If you had an argument with a religious or non-religious person, how would you defend your opinion?

With facts and references?

With a non-religious person, logic. With a religious person, just walk away.

For me, the argument is less about God existing. It's more about how literally the bible should be taken. There are some fundamentalist Christians who believe the earth is like 4000 years old and dinosaur bones are actually the bones of demons/failed angels/whatever. I'm like, "why even hold that position"?

Tell about current war.

depends on the person, i'd try to find common ground first.

"Prove it"

Tell them to f off.

I don't argue about religion or God. Faith is a personal matter.

I’d focus on explaining my reasoning calmly and listening to theirs. Whether someone is religious or not, arguments usually go nowhere if both sides are just trying to “win.” Understanding why someone believes what they do is usually more productive than trying to defeat them.

You can’t defend science from magic. There’s no debate. Religious people believe what they believe; you’re not going to sway them with facts.

This is such a vague question, that it is meaningless.

  Religion has mastered one remarkable skill: surviving without evidence. For thousands of years, gods have been proposed, worshiped, feared, obeyed, and defended yet never independently verified. This is not a minor oversight. In every other domain of human knowledge, claims without evidence are discarded. Only in religion are they protected, revered, and shielded from scrutiny. Atheism begins with a simple, question: Where is the evidence? Not the feelings, not the traditions, not the anecdotes but the verifiable, testable, independently confirmable evidence. When that question is asked honestly, belief systems that rely on revelation and authority rather than observation begin to wobble. Faith Is Not a Virtue It is a Gap-Filler Faith is often praised as a virtue. In practice, it is an admission of ignorance dressed up as confidence. Faith exists precisely where evidence does not. No one has “faith” that gravity works or that germs cause disease. Those are facts established through experiment and replication. Faith only enters when knowledge fails. If faith were a reliable path to truth, different religions would converge on the same conclusions. Instead, they contradict one another on every fundamental claim—how many gods exist, what they want, who they favour, and what happens after death. Billions of believers, thousands of gods, zero consensus. Why should we treat any one of them as special? A popular apologetic claim is that religion “invented” science or was its primary driver. History tells a messier story. Scientific progress emerged when thinkers began questioning authority including religious authority—and insisting on evidence over scripture. Copernicus, Galileo, Darwin, and countless others faced religious resistance, not encouragement. The Catholic Church condemned heliocentrism. Protestant leaders rejected evolution. Even today, creationism and intelligent design attempt to smuggle theology into science classrooms despite overwhelming biological evidence to the contrary. If religion were the engine of science, why did it so often apply the brakes?  Another common claim is that without God, morality collapses. This argument misunderstands both morality and human behaviour. Moral systems existed long before monotheistic religions and vary widely across cultures. Empathy, cooperation, and fairness are products of social evolution, not divine command. If morality truly came from God, believers would behave demonstrably better than nonbelievers. They do not. Study after study shows no consistent correlation between religiosity and moral behaviour, and some of the least religious countries score highest on measures of social trust, equality, and well-being. So why credit gods for morals humans demonstrably construct themselves? Prayer is often described as powerful, transformative, and effective until it is tested. Controlled studies consistently show that intercessory prayer has no measurable effect on recovery, illness, or outcomes. In some cases, being told you are prayed for actually worsens outcomes due to performance anxiety. If prayer worked the way believers claim, hospitals would replace ICUs with chapels. They do not. Why? Because when lives are on the line, even believers trust medicine, not miracles. Why is scepticism encouraged everywhere except religion? Why are children taught to question advertisements, politicians, and strangers but not gods? Why is doubt framed as intellectual honesty in science and rebellion in theology? What would happen if religious claims were held to the same standards as scientific ones? If holy books were treated like hypotheses? If miracles required evidence before belief? Would anything remain? Atheism offers no cosmic rewards, no eternal surveillance, no divine forgiveness loopholes. That is precisely its strength. Meaning is not handed down; it is constructed. Morality is not outsourced; it is owned. There is no god to blame, no plan to hide behind. If this life is the only one, we know we have, then cruelty is less excusable, not more. Kindness matters now. Justice matters now. Truth matters now. And that is what makes atheism unsettling not that it removes meaning, but that it removes excuses. If faith is a reliable path to truth, why does it produce contradictory conclusions? Why are religious claims exempt from the standards applied to every other claim? If morality comes from God, why do moral intuitions change over time and culture? What belief would you abandon if evidence disproved it—and why should religion be different? Selected Sources Benson, H. et al. (2006). Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer (STEP). American Heart Journal, 151(4), 934–942. Coyne, J. A. (2009). Why Evolution Is True. Oxford University Press. Dawkins, R. (2006). The God Delusion. Houghton Mifflin. de Waal, F. (2006). Primates and Philosophers: How Morality Evolved. Princeton University Press. Harris, S. (2010). The Moral Landscape. Free Press. Russell, B. (1927). Why I Am Not a Christian. Simon & Schuster. Zuckerman, P. (2008). Society Without God. NYU Press.  

The best is Respect each other

Both sides just need to let each other be. End of story.