On one of my favourite TV shows Lewis, recently, one of the characters asked Det. Sgt Hathaway (Lawrence Fox), if he believed in God. Fox plays a fellow who was a candidate for the priesthood, which brings interesting quirks in the script.
Fox evaded an answer: good police behaviour in avoiding the personal, but the protagonist, a researcher into religious beliefs, claimed later that he therefore knew that Hathaway was a believer.
Now, if Hathaway wasn't a police officer, his inference would have been likely correct. Evade the question of Christian belief, and you are. An atheist couldn't care less, of course.
Here's how to handle it:
Q: "Do you believe in God" [asked in a cynical or mocking tone by Eric the dill]
A: "Yes; what do you believe in? Dirt?" [stated directly, without emotion by Colin the robustly informed Christian]
Most people who would ask in a mocking tone would be materialists, either explicitly, or implicitly. If so, they believe that matter, or in our language, dirt, is basic. So go ahead and ask.
If they are dirt-huggers, then you've got to ask them why they act as though there's more to life than the dust they walk on, and why do they care anyway? If its all just dirt, then nothing really matters, because its all just a random dirt configuration, or a result thereof.
