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In this long and very interesting discussion, the "other side" has nearly 
always been referred to as the "Creationists".

I think that that diminishes the "size" of the thing that we are up 
against.  While we see a bunch of unreasonable dogmatists, we should 
understand that what motivates their fervor is that they are, in their 
eyes, defending the Word of GOD (for chrissakes).  Any true believer is 
going to have a hard time accepting that what is in the Bible, namely the 
word of God as revealed to mankind  (I beg pardon, I am only trained in 
judaeo-christian theology, so I can't name the other holy books), is untrue.

I think that we need to simply accept the existence of these kinds of 
people; acknowledge that we are confronting them with, in fact, heresy; 
behave in a way that demonstrates to them that although we do not believe 
in the Biblical stories, we are, nevertheless moral, upstanding human 
beings (and even Children of God, if you will!).  If they see that God is 
good to us, and that we in fact are actually pretty nice folks, then after 
a while they're going to have to start to think about why God tolerates 
us.  At the very least, they will see us as a test of their own faith.  (I 
don't mind being that ... There're plenty of other ways to be tested -- 
untimely death, serious illness, psycho terror.  If we're the worst thing 
to happen to them, we're a pretty mild test.)

I agree with Peter Dow that confronting the opponent on his level 
strengthens the opponent and weakens the victim.  Governments use the 
"ignoring" strategy with great effectiveness all the time, as I discovered 
in my mildly radical student days.  On a crass level, I once heard a quote 
on Armed Forces Network: "if you find yourself in a fair fight, you haven't 
planned your strategy right".

Natasha
no current affiliation 

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