Perhaps you’re aware of a new version of atheists called, reasonably enough, the New Atheists. Like older versions, new atheists don’t believe in God and claim that religious believers are, if not downright stupid, at least intellectually cavalier. But the New Atheists’ complaints against believers aren’t merely academic. As they see it, the believer’s lack of intellectual responsibility is more than a matter of ideas; it is a thing of immense practical concern. Our irrationality, they say, makes us dangerous, not merely dolts. Naturally, this troubles the atheists, whose militant leaders Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, and the late Christopher Hitchens see religious belief as something to eliminate rather than merely ridicule. “We must find our way to a time when faith, without evidence, disgraces anyone who would claim it,” writes Harris. “Given the present state of our world, there appears to be no other future worth wanting.”

Of course, religious people can be dangerous. Most of us think of September 11, 2001, when Muslim extremists flew airliners into the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon, killing thousands. We’re all aware of this kind of danger. Yet extremists aren’t the sole threat. The perils of religion surround us daily. According to Dawkins, you or your parents (or both) have probably committed horrific crimes in the name of God. In his article “Religion’s Real Child Abuse,” Dawkins approvingly quotes psychologist Nicholas Humphrey:

Children, I’ll argue, have a human right not to have their minds crippled by exposure to other people’s bad ideas—no matter who these other people are. Parents, correspondingly, have no god-given license to enculturate their children in whatever ways they personally choose: no right to limit the horizons of their children’s knowledge, to bring them up in an atmosphere of dogma and superstition, or to insist they follow the straight and narrow paths of their own faith. In short, children have a right not have their minds addled by nonsense.

Ominously, Humphrey adds: “And we as a society have a duty to protect them from it.”

In fact, Dawkins thinks that a religious upbringing is worse than most forms of child abuse. Once asked about the Catholic priest sex-abuse scandal, Dawkins actually said that, “the damage [from molestation] was arguably less than the long-term psychological damage inflicted by bringing the child up Catholic in the first place.” The only thing more lacking than his sensitivity is his sense of perspective. Rape or religion? Dawkins says it’s arguably worse to teach children that Christianity is true than it is to violate them sexually.

If Dawkins and other atheists are being genuine—and I have no real reason to doubt their sincerity—they’re trying to set the stakes very high. There’s a certain amount of bluster and theatrics of course; nevertheless, by offering to “protect” our children from religious teaching, it’s hard not to detect more than a whiff of good old-fashioned totalitarianism. Christopher Hitchens’ brother, Peter, a Christian, reminds us that after Lenin’s coup, teaching religion to children was illegal and could result in the death penalty.If religious education amounts to literal child abuse, it’s difficult to see how Dawkins and Humphrey could find such measures disagreeable.

Whatever the tactics, a cultural war is afoot. Only struggle will produce the rationalist future that Harris and others envision. To get there, said Christopher Hitchens, “We have first to transcend our prehistory, and escape the gnarled hands which reach out to drag us back to the catacombs and the reeking altars and the guilty pleasures of subjection and abjection. . . . To clear the mind for this project, it has become necessary to know the enemy, and to prepare to fight it.” Hitchens said elsewhere that one of the few things he and the late William F. Buckley Jr. agreed on was that “the duel between Christianity and atheism is the most important in the world.” 

How then should we respond to belligerent unbelievers? Well, it’s all too easy to get angry and wound up. Do the opposite instead: relax. This is one of the first things to remember when attempting to love your enemies. Anger and fear—the latter usually causing the former—get in the way of doing the right thing. To be sure, these atheists are sometimes in your face, asking for a fight, but if you melt into defensive shrillness just because their nose is an inch from yours, you’ve already lost—not merely the confrontation—but the person in front of you.

So how do you remain calm, confident, and in your right mind when someone is threatening you? The first and obvious thing is to constantly pray about it, asking to fear God alone. The second is to prepare for confrontation, to train for it. In the case of these atheists, read up on your apologetics, learn the fundamental moves and high-yield techniques. Just as in physical confrontations, the more competent you are at self-defense, the easier it is to relax. As someone once said, “The stronger you are, the more gentle you can afford to be.” If you don’t feel threatened by the person in front of you, you’ll be more likely to see him as someone who needs help. Which is exactly what the atheist is.

 Mitch Stokes is the author of his newly released book, A Shot of Faith {to the Head}: Be a Confident Believer in an Age of Cranky Atheists. You can check out more about the book from the video below.