I read two books that have helped me tremendously to speak to people. The first is called Tactics by Gregory Koukl and Being Logical: A Guide to Good Thinking by D.Q. McInerny
No one on this site compares to the debates with atheists on other sites or real life. So many have responded with hate, slander, reducule and mock.
It takes a lot of practice and patience to resist attacking back. I just try to ignore it and stay promoting facts or asking questions which often gives them the floor to speak. With speaking it shows you care to listen. Then after awhile, you will see good questions to ask that may show an error in thinking or their conclusion.
In doing this, you without saying your wrong have walked them into where they admitting or not have to question their own belief or conclusion.
A lot less confrontational.
I also try to stay away from the you or your words that are often felt confrontational. I want them to think and not go on the defense.
We all know the psychology of cognitive immunology, confirmstion bias, and belief enforcing techniques.
(Cognitive immunology (CI) is the science of mental immunity. It’s a field of research that goes back to the 1950s and continues in the work of experimentalists like
Sander Van Der Linden. The premise is that our minds have immune systems, just as our bodies do. But where bodily immune systems protect us from infectious microbes, mental immune systems protect us from infectious ideas.
Cognitive immunologists study how mental immune systems work. They seek to understand common mental immune disorders and reveal the root causes of mental immune collapse. (A mind’s capacity to distinguish fact from fiction—and good ideas from bad ideas—can deteriorate rapidly.)
Research suggests that we employ five major belief-enforcing techniques:
- We isolate ourselves from people who hold outside beliefs in order to shield our ideas from even the possibility of contrary voices and arguments. Forms of isolation play a role in most group memberships, ranging from strong examples such as military basic training to subtle examples such as a spouse who tries to exclude one of his or her partner’s unappreciated friends.
- We try to reduce our direct exposure to other beliefs and ideas that might challenge our own. We can see stronger examples in hardline nation-states with totalitarian regimes that ban media and free speech. At the same time, all forms of education use similar principles, whether in selecting appropriate texts for the classroom or in prescribing the best nutritional advice.
- We connect our beliefs to powerful emotions. One approach involves anchoring negative emotions to belief failures. The obvious example is the fear of an unpalatable afterlife as a result of non-compliance to a religious doctrine. On the other hand, we also scare our kids deliberately in order to shape their behaviors and steer them away from risk, whether in the form of electricity or pools, or both at the same time.
- We associate with like-minded groups in which we work together to undermine rival beliefs and the groups proposing them. Targeting competing beliefs is common in politics, especially along party and ideological lines. Academics have also made this into a fine art under the rubric of the scientific method by highlighting the weaknesses in theoretical adversaries’ arguments while ignoring their strengths.
- A final technique for immunizing our beliefs relies on repetition. Repetition is, of course, the backbone of all learning (for better and worse), including the essentials, such as grammar; the extraneous, such as sporting allegiances; and the repugnant, such as racism.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/...why-people-stick-their-beliefs-no-matter-what
Of course, the Christian can also fall into this if we are not careful to always look for truth. It is easy to do especially when our perceived bad ideas—can deteriorate rapidly.
Putting people on the defense immediately starts this psychological warfare. So in order for people to hear what we say, we need to be careful how we speak.
This is why it is always evident that the best evangelist tool is creating a good relationship. Trust bridges the gap to allow what they may have once believed as a bad idea, now to be at least worth listening to.