This is more or less the point I was trying to get to in another thread. I'm an atheist myself but that's irrelevant to most of the young earth type of debates. At least I always thought it was. Theism/atheism is a matter of belief, either you do believe or you don't. Science isn't about belief, it's about evidence and acceptance of that evidence. Separate issues and we don't help ourselves by confusing them with the very people who need the education the most.

Two individuals who I've run across and found to be interesting are YouTube Christians with a small difference from the ones we normally think of. One of them has a degree in Evolutionary Biology and produces his own videos on the subject, and both are active on the side of science in the debate. Not on the side of us atheists, but of science. It's a distinction worth remembering if we want to see more like them.

The home page for the author of this vid first, then the other guy I found interesting. The second one has a great playlist collection.

http://www.youtube.com/user/DonExodus2
http://www.youtube.com/user/djarm67

"38% of British Muslims believe, that people who leave the Muslim faith should be killed". I'm very curious to know where that number comes from.

Yes, I'm also skeptical of that statistic. We have a handful of very nutty Muslims to be sure, but my experience is that they're in a very small minority.

Magic is real.
Red skinned cloven-hoofed horned beasts live below the ground.
Bird winged people fly in the clouds.

So there. Proof given. Because I say so. Because I was told so.

I find ridicule perfectly reasonable when talking to a creationist. Seriously, I see no other option for the level of stupidity and primitiveness they display.

He's probably right that rationalists could persuade more creationists if they focused on evolution vs. creationism, rather than evolution vs. religiosity... but rationalists can achieve a larger victory by using religions' ongoing losing position on evolution as a tool to discredit supernaturalist sentimentalism in general.

Eric, where he got the number I couldn't say but if you really wonder he might answer if he's got time, ask in the comments section on his page or drop him a private message and see. The group of them that I've been watching for a few weeks, some atheist and some Christian, seem to be pretty good about reasonable questions.

chilaxe, that's pretty certainly true but we've got a small catch I think and he touched on it in his post. Belief in evolution doesn't require atheism but it does help to enable it.

From what I've seen and read there's some indication of a biological inclination toward faith. You see it in more than religion. Scientology, nationalism, the neocons, there's been faith in a lot of aspects of things over recent years if we think about it. You probably don't need to attack it so much as to let them know some of what they've been told isn't true. Plant that seed of doubt and the ones who are open to it will figure it out themselves over time.

For those who are committed we won't break that faith anyway, no more than they've been able to teach people not to be gay, if it's a biological inclination toward faith it'll express itself one way or another. I think we tend to lose chances to reach that middle by pushing too hard at the extremes.

Easiest way to clarify that would be for you to just read an example. My debate is normally the drug war and I've done that for a LONG time now but activism is activism for the most part and the same methods work here too. The relevant players in this thread were myself in the first post linked (Yana Usdi on that board), Coldslaw, and Sideway.

I had planned (and there am now on) a break but that thread started just as I was leaving so I jumped back in for a short time to stop it from going hostile, bring it back on track. They were young earth creation "science" all the way and we had a real productive conversation. Nornerator is a real nice guy, an atheist, and I don't think he understood where I was going at first either but after a page or two he caught on and you can see it in his thanks for the later posts. The rest of the thread could be skimmed or skipped, they're not relevant to the point and it's enough reading already.

http://www.marijuana.com/religion/112515-will-atheism-ever-dominate-6.html#post1037462

In the end it comes down to a simple question to me . Do we want to make a difference or a gesture? I think we've got a better chance of making a difference if this approach is tried where there's an open mind to accept it and we'll never know if it's open if we assume from the start that it isn't.

From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1571970/Muslim-apostates-threatened-over-Christianity.html

"And yet a significant portion of British Muslims think that such behaviour is not merely right, but a religious obligation: a survey by the think-tank Policy Exchange, for instance, revealed that 36 per cent of young Muslims believe that those who leave Islam should be killed."

Worthy advice.. qualiasoup's tactics seem a bit more refined, however. Check him out on the youtubes.

Poster set the vid to private, given the reasons I don't expect that to change.

*kill

Permanently discarding this video - kill requested by submitter drattus.