Two Sad Examples:

Treat Them Like Trolls?           http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCD2wigqFUk

Our Brains Are Too Small? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22fvEPsI2JA

Two observations 

(Attitudes in conversations/ conflicts that are happening in our culture, explicitly between atheists and believers and generally between followers of Christ and non-believers and even amongst believers themselves):

1) That the object is to win the argument.  

    It is interesting to observe Jesus' interactions with men who set themselves up as his opponents. On the one hand, he is never "out flanked" or intellectually trapped (Matt 19:3,21:23-27, 22:15-21) by the intelligentsia of his time. On the other hand, it is rare that we see people's hearts and minds and lives changed as a result of Jesus winning a debate,se stories end with a statement something like this from Matthew 12: But the Pharisees went out and conspired against him, how to destroy him."  More often than not it is, however, the case that people's lives were transformed by the experience of his love, healing, protection and ultimately his sacrifice on our behalf (John 8:3-11, Luke 19:2-9). Most profoundly, on the day of his crucifixion, Jesus makes no attempts whatsoever to engage in his own defense. His objective that day was not to win, but to loose. To conquer death? Yes. To conquer death even for those who lead him into its jaws, because his opponent was never really a Pharisee or Scribe, but death, disease and all of our depravity that let them into creation in the first place. To conquer by absorbing death's worst and remaining alive, returning to love (Luke 23:34).

    If it seems that I am somehow suggesting that the object of my interaction with a non-believer shouldn't include a coherent explanation of why I believe the claims of Christ rationally, historically and experientially, then I have not made myself clear. I believe that Christianity can be supported in all these realms. I am only suggesting that winning "the argument" is not exactly the same thing as loving my neighbor and bringing them the good news of a God who has loved them to death. To put it another way, Christ's objective is my neighbor's salvation, not their defeat.

2) Ridicule, Revile and Insult are appropriate responses to those who oppose me.

Timothy Keller says: "When you say: Here are these people over here and they disagree with us...and they don't even deserve respect, or sympathy, I don't see how that can actually lead to anything but civil disorder."  From a completely civic point of view, there is nothing productive that can come from demeaning those with whom I engage.

But all that is beside the point. On a very basic level, if I call myself a follower of Christ, then I am confessing that any person to whom I am speaking and any individual of whom I am speaking is "created in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them." They are someone just like me to whom the "Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient... not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance."  

NUF SAID.