Biblical Christianity 101, a study of the book of Romans

[Drich]

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.


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


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.

What I said goes a little deeper than that. I pointed to what and why Paul believe, you wrongly assume that the what and why Paul/Christians have is shared with those you've pictured.

Again just so we are clear their belief was a point of blind faith.

Paul's beliefs were based on his works/miracals and personal contact with God.

Those people died rather than be challenged or tested by the world.

Paull was beaten, imprisioned, stoned and beheaded/Severly tested for his beliefs.

Yes both wound up dead, but yours is an apples to oranges compareson because of how and why they both died