Playing with Synonyms as Antonyms

There is a really heavy logical fallacy today that tries to play with the synonyms as antonyms.  How is this being one?  One obvious joke in childhood is saying "What's the difference between two words?" and the answer would be "the spelling".  However that kind of joke can turn from clean fun to a sour one if it becomes used as if it's not a joke in the field of apologetics.  

Here are a few examples of how the fallacy is being used and notice how funny or even annoying they can get:

  • "Salvation is not by doing good works but by doing the works of the Law and the sacraments."
  • "I don't teach works salvation by any means, I teach conditional security where a believer can lose their salvation should they stumble into sin."
  • "He's not being annoying, he's just being bothersome so get over it."
  • "I wasn't cheating, I was just looking at the answer."
  • "He's not addicted to illegal drugs, he's addicted to narcotics."
  • "I wasn't stealing, I was just taking a few fruits from the tree."
  • "Elijah the Tishbite is not Elias the Tishbite because the spellings are different." (ignoring that some words get translated over from Hebrew to Greek change their spelling like "Joshua of Nazareth" to "Jesus of Nazareth")

In short, it's plain childish reasoning used in apologetics that's being used to defend a wrong as a right when in fact, two correctly spelled words if they ever have the same meaning don't get a single change in meaning just because the spelling is different (even between different languages).  It would be a helpful tip to actually get a thesaurus in the study of apologetics as well as a dictionary, enhancing one's vocabulary and above all use one's common sense as a means to counter this fallacy from an obviously dumbing down generation when it comes to the Word of God.  Also this is another good reason why debates or proverbial fistfights with defenders of false religions (both the same words) just don't lead anywhere.