Atheists can make good contributions to religious debates, but there are 3 types who are generally not worth engaging with, as attempted dialogue will usually be futile.
1) The spiteful detractors of faith who lurk parasitically in the comments section of other people’s writings in order to stir up trouble.
2) The commentators who just cannot stop banging on about how strongly they disbelieve in God and dislike religion.
3) Those who lack any willingness to concede anything good about that which they criticise.
Group
no 1 are the worst of all; they are people on whom you should waste absolutely
none of your time discussing your faith. Leave them be, in the hope that, in ignoring them, they will learn to seek the rewards of proper engagement. Group 2 are usually people with an
ex-church background, and an axe to grind, and are looking to seek attention
and draw it on themselves, not to seriously engage in the matter. Group 3* can
seem willing to engage at a superficial level, but if they are unwilling to
acknowledge anything positive or persuasive about Christianity or the counter
position, it should arouse suspicion.
* On the third group, I remember C.S Lewis once said "In order to pronounce a book bad, it is not enough to discover that it elicits no good response from ourselves, for that might be our fault." James Joyce has lots of streams of consciousness in Ulysses that say something similar about our response to human beings themselves, and how we might be indicted if we can’t extract the interesting from the apparent mundane. And as we’ve seen so often, the most tremendous minds aren't just operating at a great height themselves, they help others reach a great height too by meeting people where they are at and aiding them in climbing higher. A quality similarly expressed about Falstaff’s wit (a subset of intelligence) in Henry IV:
"Men of all sorts take a pride to gird at me. The brain of this foolish-compounded clay, man, is not able to invent anything that tends to laughter more than I invent, or is invented on me. I am not only witty in myself, but the cause that wit is in other men."
