I've riffed on this a little bit in one of my own sites, but always find this an interesting topic so I'll re-hash. Daniel Gilbert's book Stumbling on Happiness talks about research showing that we see things with greater clarity "now" than in the "distant past" in much the same way we see things with detail closer up than things far away. I think one has to understand that it's uncomfortable for most people to think about things in the distant past in a detailed way. So if it doesn't effect my day-to-day life to think that the earth is 6000 years old (and to be realistic it doesn't effect most people's day to day life) then I've got no good reason to put myself through the discomfort of trying to visualize the evolutionary or cosmological process over millions and billions of years. To that end I think the key is going to be, as the authors of the original article seem to point out, finding common ground, and finding life relevant applications for this information.

David Sloan Wilson has some interesting things to say on the subject of religion, the "new atheists" and evolution (for those who don't know who he is, he's an atheist and evolutionary biologist who has written a couple books like Darwin's Cathedral and Evolution for Everyone). I think I can sum up part of one of his arguments in his recent Huffington Post series as "If you say 'screw them, we'll make them bow to the truth of our science' you lose the moral high-ground." In much the same way saying "their evil so it's OK if we torture THEM" does the same thing for a nation.

There's a problem with high-level scientific understanding, and that's that it is high-level. To "prove" to somebody X or Y you've got to first insure that they know enough about the subject to understand your argument (and the facts) in the first place. Because the vast majority of the population doesn't have an inclination, or vested interest in learning enough about science, or religion for that matter, they have to make the call on who to believe. For the most part what, to me, the Dawkins/Hitchens crowd seem to be saying is "trust us, we're scientists, the facts are on our side" in the same way that religious leaders say "trust us, we're pastors, God is on our side." Well, if my Grandmother told me God was right and Richard Dawkins told me Science was right, if I'm not getting too deep in personal investigation of the subjects, I'm more inclined to listen to the nice old lady than the prickly obnoxious scientist.

It's like the old saying (which has probably been mythbustered) "you catch more flies with honey than vinegar." When we can make science useful and relevant to people's every day life, it's easier to teach it. And if you're competing with a church experience that, for all its flaws, includes friends who come take care of you when you're sick, and ask you how you're doing every weekend at services, and all of the GOOD things that religious experience brings to people's lives you're going to have a tough time selling a few crotchety atheists as ambassadors. To take an evolutionary tact with the same thought, how are you going to compete with groups of people that provide a medium to meet and breed (prolifically) with people of like beliefs. I'm not sure the numbers, but if your average atheist couple has 1.2 kids, and your average Christian couple has 2.3 kids you're going to have to win somebody over to not be overwhelmed by their numbers. I don't think Dawkins wins over many converts to athiesm because he preaches to the choir (to use a church metaphor).