds is asked them they will appeal to bucket 1 to debunk alternatives.
...oh forgot to bring my point home. Its not surprising because we are used to only Atheists using such absurd kinds of arguments. But it is a fun game to use their own system of debunking on them.
Coming back to this comment, I realized an issue. If there are infinite multiverses, then Spiderman or unicorns wouldn't exist in a "tiny portion" of them, because you can't take a portion out of infinity (i.e infinity-10= infinity). They would just exist in a vast number of them. Minor nitpick about the wording
@@grubblewubbles Suppose there was a Hilbert's Casino next to Hilbert's Hotel. In this casino a black jack dealer shuffles an infinite number of decks together. You are at his black jack table and get a king and a queen such that you are at 20. Would you take another hit because there are an infinite number of aces or would you stay at 20 because those aces are only a small portion of the cards left to deal?
Thank you for making these videos! It seems like Paulogia and his comrades make their arguments in a bubble, ignoring the mountains of actual evidence and the CONTEXT of Christianity (Hebrew and Greek law, culture, etc.)
@@adamcosper3308 we can agree to disagree, but honestly, most of what we believe is so distorted and twisted to fit the assumption that we Christians are so dumb and you Atheists/Agnostic are so super smart. We are not the brain numbed idiots we are portrayed in most movies and TV shows (Righteous Gemstones, Big Bang Theory, even The Last of Us ep 1). While I may watch and even enjoy some of these shows it is VERY CLEAR that Atheists/Agnostics have no idea why we believe so they resort to insults and mischaracterizations. Hey, we Christians can do this as well with some of our lame movies when we portray non-Christians as 1 dimensional "sinners" with no redeeming values.
Eric, idk if you've already talked about this, but are there any counter-apologists or skeptics you have respect for? People not like Ehrman, Paulogia, Genetically Damaged Skeptic, etc
Christians claim the bible is inspired by the most powerful being in all of existence... Yet his words are not inerrantly preserved and needs apologists who by the way disagree with each other to defend it... I can confidently say that no other book in the history of civilization has caused as much confusion as the bible.
Another thing to point out, is that Legends and myths form and evolve over hundreds of years. Even if we go with the latest dating of the Gospels, that would put them around 40 years after the events... That timespam is hardly enough to allow some myths and legends to develop in such a rich and detailed way. And if we go with the conservative dating of the Gospels, such as Mark being written only around 20 years after the events, the odds of everything being just a legend become even less likely.
Using these criteria an atheist would have to discount every single other historical sources existence. Just say rewrite history so often in their own heads, I wonder if that's the goal. Never assume someone who uses the Spider-Man analogy is arguing in good faith.
The only way the spider man situation would be = the gospel is, if people said: Stan Lee most likely didn't exist, didn't live in New York, and wrote spider man 60 years after its publication.
Because people weren’t writing thinking, “Man, I sure need to include accurate details from the first century so that people almost 2,000 years in the future will be fooled into thinking that I was writing in the first century!” Rather, they were writing to make theological points. The point is that they were simply writing from what they knew. Thus, while the pseudepigraphical writings betray their late date via their lack of accurate knowledge of the 1st-century Meditteranean world and more specifically the culture and geography of 1st-century Judea and Galilee, the canonical Gospel authors betray accurate knowledge of meticulous details of that subject matter. At the very least, that paints a picture of the canonical Gospel authors as men who lived in the first century and as men who knew enough to report accurate information about the area and time period.
11:10 You are leaving out that satire actually does mime history. Lucian whom you mentioned was in fact a satirist. When it comes to Josephus, his being a historian for Antiquities is because he reformulates with explanations to a Roman audience the Biblical history, and with his Jewish war, he tells a history which Jews up to this day commemorate by a glass being shattered at weddings, to mourn for the shattered temple. If Lucian's biography of Demonax is a biography or a satire is difficult to know. For _Walden_ being bona fide autobiographic, we have the testimony of the Transcendentals. Thoreau knew Emerson. We probably to this day have people intellectually in a straight lineage of discipleship from Thoreau and Emerson. We certainly have a tradition by editors.
The blindless of print culture is on full display with Paulogia. He doesn't even seem to be aware that the first century was primarily an oral culture. Oral cultures preserve tradition through repeated enactments of ritual and repeated telling of the events they consider sacred. Its not a game of telephone when the whole community knows the content of the same story even if they don't preserve word for word like books do. The disciples didn't wait 200 years to put it all written form either. I would say the Gospels are remarkable well preserved testimonies.
I think people get lost in the spider man part of the analogy. Let’s say I, a first hand eye witness testimony, report directly to you that I jumped off the Empire State Building and started flying. then you verify the Empire State Building really exists and that I was there, it is still not good evidence that I flew. Conversely I could have forgotten what I ate for lunch and misreported it. This does not entail that I did not fly.
That is a good point, however I don't think Christians are saying, because the authors get stuff right about times/places/people, that we should believe Christ rose from the dead. I think its a cumulative case, and part of that case is the question, are the authors reliable, did they portray historical times/places/people/ways of speaking/ways of acting/etc. accurately? If yes then we can trust what they are saying. That doesnt mean to take miracles as fact, but it means we don't need to dismiss it as a fairy tale right away (like other ancient writings can be). Hopefully I explained what I was thinking correctly lol thanks
@@christian11111 you explained well, I think this is a good summary of what Eric was saying too. My question though is, isn’t this just adding an extra step? The argument is still “correct details show they were reliable. The gospel writers being reliable and accurate in these details increases the probability of them reporting the resurrection accurately.” I don’t see how this changes anything about the argument. It’s still using the fact they were correct in some details to support the likely hood of a supernatural event. We are just taking a verbal pit stop to throw in some statement about reliability. I get it’s part of a cumulative case, but a bunch of bad arguments don’t make one good cumulative case. So personally I would just let this one go. If you have a good cumulative case this argument won’t make it better by adding it.
@@dillanklapp Well said my friend and I do agree with you. I guess all I would say is, that its not as much an argument for miracles/the resurrection, it is necessary for any belief in miracles/the resurrection. It is less an argument and more a prerequisite. If the gospels were littered with inaccuracies that suggests they were written much later by individuals that knew nothing of the times/places/people/customs surrounding when the real events were to take place. In that case we could not base any belief off of them, or trust them as honest accurate reports. So yes I agree, not a great argument and doesn't add much to the cumulative case, but I see it as necessary to use the gospels for pretty much anything. What are your thoughts on that? Thanks for the good conversation.
@@christian11111 I feel like it may be unfair to require it as a prerequisite like that. I was challenged when Eric said if inaccuracies are evidence against Christianity than accurate details have to be evidence for it. I don’t think these type of accuracies are good evidence so to be consistent I shouldn’t put too much stock in the inaccuracies either. Genuinely conflicted on this. Personally I think the birth accounts in Mathew and Luke are contradictory and not historical. Specifically I don’t believe the census actually happened or would have been carried out that way. I also don’t believe Herod decreed to kill all the new born children. Even mike licona admits that many details in the Gospels like the sky going dark or the saints being raised by the dead are not historical. I think there is good evidence that these claims in the gospel are false. But I don’t think these claims being false debunks Christianity or counts against Jesus raising from the dead. It could be true that these claims are false and Jesus still raised. So intuitively it seems like getting small details right or wrong adds to their credibility but I guess I’m trying to separate the claims out and not require an unfair prerequisite if I’m not willing to admit getting small details right is evidence for the supernatural. Still thinking it through though. But simultaneously I do think extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. I think supernatural claims do carry a higher burden then statements like I have a pet cat. So maybe there is a dissymmetry here where that evidence isn’t good enough to prove a supernatural claim but the inconsistencies could still count against it. And likewise thanks for the convo! I know that’s a lot but would love to hear your thoughts on that.
The Spider-Man fallacy, if accepted as true, becomes a universal acid against all written material. Anything presented as fact can just be dismissed and the historical consistency and accuracy of the writer doesn’t matter. Any modern biography can be dismissed. Any historical work can be dismissed, any scientific paper can be dismissed. So what if rows 1-55 in your data table are accurate, it has no bearing on whether row 56 is accurate. I can just dismiss it by saying Lol Spider-Man. Just another case of the skeptic-meter turned to 11 for the Bible.
“But it’s a scientific paper!” Lol appeal to genre.
“They wrote their instead of there” lol dismiss the whole paper as a fabrication
“The paper was attributed to Dr. W” lol other editors might have changed it or the journal only attributes it to him.
“The paper was published in English” lol Dr W speaks Hindi he could never have written in in English.
Their arguments against the Bible erode all human knowledge when applied consistently to other areas. That’s why I don’t take them seriously.
Brilliantly put
Dr. W is a W example name for sure
You know theres a difference between attribution of authorship to an ancient text is different than attribution of authorship by a public and contemporary scientific press that you can contact, right?
Well said! This kind of reasoning, if useful, would destroy historical knowledge writ large
@@Greyz174 what if the author of the paper is lying and it was ghost written?
You missed a golden opportunity to use the Tobey Maguire screaming "NOOOO!" meme in your refutation.
"Heads I win, tails you lose." Yes. That is exactly the way he was arguing. Great video.
The BEST rebuttal to Spiderman is that Spiderman has multiple conflictng versions of the stories that cross different eras and ages. They're MUCH more like pagan stories where the key detains mutate. Also, Spiderman says its fiction. And it does NOT give the same level of location detail. Where did that robbery he stopped take place? Why is that police station fictional? Why is it referencing fake events that are huge? Why does nobody believe it at the time, and why is Jesus backed up external sources from the time but Spiderman not?
In a lose sense you can at least say the Spiderman comics can be used as a cultural reference for any historian analyzing it 300 years from now. In the same way we can use pottery, furniture, poetic writings and paintings, to analyze cultures that are no longer with us (i.e. Rome)
Also it has many more things that are provably wrong, like a giant green demon possessed goblin flying around on a metal saucer terrorizing NYC... oh wait that was Governor Andrew Cuomo
@@vohloo9797 the biggest issue with the Spiderman fallacy IMO is the fact that if it was fiction, people wouldn't have believed it bc who would believe in a god, who was a jewish carpenter, who was then crucified and they say he came back from the dead. If they wouldn't have had proof I would honestly laugh my ### off at such a story and tell them that's a good one. If it was fiction, people would have noticed or not believed it bc it's so stupid. And if it was Seen as fiction, when did it transition from fiction to historical beliefs. Along with that let's not Also forget the fact that there was a constant flow of information talking about Jesus Christ like he was real and even the biggest early skeptics of Rome didn't refute, that he did miracles and that he was real.
Because "atheist" is another word for scoffer nowadays.
@@inukithesavage828 My favorite example are the multiple explanations of who shot JFK. Imagine the historians 2000 yrs. from now trying to prove that it actually happened with all the different, contradictory claims of how it happened.
Then add up the other individuals who died in similar ways within the same period of time (from the future historians' POV): Lincoln, JFK, RFK, & MLK. The parallels between Lincoln's death and JFK's have been remarked upon. What will future historians make of those? Just as skeptics do today, they'll try to pass them all of as Cultural Mythology.
Kind of a weird comparison considering we have video of Stan Lee detailing how he came up with Spider-Man and never once does he claim that Spider-Man is a real historical person
It seems we have more background information about the authorship of Spiderman than we do about the biblical authors.
Do we even know who they are?
@@SkepticalMantisCHANNEL10 We have the names of the authors, their professions, their stories of how they knew Jesus or how their sources knew Jesus, character witness accounts of the authors (to the point that we know they died painful and torturous deaths without recanting), as well as a lack of any competing claims of authorship. We don't have as many details as we have of Stan Lee, but neither do we have as much detail about, say, Xenophon. We obviously have an advantage with Stan Lee being in our era, and if we demand that level of background information we will have to throw out everything we know of ancient history, medieval history, the renaissance, and even a ton of the industrial revolution. On the other hand, I don't even need any details on Stan Lee or the making of Spiderman to know Spiderman is fiction, because the comics are stated to be fiction right in their pages.
Now, how much do we need to know about the authors of the Gospels before it is reasonable to think they were written as genuine histories by people involved in the events or on behalf of such people?
You're missing the point of the analogy.
@@Whatsisface4 Yes we do.
@@Whatsisface4 Your incredulity is not an argument.
Kicking a dead horse at its finest.
Edit: “The Spider-Man fallacy should be more dead than Peter Park’s uncle Ben,” 😂 you didn’t have to do Peter like that.
The trend in the UA-cam Atheist Echo-chamber is to misrepresent apologist's arguments so that it makes the creator's argument seem like a big "gotcha". The reality is that it tends to just be click bait for that camp and they don't have to present opponents' arguments honestly, because they know their viewers won't actually pay any attention to the other side. This isn't an error; it's an intentionally misleading representation to make sure they get subscribers and viewers.
@@dachristiangamer I share your view, it is unreasonable to ponder the same subject every day and never come to a conclusion. So let me challenge you to consider this fact from your opponents' point of view: the evidence doesn't seem convincing to them, and when they hear stories about talking snakes, floods, towers, sun's stopping in the sky, dead people walking back into Jerusalem, etc. they don't want to wade through immense amounts of apologetics to try to explain and harmonize the bible stories. It seems almost elitist to ask the average person to be so studious. Yet they are damned to hell for their unbelief because they were satisfied with thinking these are just stories and not interested in studying theology or apologetics.
@@dachristiangamer You wrote a lot, which seems to mean you have thought a lot about this. Thanks for taking the time to do that. At this point, you and I disagree. I have read a lot on both sides, but I tend to agree with evolutionists because to me it seems more consistent with the evidence. In your opinion, I would assume I am wrong. Assuming I am just trying to make sense of all this information, should I be damned to hell for all eternity for coming to a different conclusion than you?
@@dachristiangamer It sounds convincing to those who believe, but can you step outside that for a minute and consider that to those who don't already believe expect it to mean what it plainly says? Should everyone who doesn't have this belief and who can't read Greek or study apologetics go to hell?
@@dachristiangamer I an not a scientist, so I won't waste time refuting your points with my opinion. I read a lot of science, and I think you are misinterpreting what has been established. If you are satisfied with your current understanding of evolutionary science, it's not my job to change your mind. But I would like to know how you explain the existence of endogenous retroviruses and Chromasone 2 apart from evolutionary processes.
Amen! So true
So the extra-biblical content such as Josephus' writings should be regarded as fiction as well because we weren't there, so how could we know? The spider-man fallacy is such a bad argument, I thought atheists were supposed to be the "intellectuals"
It seems consistency isn't a commodity for them.
Atheism is a highly emotional ideology, you never once hear of an Atheist who says "The evidence in favor of Atheism convinced me" not a single one will tell you that. They will all point to issues they take with Theism.
If you can't tell why that shows Atheism is pure emotion, let me set it up simply. Between two metaphysical positions, one we will call "X" and the other "Y", if we have tons of evidence for X and X has explanatory power but also some counter evidence for X, do we then accept Y? Obviously not, because Y has no evidence, no explanatory power, which means anything with either evidence or explanatory power are by default more likely to be true.
To use a more practical example, imagine Hannibal crossing the alps. We have evidence for it in the form of attestation from his enemies, but we could say that we have counter evidence due to the logistical problem of doing so never being solved by anyone. So naturally a totally rational person would look at the counter evidence, and conclude nothing at all happened. Of course this would be absurd, the explanation that Hannibal crossed the alps is most likely, but even rejecting it the attestation makes it clear something happened, such that nothing happening is absurd.
Atheism is the emotional ideology that because someone doesn't like *insert some form of Theism* that they must accept something that has no evidence or explanatory power. There is a reason why even the Deist insisted that Atheism is nothing more than intellectual drivel.
Paulogia should stick to the cartoon; I could see the tears well up as he hears how easy his spiderman analogy is to debunk. Something most people don't realize, but in order to appeal to the spiderman fallacy, the speaker assumes a state of illiteracy, that they don't know there are different genres or how to differentiate between them. If there was any legitimacy to the spiderman fallacy, then the Romances of Alexander should be considered historically accurate.
@@dachristiangamer I saw his video “refuting” the resurrection of Jesus. I didn’t realize how unconfident he was of his argument 😂 his face betrays a lot
That's exactly what I was thinking. Historical fiction wasn't even a genre at that time.
Testify knocks out Bible skeptics with yet another banger!
Every time I hear this I can’t help but wonder what other historical character we can apply this logic to.
Exactly. I care less that they would agree with me, than they would be consistent.
Some UA-camr does the skits "I'm an a-Lincolnist; Abraham Lincoln wasn't real, if you think about it. Let's break this down..." It's really funny.
@@fridge3489 I can’t find it, whats the name?
I'm fine with applying this logic to any other historical character because I approach historical characters with something between indifference and mild interest. Christians approach Jesus with a very different mindset.
@@UnconventionalReasoningformer atheist here, your wrong. And it only works if you assume what we are doing here is pure I BELIEVE SO we are litterraly comparing jesus to other historical figures, litterraly paulogia says well its different because its super natural ! It can be boiled down to that, its literraly being intelectual disonest, and some times he appeals to well it should be this way instead to be absolutely true, thus making criteries if applied to 9/11 no fireman would be an actual martyr or sacrifice, its like dude cmon what world you live in? If i applied the same criteria to anything ever i could "disprove" The whole world, and the only way to prove ir true us with a time machine and witnessing it, but it would be also proof of nothing, even apllying those criterias because he will say ofc i hallucinated! Time machines dont work, what is he gonna do next? Flat earth apologism?
"I believe that the stories of spiderman were written closer to the year 2200 rather than the 1960s."
"Actually, there are many locations and people who would be relevant to the late 20th and early 21st centuries, so it's safe to say that the stories of spiderman *were* written in the 1960s."
Spider-Man comics also include a TON of other fictional material.
The Daily Bugle, Oz Corp, specific types of technologies that couldn’t exist and STILL have not been developed yet. Not to mention MAJOR crimes that would be recorded in the annals of history through more reputable documents that aren’t comic books. Let’s also include the number of fictional characters and organizations of political significance. Different US Presidents, fictional nations, fictional wars, etc.
The Spider-Man analogy is absurd in every way.
@@authenticallysuperficial9874 hmmm.....I smell the rotting corpse of David Hume
@@authenticallysuperficial9874
Earthquake can definitely be a natural phenomena
Thallus in 50 AD reported the darkness at the time of the crucifixion though he insisted the timing was accidental and was natural phenomena
When atheists portray Matthew's account on saints rising in Jerusalem they misrepresent it in the manner of a World War Z scenario
No, what Matthew is most likely reporting is an undetermined number of recently passed godly saints rising from the dead and interacted with locals who didn't necessarily know them personally and the reason there appears to be a lack of extra biblical mention is because informations weren't spreading quickly and not many may have known about it
@@authenticallysuperficial9874 Surely you're not ignoring the VAST difference in the way people used to keep information and the availability of those ways. Are you really lowering your intellect to make this dumb argument work or do you really not see a problem with it?
And historical novels did not exist to be distributed and read to common people then. Writing a historical narrative meant to be read as fiction in Rome or Nazareth in 50 A. D. doesn't seem to make much sense. Dying by torture rather than admit you wrote fiction seems even more unlikely.
The contradictions of rulers are so strong, none of the early opponents to Christianity, who lived in the Roman Empire and outlawed the religion mentioned them? See, argument from silence goes both ways. For the record, that new objection about contradictions has been answered hundreds of times.
He doesn't accept the gospels because they were written 40 years after the events? When something has impacted your life in such a tangible way, you're going to remember in detail. I guess this guy doesn't appreciate memoirs and other historical documents written about people in the past 🤷🏼♀️
If he admitted that the analogy was faulty, then why does he use it? My brain hurts.
Because it’s catchy enough for midwits to blindly repeat.
@@TheTendermen Atheism is founded by emotion, and new Atheism just applies fallacious reasoning to it.
When atheists try to invent childish arguments against the existence of Jesus, I kindly remind them the same theories can be applied toward the existence of their own grandparents.
The "Strawder-Man Fallacy" is when someone uses the Spider-Man analogy to debunk arguments noone ever makes, like "it contains verifiable details therefore the unverifiable details must be reliable no matter what".
The "Scarecrow Fallacy" if you will.
They do seem determined to misunderstand our arguments at times, don't they?
Bottom line, its a silly analogy: comic books don't claim to be true, in fact quite the contrary. It is a very unserious rhetorical device. I honestly can't fathom how its survived this long.
The fact that Paul of all people is even using this argument shows just how terrible atheist arguments really are against Christian belief. Even what I was an agnostic I could see the problem with the use of this argument and especially the way that Paul particularly uses it. It's fallacious on both sides of its assumptions. This is why Christians all need to think these arguments through and not just accept that atheists have actually taken time to conceptualize these things properly to their fullest extent.
@Zheng Fuukusheng Destroyer of religions that's quite an irrational standard you have sir. You do know that Paul was himself a high pharisee named Saul prior to his conversion right? These are his own words. The only people contesting the validity of his words are only very recently. It seems to me like you have no problem with eye witness testimony until the person claims something that you don't agree could ever happen. That's a personal issue rather than an issue with the historical data.
@Zheng Fuukusheng Destroyer of religions when you have 2 witnesses or more to any event you can infer that where their testimony overlaps that the event played out as much. It appears that you are not dealing in the realm of historical science but in speculation and cynicism rather than skepticism. We have Roman authorities who wrote about many of the same things these individuals wrote about. They at the very least confirm that they existed and that they believed what they said because of their willingness to die for said belief. You need to rethink your epistemology concerning these accounts because by your standard we could never trust anything ever written even in scientific journals. After all, you and I are not the ones conducting these experiments and therefore cannot ever reproduce what is written in their accounts. Please stop undermining your position for your own sake.
@@pigzcanfly444 facts dude. I don’t think this zheng guy has a conscience any more he has fed himself lies for so long, it probably exploded
@ramigilneas9274 your statements are patently false. It's a known fallacy to use fiction and equivocation it with historical events that were written down. You do realize that all of history is based upon testimony, and the vast majority of it isn't even from eye witnesses, right? So, if we can accept it for the rest of history, then we can accept it in the case of the gospels whose veracity has surpassed all historical documentation by far. If you can not understand the problem, then it may just be you.
I can’t believe you had to make an entire video about this…
I think this is one of your best videos in a while (that’s not to say your other recent videos have not been good). It’s just that this one was very satisfying because it got to the heart of what makes the Spider-Man fallacy such a weak and unconvincing argument. Great job!
"The Spiderman fallacy should be more dead than Peter Parker's Uncle Ben." LOL
In the future people aren't even going to know what a fallacy is, let a lone a Spider-Man fallacy. We sure will know what glazed dounuts are Toy Story 15 are though!
The fact is that the NT accounts for all the data we see in the historical record and no other hypothesis yet has. But for some reason I'm supposed to defer to other ad hoc hypotheses? No thanks.
Uncle Ben!! 😢
Too soon, man
Not to mention the'fact that 'Spider-Man' is PRESENTED, REGARDED, and CALLED *'FICTION'* ALL the bleeding TIME..... 🙄😏
“Heads I win, tails you lose” Is Paulogias entire business model.
Another great video! I've been thinking about making a video analyzing one of Paulogia's videos myself. I love how easily you disassemble the view and explain why it's flawed and then do a concise recap at the end.
It is amazing when adults men and women say stupid things like comparing biblical historical facts with fiction.
Their stupidity is intolerable.
Great video once again!
As a Christian who loves the Spiderman comics, I'm kinda upset to see them being used to "debunk" Christianity like this.
Glad to see the debunking be debunked, though.
Well Stan Lee wasn't a European, if you get my meaning...
Peter Parker himself was a Christian, according to the Comics
6:04 totally underrated point that I find very convincing, the Spiderman fallacy feels like a damage control tactic, why can’t skeptics just argue on other grounds against the reliability of the Gospels instead of denying the basic reality that we have incredible documents in our hands that have marks of truth all over them???
Very good point
@@adamcosper3308 Ok so the synoptic problem is enough evidence for you to dismiss what exactly? The EVIDENCE of the content of the Gospels is quite impressive in my epistemic view. If you would like to elaborate, tell me how they are not good enough for your epistemic standard of truth and reliability.
@@adamcosper3308 give specific examples.
@@adamcosper3308 you should go into the Olympics the way you dodged that question.
@@adamcosper3308 Ahhh so you dont even care about the truth signs of the Gospels because you just a priori assume they are false due to your metaphysical commitments…looks like we are done here.
The point, it seems to me, is that the details in the Gospels are merely evidence of authorship by people who knew the time and place intimately. The details in Spiderman prove that Stan Lee knows New York City.
It’s so exhaustive that Paulogia really doesn’t see his error in using the Spider-Man fallacy. At like 10:28 he says, “it’s simply to say, that if you think because it gets names and places right, the stories must be true, I think that’s why it works” it’s like, no one is saying that?? In fact apologists aren’t even remotely close to claiming that. It’s simply just to say, this is evidence that the gospel writers were likely very close to the facts, even eye witnesses, and this is what they’re claiming actually happened. Of course that doesn’t mean this is proof that the claims are true. But it’s an evidential chip in favor of christianity, specifically of the reliability and eye witness nature of the gospels. I just don’t get why that’s so hard to grasp.
well said.
I think that is the problem for Paulogia though. He said that he presents a view that the accounts were embellished over time into legend. I think it is hard to keep that view and admit that the historical details are right there next to the miracles.
@Zheng Fuukusheng Destroyer of religions in case you didn't know this papyrus was very difficult to come by back then and it took weeks to make by hand. Only knowledgeable people skilled in doing such would have done so let alone write because not many people were educated in writ. We would expect someone like Luke a physician and historian to be able to. We would expect Matthew the Tax collector to be able to and of course Paul who was once a high pharisee to be trained on this. It's also possible that the method was taught and passed to John or he grew up in such circumstances that he knew how to do it himself. The 500 witnesses were contemporary and obviously christianity spread like wildfire across the Roman empire during a period when people had every reason to reject it unless what was written about it was true. Can you point to a single religion that has survived massive persecution to its original followers that has survived to this day? I'm not aware of any. Can you explain how so many people concluded that Jesus was God, including his mother and half-brother James? What would it take to convince you that your family member was God in the flesh? Please think more carefully about this than it appears you have.
@@zhengfuukusheng9238 it’s almost comical that you could comment such a thing.
Could I have the contact details of Alexander the Great’s Greek soldiers? I’d like to interview them myself, oh I can’t interview them?? They must not have existed.
^^ that’s what your comment sounds like
I completely agree that using the apocrypha is a much better comparison! Great job, Erik! 💪
Ironically by using this argument they are proving the Bible is true where by proclaiming to be wise they became fools.
Spider-Man is a stated fiction. It's written in a fictional genre. But most importantly, there's so much counter-evidence against Marvel Comics being an accurate representation of reality that it's not a comparable situation to the Gospels.
Also, as Erick points out, the particulars of the situations are important here. Spider-Man authors referring to a well-known fact like New York's existence doesn't mean much, unlike the subtle historical confirmations of the Gospels. And the motive is different. The Gospels were written as tools of evangelism in a context where they could have been easily refuted. A better comparison would be to something like the "Hitler Diaries" which ended up being exposed for the fraud it was in a relatively short time.
Sorry, when you put up Toby Macguire on the screen, I laughed so much I had to rewind the video to catch what you actually said 😂
Nice one Testify, another straw-hair man defeated 🤙
Bottom line getting those mundane historical details correct lends to the timeliness and credibility of the New Testament and its authors, not count against - as they try in vain to do.
Paulogia can't even get the basic facts right like the dating of the writing of the Gospels, why does he think he has anything of substance to say?
wait I know this is tongue in cheek so i don't know how serious you are on all of this, but do you think the dating of the gospels is a basic fact?
@@Greyz174 the basic time period is a fact. From whatever decade to whatever decade. 🤷♂
@@Swiftninjatrev what basic time period are you referring to? do you mean the 70s for Mark, 80s for Matthew, etc?
@@Greyz174 I left it blank cuz I don't remember at the moment lol. But if that's the dates historians talk about yes.
@@Swiftninjatrev okok, if you're on the same page about what most historians say then yeah and Paul isn't wrong because he's going with the consensus here. looks like the original commenter is saying he's wrong though, I was wondering if he thinks it's obvious they were written before or something
The Spider-man fallacy is one of those that immediately falls when you think about it for a bit. First of all, the genres are different, one is being passed off as a historical biography the other as fiction. Spider-man's contents while having some elements grounded reality have far more fictitious elements where our non oral culture would have recorded them as newspapers, videos, books etc. Also outside material for NT confirms SOME historical aspects of the material, (e.g. Romans confirming the crucifixion, Jewish sources claiming that Jesus learned magic in Egypt), while outside material for spider-man all show that it is a deliberate work of fiction.
A better analogy would be historical fiction, as a writer would want to ground their story in history, however the surrounding context of the work would still show its fiction. Unless somehow all documentation about the work are lost to time, which is unlikely.
It's so nonsensical, especially when you consider that the person that CREATED the stories existed during our life time and that in every comic book ever made there is the credits of the people that comprised it. Essentially making it so that we can obviously say it's a work of fiction.
As you said there is historicity for the existence of Jesus in different historical sources, that prove his influence was so great that he had a multitude of people following him and the people that knew him/believed in him were willing to risk their lives so other people learned of his message. Even non christian sources talk about his miracles, though attributing it to magic, since they don't want say it's from his divinity. At best what you can say about the web slinger is that they are great stories that talk about the human condition, but the writing can easily be attributed to Stan Lee or whoever wrote that issue/run.
@Voh Loo yeah exactly, I don't understand how skeptics don't see this.
Some people are always going to argue that if it involves a miracle or something supernatural then no amount of evidence or accounts or logic or reasoning will ever suffice. And, I can't say that's a totally insane position. It isn't really. Which makes my next point even more salient: why do these people make an entire career or persona around not believing in something? It's so odd to spend so much of your life and your thinking life on stating in 1,000 different ways how and why you don't believe something. It's so strange. Even when they don't believe in it, they still have to have it in their lives. Kind of telling.
Ad hominem.
But interesting question, most of them see christianity as a kinda hurtfull ideology and are fighting a cultural battle, it has a lot of power over peoples lives, others have more personal reasons againts christianity and because its a hot topic that gets a lot of views (it applies to both sides). But still funny, something that you dont see as truthful to play such a big role in your life...in my case, i consume a lot of this class of theological and skeptic content because i am very skeptic my self but it's still very dificult to drop something as influential in my life and enviorioment as christianity, i just dont want to blindly believe or not believe... probably just my undecisive personality...
I find it interesting that atheists will often argue that people from New Testament times were easily fooled into believing miracles and did not fact check the gospel writers. But then why did Luke, etc. take the time to get all of these trivial details right? This is generally the way I present the argument. Paulogia is misrepresenting how Christians use this argument...a strawman logical fallacy.
But even if you use the specific names & places as your case in 2000 years no one will find any evidence for JJ, MJ, & PP (Peter Parker). But there is evidence for the characters in the gospels.
Thank you, brother
Kind regards Kim
7:52 "While there was fiction, it was often crudely written."
_Shows Homer's Iliad_
There are many things you can say about the Iliad. "Overly dramatic" could even be argued. But crudely written? The epic of Troy and Greece spanning 24 books? 15,693 lines in dactylic hexameter? This is crudely written?!
It certainly can't be classed as historical fiction. According to Chat GPT, while Homer's "The Iliad" is a work of epic poetry and mythology, it is not typically categorized as historical fiction in the modern sense. Historical fiction, as a distinct genre, involves the use of historical settings, events, or figures as a backdrop for fictional narratives. The term "historical fiction" is more commonly applied to novels or stories that are specifically created with the intention of blending fictional elements with historical facts.
"The Iliad" is an ancient Greek epic that centers around the mythical events of the Trojan War, featuring gods, heroes, and legendary figures. While it may contain elements inspired by historical events or cultural memories, its primary purpose is not to present a historically accurate account but rather to convey themes, values, and the heroic tradition of ancient Greece.
The concept of historical fiction, as a genre with a deliberate blending of history and fiction, developed much later in literary history. Some consider works like Sir Walter Scott's "Waverley" (1814) or Jane Porter's "Thaddeus of Warsaw" (1803) as early examples of historical fiction in the modern sense. These novels are set in historical contexts and feature fictional characters and events against a backdrop of real historical events.
While "The Iliad" may have historical elements, it is not typically classified as historical fiction because it lacks the intentional blending of historical facts with fictional narrative that characterizes the modern genre.
This was helpful, Erik! Could you make a longer video explaining how a dis-unified or schizophrenic view doesn't make sense? I'm still thinking through this. What's to stop the gospel authors from mixing in nuggets of misinformation knowing that they've been pretty truthful for the most part? Or if you know a good article that covers this, I'd appreciate that too.
I've stated it elsewhere but I'll answer it briefly here. In short, if they're mixing in nuggets of misinformation it's going to be where there are miracles, right? That would be Jesus' resurrection and so forth. Well, if Luke is a traveling companion of Paul's (and I've argued at length that he is) then he must have some sort of willingness to suffer and be persecuted along with Paul. I mean, he's with him during a shipwreck and being chased from town to town. Mark is a companion of Peter, there's like a similar thing going on there as Peter was arrested, beaten, almost killed and eventually martyred. John and Matthew are apostles (and I'm happy to make a case for traditional authorship), and they were called on the carpet by the Jewish leaders and beaten. John's brother James was beheaded. Also the mixing in clever lies is just less unified, and more complicated. It's unlikely that they're going to be willing to suffer for things they know are false.
Misinformation doesn't have to be a conscious lie, they could just be mistaken.
I think that even to take the example of spider man at face value it does help the apologists case because it establishes Stan Lees knowledge of New York from his firsthand experiences of having lived there and being familiar with the setting. This corroborates with the Christian claim that the gospel authors, or their sources were familiar with the region and time that they were writing about.
Idk I’ve always regarded the Spider-Man analogy and others like it as intending to show that an author’s familiarity with the setting of the story (whether firsthand, sources, etc.) doesn’t necessarily indicate familiarity/ accuracy with/ of the details of the story themselves.
I understand the counter is something like “but it should raise our credence with respect to the details,” to which I think the response is “perhaps, but how much?” I certainly grant that someone with knowledge on the details of the story is more likely to have knowledge of the setting, but is someone with knowledge of the setting significantly more likely to have access to accurate narrative details? Especially when we’re talking about a story (at least initially) as eyebrow raising as the gospels from the atheist perspective? I’m not so sure. Probably should go up a little, but not much for someone with the worldview of a non-Christian.
I think this is tangentially related to the point Eric made when eluding to a potential inconsistency in evaluating accuracies v inaccuracies (heads I win, tails you lose). A piece of evidence may count in favor of one position if present, but not count equally against it if absent. An example might be if I said a prayer and Jesus appeared in front my me, shook my hand, and then wrote down a 100 digit decimal expansion of pi. Surely this would be incredible evidence that Christianity is true (at least for the witness), but I don’t think we’d want to say that the fact this did not occur when I said my prayer just now means that Christianity is almost definitely false.
Yeah, but Christians aren't basing their conclusions entirely on these accurate details like many skeptics dishonesty imply. I couldn't make sense of ur pi prayer analogy, but at any rate I doubt that alone would be conclusive either way. The Bible is deemed reliable because of the evidence that is stacked in its favor vs the evidence stacked against it. The documents still stand the test of time, and anti theists 2000 years later are still looking for a silver bullet. Since they can't find one, all they can do is dismiss, which is exactly how they use the spider man fallacy.
@@arcguardian Well the spider-man analogy is intended as a response to appeals to accurate geographical/ cultural/ broad historical details as reason for regarding the gospels as reliable with respect to the Jesus narrative. So if we have independent reasons for trusting this narrative that's fine, but it doesn't really support the idea that the spider-man analogy is flawed. In my experience people seem to think the analogy is meant as a rebutting defeater as opposed to an undercutting defeater. I largely agree with the thrust of the analogy was my only point, whether the gospels are reliable is a separate question.
@@chipperhippo the analogy seems to be completely flawed in this context. To bring it up as something to nullify the credibility of documents listing accurate things seems a bit absurd, seeing as if it were absolutely it would still have to pass those tests lol. Not to mention the genre of scripture, you'd have to assume the Bible was hundreds of years ahead of its time in literature genre, but then again the skeptic is willing to go anywhere that isn't toward God. It's as credible as suggesting the disciples maybe made it up yet were still willing to die for it. The other reasons for why it's flawed in this context are already covered in the video.
@@arcguardian I don't know if you're understanding what I'm saying, as you seem to have done the thing I warned against in my previous message.
Also I think it's just kind of lame to accuse an entire group of people of delusion and/or dishonesty for arriving at a different conclusion than you; just as shallow as asserting the disciples were simply lying imo. I'm just talking about the application of this analogy, idk why you keep bringing up "skeptics" to disparage them.
@@chipperhippo you make a good point here. It all comes down to the way the analogy is applied. The analogy itself is sound, but it has unfortunately been misrepresented and misused to defend a position that was never under attack.
The truth of the supernatural elements of the gospel narratives is not strengthened by the accuracy of the historical detail contained within those narratives. They are part of a standalone category. That's the crux. That's the point of the analogy. It's been blown out of proportion to look like something it was never intended to be.
9:00 the way he so smugly acts as if the late dating hypothesis is fact, in addition with not bothering to find out micheals actual position on the matter (that at least the synoptics were written before 70 A.D)
"This is just a tiny sampler, you can fill up a good sized book with just these."
I see what you did.
Could they have gotten it from oral tradition coming from the area in which they supposedly happened
This is the argument I’m currently dealing with
If they did then it's some rock solid oral tradition that did not let many details slip through. At which point it hardly matters whether It was written right after, or 100 years after, if they're getting all these details right anyways.
If we are taking the entirety of the spiderman series into account, textual criticism would show that spiderman was indeed fiction, even if we didn't have the knowledge that spiderman is intended to be fiction. For example, Kingpin and his businesses in spiderman would not be reflected in business records in NYC (the setting of spiderman) during the time, nor the heavy power draw on the grid when he opened the doorway to the multiverse in Into the Spiderverse. Older Spiderman comics that make mention of the Twin Towers, or the Empire State building being the tallest, would be only applicable at their time, but other spiderman comics set contemporaneously after such locations and information being valid.
"You could fill up a book..." PLEASE DO (or direct me to one that already exists)
check out testimonies to the truth by lydia mcgrew, or can we trust the gospels? by peter j. williams, or living footnotes in st luke by luuk van de weghe
So, anyone willing to die because read Spiderman comic books ?
Are you suggesting that if there were it would somehow make them more true? Is there some connection between the truth and the amount of people willing to die for it? You wouldn’t want to start keeping score with Islam if you are...
@@mookiewilson4166 yup,
So u willing to die for Spiderman comic books ? And why ?
@@insanelogical8996 Sure, I’ll play. Yes, because it’s true, just like Islam. Because as you said, a willingness to die for a belief is a reliable indicator of how true that belief is.
@@mookiewilson4166 and why u don't willing to die for moslem book or Bible if u willing to die for Spiderman comic book ?
Is it mr. Dillahunty argues that Bible or moslem book are same with Spiderman comic book ?
@@insanelogical8996 I am willing to die for Islam, because it’s true. It’s true because there are so many people willing to die for it, like you said.
I wouldnt exactly call the illiad crudely written its not a modern novel but it is really good
Other than that its really good and historians use acts as a historical source all the time.
Hmm, you are wrong. According to Chat GPT, Homer's "The Iliad" is a work of epic poetry and mythology, it is not typically categorized as historical fiction in the modern sense. Historical fiction, as a distinct genre, involves the use of historical settings, events, or figures as a backdrop for fictional narratives. The term "historical fiction" is more commonly applied to novels or stories that are specifically created with the intention of blending fictional elements with historical facts.
"The Iliad" is an ancient Greek epic that centers around the mythical events of the Trojan War, featuring gods, heroes, and legendary figures. While it may contain elements inspired by historical events or cultural memories, its primary purpose is not to present a historically accurate account but rather to convey themes, values, and the heroic tradition of ancient Greece.
The concept of historical fiction, as a genre with a deliberate blending of history and fiction, developed much later in literary history. Some consider works like Sir Walter Scott's "Waverley" (1814) or Jane Porter's "Thaddeus of Warsaw" (1803) as early examples of historical fiction in the modern sense. These novels are set in historical contexts and feature fictional characters and events against a backdrop of real historical events.
While "The Iliad" may have historical elements, it is not typically classified as historical fiction because it lacks the intentional blending of historical facts with fictional narrative that characterizes the modern genre.
Like a thief in the night
He arrives just in time.
Spiderman! Spiderman! ... Here comes the Sliderman!
(I had to add that. Now we can go back to being serious.)
Fallacies, 'fore your eyes,
He's just runs on thin ice,
Sliderman! Sliderman! etc.
Paul really shows a lack of knowledge here with regards to a number of things, not least the qur'an. The qur'an is not a historic document. It is a document of nonsense crap cobbled together in a way that makes no sense. If you actually read it, there is nothing that makes sense and it makes the Gospels look like the amazing work they are.
If you want the history of Islam you have to go to the sunnah and haddith. They are equally bad being a random collection of sayings compiled about 200 years later. Again, the Gospels look absolutely great in comparison.
Perhaps Paul really needs to learn about things before spouting nonsense abiut stuff he clearly does not understand.
Seeing Paul’s face without his cartoon makes him more enjoyable and easier to listen to for some reason lol
I enjoy talking to the guy face to face. He's kind of got a different persona with the cartoon, more edgy. I like the chill Paul better.
This kind of thing is why I have little to no respect for most if not all UA-cam atheists.
Always discussing in bad faith with bad arguments
@@adamcosper3308 Interesting. I don't tend to find it of the ones I watch, but there are definitely some I don't watch specifically because I feel the same way about them as I do about every atheist UA-camr I have come across.
Wouldn't there be evidence that Spider-Man was created by Stan Lee?
SMH my head cognitive dissonance.
IKR right?
@@MatthewFearnley you picking up on my sarcasm isn’t fair since you know who I am 😂
I think the writings of einstine are false. Not because they can be proven incorrect but because spiderman could potentially be interperated in the future as earths history.
the analogy really doesn't make sense and the fact he has to switch to the criminal analogy defeats his main point that the author wasn't contemporary or local to the time and place.
simply put the authors of Spiderman have easy access to data on new York, he is proposing that the authors did not. so yes using the Quran as an analogy would be a sustainably better choice for what he is arguing. heck even Josephus gets facts wrong, facts he lived though but he knew details that only a person who lived though it would have known. yet to my knowledge he nor anyone else really argues that Josephus wasn't a native to Israel, or didn't live though the revolt. But it would make much more sense for him to argue that the Gospels were written by people who lived though those events but are propagandistic in nature.
I feel like the easiest way to debunk this is just how the apostles died.
Really, why would the apostles let themselves be burned, skinned, boiled, stoned, etc for their superhero? Would Stan Lee let himself be skinned alive for spiderman?
I have that exact Bible shown on the left in the thumbnail. It’s the Douay Rheims translation.
0:06 out of concern I have to ask; Is Paulogia transitioning?
Glory To The Triune God
The Spider-Man argument only works if they had a couple years of issues--assuming future historians view all fiction like the aliens in Galaxy Quest--because otherwise, it would be very simple to point out that he's a teenager for years, then a twenty-year-old for decades, then a teenager again.
Let's talk about the facts we don't have. We don't know where the tomb is, nor can we find it from the stories in the new testament. We don't see miracles happening on camera, ever, but we have plenty of stories from around the world of heroes in the past doing these kinds of things. What seems to be the only thing common between them? The ability to convince people of fascinating stories? Do you think that people did not sincerely believe in Zeus? Or the Aztec gods? The spider man comparison is not about setting tropes, or those tropes being right, its about the insistence by the Christians that this story cannot be fictional. Well, all the setting details being right are equally useful to a historian, and a con man, so they cannot be evidence that this is a historical claim.
What we can compare is the mythical things allegedly happening via "miracles", and say, there is zero contemporary witness accounts offered by a non religiously motivated person that can attest to any of these claims, miraculous or not. We have a man Paul who is admittedly "advanced beyond his years in the knowledge of the scriptures" who is in a position to combine the ideas of the cultures that have dominated them, with his own. In a time period where mystery religions were popping up, because there was an audience for these ideas. When I read Paul describing himself, it makes me think of that kid in school who is wicked smart and does not want to wait for his own grey beard to be an authority on things. Seems to me just the kind of guy that would do the L Ron Hubbard thing and have a miraculous revelation. The fact that Paul does not refer to the events in the Gospels regularly should be a concern. If they are later tropes added, this is problematic. The fact they get increasingly mythical, and seem to address problems in previous writings kind of damns the claim these are independent witnesses.
The Spider Man analogy suffices here. You have details about the setting that are irrelevant as we expect them in fiction and history. We have claims of miracles that happen off camera, and are not recorded by any other source. Seems to me, you Christians want it both ways. You want to say there is this entity that manufactured the cosmos, and ID demands that it be this particular being. Then you let it off the hook for being such an inefficient communicator it has to use the same trappings as those used by con men before and since.. Who get to make up religious stories and pose themselves as representatives because they had a revelation or "speak" for the gods.
The things needed for this to be history, just are not there.
Pauls conversion to Christianity after years of hunting Christians is a miracle itself and a contemporary source highlighting the validity of the faith by one of its oppressors
@@rayzas4885 Is there any evidence of this other than his say so? What if he not only made up a story, but made up a story of his being a persecutor to make his transformation sound more magnificent? Why does Paul get special exemption from this criticism when you happily apply it to Mohammed and Joseph Smith?
@@TaylorWalstonhow many resource for Muhammad and Joseph Smith ? And how about Alexander the great?
@@insanelogical8996 you are not contradicting my point. My question is why be fully skeptical of them making up religious messages and NOT Paul? To say Paul oppressed others, do we have anything other than his say so? Do we have letters from the Christians he oppressed saying why are you listening to him, he killed my auntie? No, we have his say so, and he happens to be the one claiming spirits were speaking to him. How is he any different than Mohammed and Joseph Smith as far as the claims of revealed knowledge?
@@TaylorWalston so do u mean we need letter from christian who Been oppresed by Paul to validate Paul conversion ?
//1:08 "... because everyone knows that Ironman is a fictional character ..."//
In 500 years though, many people might be claiming that Ironman was a real character while many others may deny it. If the supporters of 'real character' Ironman in that 500 year future claim that the use of real names, real dates, and real places are evidences for the reality of Ironman, then the deniers in that future time will point to fictional literature of their own day in 500 years time to make the obvious point. The obvious point will be that real names, dates and places mean nothing, and they will point to the fictional literature of their own time to demonstrate that this is so.
In both fiction and non fiction, real names, places and dates are easily used, just as in both fiction and non fiction, false names, dates and places can be used.
The deniers are simply showing how real names, places and dates can be useless as evidence when context is not considered.
Intellectually “schizophrenic” is a great way to describe the anti-eyewitness textual criticism: the author of Luke-Acts is simultaneously
1) so careful to align his account with much earlier, widely circulated Pauline epistles and the other Synoptics, while also
2) so incredibly careless and ignorant of Paul/Mark as to allow so many readily apparent (supposed) “contradictions.” Which is it? Are these guys copying from each other decades later (and thus with access to the epistles + Mark & possibly Matthew) to make their stories line up OR are their independent accounts laden with inconsistencies such that we must doubt all of them and everything in them? It can’t really be both.
(it seems to me that skeptics like to combine the negative implications of both views without acknowledging the implicit contradictions and conflicting implications on early dating, extent of independence, etc. IMO #2 is the stronger skeptic’s view. It’s just that in that case you do have to grant that these are independent, pretty darn early lines of data from different places telling, *at least almost* entirely the same story, implying much greater levels of historicity than the easier but weaker “they made it all up decades/a century later” view.)
I liked this video, but Testify you seem to make one big error here about 4:40 in. You say that "you're not saying that because the Gospel authors got a lot of difficult things right that therefore the miracles are true. That definitely would be silly." And then the funny clip saying "Ah, nobody says that". Love that clip btw. So maybe YOU'RE not saying that, but I hear it a lot. There are definitely A LOT of Christians out there that say that exact thing. A lot of them. To say "nobody says that" is to completely ignore why the Spiderman analogy is used in the first place. It's used for these people. And you seem to agree that it's a good argument against people who say that. You're simply just denying that there are Christians that say that.
And that is simply not true. I know I only use it against people who say that. And contrary to what you say there are a lot of them. I have no doubt that there are atheists out there that misuse the Spiderman analogy. Probably a lot of them. But for you to claim that there are NO Christians out there that use the factual things in the Bible as evidence for the miraculous things is just being disingenuous. Atheists can make mistakes here, but "nobody" on your side does. This is where your argument fails here.
Thank you for responding to the analogy video.
Can you make a video on how exactly the early church navigated the different theological decisions? For example the unitarian view vs trinity, there were early debates on both sides.
Paulogia - enough said. His arguments are so bad that I can barely make it through half of one of his videos without getting thoroughly disgusted. I leave comments with timestamps calling him out, and he never responds. Only his faithful trolls barf their typical name calling, etc.
Right. The entire point of these videos is not "because of these historical details the Gospels are completely true" but rather "this particular argument that the Gospels aren't credible because they were written decades later doesn't hold water.
It's kind of like how Thor Heyerdahl sailed across the pacific on an ancient-Peruvian-make raft to prove ancient Peruvians could have populated Polynesia. His theory wasn't completely correct, but not for the reason of Peruvians COULDN'T have make the voyage.
The thing is Spider Man was made by one person that's favorable to him. While King Jesus' existence was proven by even those who are not Christians like Josephus and Tacitus
To say that people in 2000 years have less information about our time so they can confuse spiderman with being real is wild. That's intending that in 2000 years there is no internet, no comic left over or any other account of information that confirm spiderman is fiction
Let's take a neutral look at this.
For example the book Dracula.
Much of what is written is historically true. The people the cuisine, the geography.
This is all done to make us suspend disbelief about Dracula.
But it's all backwards. In terms of belief, there is only one item. Dracula or vampires in general.
We have to focus on the burden of proof. What physical evidence is there that Dracula is real?
And of course zero hard evidence. No vampires to examine, or vampire bones, etc.
Thats the point of Spiderman example. No amount of background detail helps when it comes to proving amazing claims.
Ironically Atheists arguing for an infinite multiverse to refute fine tuning DOES imply spider man in some tiny tiny portion of them. Also pink unicorns in some of them...and since we can't see these other universes Atheist's are thus proving the existence of Invisible Pink Unicorns with this supposed rebuttal against fine tuning.
Never thought of it that way
@@grubblewubbles Not surprising. The polemics of Atheism requires two distinct systems of Epistemology. One system to debunk what they don't like and in this system they can use absurd techniques like appeals to multiverses to explain observations in this universe. But the other system is just to assume they are right for being the "null hypothesis". If any grounds is asked them they will appeal to bucket 1 to debunk alternatives.
...oh forgot to bring my point home. Its not surprising because we are used to only Atheists using such absurd kinds of arguments. But it is a fun game to use their own system of debunking on them.
Coming back to this comment, I realized an issue. If there are infinite multiverses, then Spiderman or unicorns wouldn't exist in a "tiny portion" of them, because you can't take a portion out of infinity (i.e infinity-10= infinity). They would just exist in a vast number of them. Minor nitpick about the wording
@@grubblewubbles Suppose there was a Hilbert's Casino next to Hilbert's Hotel. In this casino a black jack dealer shuffles an infinite number of decks together. You are at his black jack table and get a king and a queen such that you are at 20. Would you take another hit because there are an infinite number of aces or would you stay at 20 because those aces are only a small portion of the cards left to deal?
Thank you for making these videos! It seems like Paulogia and his comrades make their arguments in a bubble, ignoring the mountains of actual evidence and the CONTEXT of Christianity (Hebrew and Greek law, culture, etc.)
@@adamcosper3308 we can agree to disagree, but honestly, most of what we believe is so distorted and twisted to fit the assumption that we Christians are so dumb and you Atheists/Agnostic are so super smart. We are not the brain numbed idiots we are portrayed in most movies and TV shows (Righteous Gemstones, Big Bang Theory, even The Last of Us ep 1). While I may watch and even enjoy some of these shows it is VERY CLEAR that Atheists/Agnostics have no idea why we believe so they resort to insults and mischaracterizations. Hey, we Christians can do this as well with some of our lame movies when we portray non-Christians as 1 dimensional "sinners" with no redeeming values.
Eric, idk if you've already talked about this, but are there any counter-apologists or skeptics you have respect for? People not like Ehrman, Paulogia, Genetically Damaged Skeptic, etc
Ay look is that Meme in the intro.
So when the gospels get it right, its suspicious, when they get it wrong, theyre unreliable... Talk about an open mind
"Heads I win, tails you lose"
Christians claim the bible is inspired by the most powerful being in all of existence... Yet his words are not inerrantly preserved and needs apologists who by the way disagree with each other to defend it... I can confidently say that no other book in the history of civilization has caused as much confusion as the bible.
Idk if you take video requests, but I'd love one about non-resistant non-believers.
If I looked like Paulogia I would be an atheist too. Poor guy.
please don't insult the people whose I am criticizing.
Wow this was funny. Clever insult. Ik it's wrong but this was great
Funny, but if the atheist multiverse theory is true, then maybe there is a universe with Spider-Man in it.
Another thing to point out, is that Legends and myths form and evolve over hundreds of years. Even if we go with the latest dating of the Gospels, that would put them around 40 years after the events... That timespam is hardly enough to allow some myths and legends to develop in such a rich and detailed way. And if we go with the conservative dating of the Gospels, such as Mark being written only around 20 years after the events, the odds of everything being just a legend become even less likely.
Using these criteria an atheist would have to discount every single other historical sources existence. Just say rewrite history so often in their own heads, I wonder if that's the goal. Never assume someone who uses the Spider-Man analogy is arguing in good faith.
The only way the spider man situation would be = the gospel is, if people said: Stan Lee most likely didn't exist, didn't live in New York, and wrote spider man 60 years after its publication.
0:00, 0:07, 0:08, 0:12, 3:51 Spiderman Fallacy*
Why don't the apocryphal writings steal facts from the Gospels?
Because people weren’t writing thinking, “Man, I sure need to include accurate details from the first century so that people almost 2,000 years in the future will be fooled into thinking that I was writing in the first century!” Rather, they were writing to make theological points. The point is that they were simply writing from what they knew. Thus, while the pseudepigraphical writings betray their late date via their lack of accurate knowledge of the 1st-century Meditteranean world and more specifically the culture and geography of 1st-century Judea and Galilee, the canonical Gospel authors betray accurate knowledge of meticulous details of that subject matter. At the very least, that paints a picture of the canonical Gospel authors as men who lived in the first century and as men who knew enough to report accurate information about the area and time period.
11:10 You are leaving out that satire actually does mime history.
Lucian whom you mentioned was in fact a satirist.
When it comes to Josephus, his being a historian for Antiquities is because he reformulates with explanations to a Roman audience the Biblical history, and with his Jewish war, he tells a history which Jews up to this day commemorate by a glass being shattered at weddings, to mourn for the shattered temple.
If Lucian's biography of Demonax is a biography or a satire is difficult to know. For _Walden_ being bona fide autobiographic, we have the testimony of the Transcendentals. Thoreau knew Emerson.
We probably to this day have people intellectually in a straight lineage of discipleship from Thoreau and Emerson. We certainly have a tradition by editors.
The blindless of print culture is on full display with Paulogia. He doesn't even seem to be aware that the first century was primarily an oral culture. Oral cultures preserve tradition through repeated enactments of ritual and repeated telling of the events they consider sacred. Its not a game of telephone when the whole community knows the content of the same story even if they don't preserve word for word like books do. The disciples didn't wait 200 years to put it all written form either. I would say the Gospels are remarkable well preserved testimonies.
I think people get lost in the spider man part of the analogy.
Let’s say I, a first hand eye witness testimony, report directly to you that I jumped off the Empire State Building and started flying. then you verify the Empire State Building really exists and that I was there, it is still not good evidence that I flew.
Conversely I could have forgotten what I ate for lunch and misreported it. This does not entail that I did not fly.
That is a good point, however I don't think Christians are saying, because the authors get stuff right about times/places/people, that we should believe Christ rose from the dead. I think its a cumulative case, and part of that case is the question, are the authors reliable, did they portray historical times/places/people/ways of speaking/ways of acting/etc. accurately? If yes then we can trust what they are saying. That doesnt mean to take miracles as fact, but it means we don't need to dismiss it as a fairy tale right away (like other ancient writings can be). Hopefully I explained what I was thinking correctly lol thanks
@@christian11111 you explained well, I think this is a good summary of what Eric was saying too.
My question though is, isn’t this just adding an extra step?
The argument is still “correct details show they were reliable. The gospel writers being reliable and accurate in these details increases the probability of them reporting the resurrection accurately.” I don’t see how this changes anything about the argument. It’s still using the fact they were correct in some details to support the likely hood of a supernatural event. We are just taking a verbal pit stop to throw in some statement about reliability.
I get it’s part of a cumulative case, but a bunch of bad arguments don’t make one good cumulative case. So personally I would just let this one go. If you have a good cumulative case this argument won’t make it better by adding it.
@@dillanklapp Well said my friend and I do agree with you. I guess all I would say is, that its not as much an argument for miracles/the resurrection, it is necessary for any belief in miracles/the resurrection.
It is less an argument and more a prerequisite. If the gospels were littered with inaccuracies that suggests they were written much later by individuals that knew nothing of the times/places/people/customs surrounding when the real events were to take place. In that case we could not base any belief off of them, or trust them as honest accurate reports. So yes I agree, not a great argument and doesn't add much to the cumulative case, but I see it as necessary to use the gospels for pretty much anything.
What are your thoughts on that? Thanks for the good conversation.
@@christian11111 I feel like it may be unfair to require it as a prerequisite like that. I was challenged when Eric said if inaccuracies are evidence against Christianity than accurate details have to be evidence for it. I don’t think these type of accuracies are good evidence so to be consistent I shouldn’t put too much stock in the inaccuracies either. Genuinely conflicted on this.
Personally I think the birth accounts in Mathew and Luke are contradictory and not historical. Specifically I don’t believe the census actually happened or would have been carried out that way. I also don’t believe Herod decreed to kill all the new born children. Even mike licona admits that many details in the Gospels like the sky going dark or the saints being raised by the dead are not historical.
I think there is good evidence that these claims in the gospel are false. But I don’t think these claims being false debunks Christianity or counts against Jesus raising from the dead. It could be true that these claims are false and Jesus still raised.
So intuitively it seems like getting small details right or wrong adds to their credibility but I guess I’m trying to separate the claims out and not require an unfair prerequisite if I’m not willing to admit getting small details right is evidence for the supernatural. Still thinking it through though.
But simultaneously I do think extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. I think supernatural claims do carry a higher burden then statements like I have a pet cat. So maybe there is a dissymmetry here where that evidence isn’t good enough to prove a supernatural claim but the inconsistencies could still count against it.
And likewise thanks for the convo! I know that’s a lot but would love to hear your thoughts on that.
@@zhengfuukusheng9238
5,000 people smelled the McFish and decided they weren’t hungry anymore, and the legend just kept growing from there😂😂
Ow, it hurts me when you said ancient fiction was a thing but it was… poorly written and you had image of the Iliad. Oof, right in my feels.
Is Paulogia making the claim that Jesus of Nazareth is fictional? Like Spiderman?