Biblical Christianity 101, a study of the book of Romans

[TheRocketSurgeon]

Whatever, dude. I thought pictures were better than 1000 words, as the saying goes, that's all.

Sure, pictures can be better as in more effective. That's because we're emotional as well as rational creatures, and pictures tend to appeal to our emotions. If a theist put up pictures of aborted fetuses in a thread on abortion, you could make a similar charge.

His contention is that Paul would not have done what he did, at risk of his life, unless he truly believed.

Yep, and you twisted that to the straw man: Ah, so it's "willingness to die" = must be true.

The pictures point out that people are willing to suffer greatly and even die in the name of false beliefs, even when they are (or follow) cult leaders who are clearly charlatans, like Koresh and Jones.

He didn't argue otherwise, and expressly said that the correctness of Paul's beliefs was not his point.

Here is what he said:

Ah, the flaw in your reasoning! 'Zeal' in that time for the wrong thing meant death. So to have zeal about something forbidden meant you believed in it with your very life. Now whether you believe Paul to be correct or not is not what I am illustrating. I am pointing out that Paul believed with his very life on the line that he was correct.

His point IS that because Paul believed it to the point of death, he must have believed what he wrote. Whether *I* believe Paul is not the point he was illustrating. He was most certainly trying to show that Paul believed he was correct; he says so. So my pictures of other people who died horribly, while also believing they were correct about God, were most certainly relevant to his point. 

The only  point of putting up pictures with dead fetuses is to make an emotionally-charged side point. However, I could have simply typed "Jonestown, Waco, and the monks in Vietnam", and it would not have been nearly as effective a reply. My point is not a side point, I simply used illustration when I felt words were insufficient to get my point across entirely.

The pictures are not offensive to me, and I can't imagine why they'd be "emotional" to someone else, unless you count the emotion of sadness that we live in such a world of people who will die for their beliefs.