Be careful with your description of atheists there. A major point of iMonk is that there are many deep, profound and positively congenial atheists out there. They genuinely believe we are wrong, have many persuasive arguments and have seen the damage we often do to others and even to our own and understandably want to help people get away from that. We must have complete respect for them. Frankly, the offerings at an awful lot of churches could accurately be called a clever and appealing facade with shallow and deceptive arguments with a congregation that is hostile and belligerent.

The call is not to learn more about how to respond to atheism, the call is to offer truth, depth, love and acceptance, which many atheists do far better than many churches (much like the well known local bar comparisons).

We are right to consider what God wants us to tell an atheist, but sometimes we need to ask what God is telling us through an atheist.

I suppose Ken’s caveat is necessary, since any ad hominem attack is logically fallacious. Nevertheless, in my own experience, some atheists are positively congenial… up to a point. That point frequently is when a reasoned defense of the Christian faith is offered. In response to which words like “stupid” and “ignorant” come out and the discussion turns emotional rather than reasonable– Gervais’ video is an example of such emotional rather than reasonable argument, as are the works of Dawkins and Harris and their cronies, though Gervais lacks the vitriol.

That the best a large slice of Christianity can do in response is ratchet up the emotion (Sam Harris got enough death threats from Christians (!) that he wrote another book in response), says a great deal about the failure to teach our youth (and I’d add adults) so that their faith is built on a firm, intelligent, and appropriately sophisticated foundation. Were this the case, there might be far fewer facile, shallow churches creating facile, shallow members.