Atheists and religious: can't we just cut the name-calling?

The author of this blog has some good stuff to say:

The war that's coming between the fundamentalist Christians and the hard-core Atheists probably won't be the most violent of the holy wars. But it has the potential to be the most annoying.
We'll, I'm going to try to stop it.

Now I would say this because a lot of what is said is the kind of stuff I agree with. For example:

All I need from you is agreement that it's entirely possible for either an atheist or theist world to devolve into a screaming murder festival. The religious leader sends his people into battle because he thinks God commanded it, the Stalins and Maos of the world do the same because they see their people as nothing more than meaty fuel to be ground up to feed the machinery of The State. In both cases, the people are equally dead.

Or

the other guy, no matter how irritating he or she is, is likely making an honest mistake.

Or

at the very worst, the atheists are just applying the same common sense, real-world troubleshooting to the God question. At the creation of the universe and in the heart of mankind, they expect to find the same physical, tangible answers they'd find inside a burnt transmission. If they're wrong about God, they're only wrong in that they've taken the tried-and-true troubleshooting we all practice one step too far.
On the other hand...
Atheists, even if you reject the idea of God completely and claim to live according only to the cold logic of the physical sciences, you all still live as if the absolute morality of some magical lawgiver were true.

Or

all we're doing here is understanding why they're offended by what you say. That's it. Putting yourself in their shoes. Basic human empathy. That's all.

Or this very nicely put observation;

Both Sides Have Brought Good to the Table... If atheism is wrong, it's only wrong in that it takes rationalism too far, beyond the edges of the universe. But you don't have a problem with the rationalism itself. There are people you love who would not be alive without it. You can pray that grandpa's heart holds out for another year, but rational thinking invented the pacemaker.

It's just full of good, basic, sensible stuff that actually really applies to general handling of disagreements, when you think about it. And the carefully chosen (?) offensive pictures are a good laugh too -or a sad reflection on intolerant mindsets, ironically exhibited (you decide).

And the last point is

The sarcasm, the disdain, the laughter. It makes you feel better, and rallies your friends, but it does exactly nothing to change minds on the other side. ...
No, in reality, if changing minds is your thing, there's only one way to do it:
Lead by Example.

Amen or hear! hear! to that.
I'd think about adding this: can't we agree to actually tell the other side what it is that we think is the strong point in their position; so they know we've heard it. You see, in most conversatins, if you don't do that the person(s) on the other side tend to keep repeating what they regard as their important points until they are acknowledged and genuinely so: valued even. It's what they teach you to do in counselling and mediation for the reason that if you don't acknowledge it, you can't move past it. Of course, for centuries people have been doing this on both sides, but it has to be done anew by each new person to the debates. And that leads on to another thing that might be useful to add: to be prepared to acknowledge that most of this debate is not new and that it is unlikely that 'I' or 'we' or even 'they' will come up with a genuinely new argument or angle. So acknowledging this and doing your homework, a bit, would be good too. Check out the territory a bit before you enter it. A bit like the whole thing about reading the FAQ sheets before posting on a forum so as not to unnecessarily irritate the normal denizens who then have to labouriously and patiently go over past debates (or more often, unfortunately, flame you for a basic discourtesy. Come to think of it; isn't that just like what we're talking about only played out irl?).
Ten things Christians and Atheists can and must agree on
Htt: Matt Stone