Picking your Battles

When it comes to argumentation, there are a number of logical falicies which are employed on a regular basis.  In an argument, these false reasonings may seem very convincing, however they do not stand up logically.
One employed all too often in debates between skeptics and Christians is the technique of "attacking the person."  This is when someone makes a statement, claim, or argument, and instead of focusing on the viability of their claim you choose to attack the person MAKING the claim.  So, for instance, let's say that I make an argument defending the historicity of Jesus' ressurection.  After I have said my peice, you come back to me and say, "Well you failed your college history class, so why should I trust what you have to say?"
The fact is that, if my claim stands up to reason, it really bears no relevence how poorly I have done academically.
There IS one sense, however, in which the skeptic has some justification in attacking the believer, and that is this: if what we believe is true, then our belief should affect our lives and our actions.  Christ, through us, should be forming us to the image of his likeness.  If we attack the opposition with hostility in a mean-hearted way, we falsify our claim that our belief improves us.

That said, it is vital that we pick the battles that are worth fighting and those that are dead-end arguments.  For instance, one of the biggest battlefields of debate both within the believing camp and outside of it is the argument over Creation versus Evolution.  Now I do not mean to belittle the effort that some believers put into the research, study, and forming of their beliefs on this issue.  However, I think that this debate may be hurting us more than it is helping.  Even if I am able to come up with incontroverible proof of a created universe, I have ultimately not brought my opponent to Christianity.  I have not even begun.  Many, many belief systems have a Creator God.

Put another way: if you prove every aspect of Christian faith to someone EXCEPT Christ, you have not brought them to Christianity.  If every aspect of belief falls away, EXCEPT Christ, Christianity still stands.  Our faith stands or falls on nothing more or less than the person of Christ.  He is the manifest image of God who came to earth and walked among us.  He is the tactile, verifiable or falsifiable peice of evidence that stands behind all of our claims, and when we engage the skeptic, we must always bring the discussion to His Person.