This is the primary strategy of the Creationists: To portray evolution as incompatable with faith in a Creator. It's hogwash of course, but it gets traction. (Image from Pandagon). And if you think that's bad, check out this pamphlet that gets handed out to this day by Jack Chick called Big Daddy.
It's imporant to understand this-Creationists will lie. They will lie while smiling, the will lie with great charm, they will lie convincingly on live national TV to your face with their hand on a Bible swearing to God. So be prepared for it. They will tell bald-faced whoppers without batting an eye. To effectively oppose these numbskulls it's necessary to have some cold hard facts and responses framed in effective soundbites. I have a couple of suggestions below along those lines, and some suggested language for theists to use, but mostly I want to use this thread as an evolution Vs Creationism discussion thread.
Ideas On Language for Christians to use: A Creator who employed complex processes such as evolution, geology, astrophysics, and chemistry, operating over oceans of time, unfolding through countless steps, to produce this glorious Star studded Universe and ourselves, is a God worthy of worship. I would happily point out the caliber of scientist and artist God is, and note how His scientific capability far exceeds the scope of the most gifted intellects among mankind. I'd explain that God can Create however He Chooses to Create. That's God's prerogative, and we're Blessed to be a part it.
If I were Christian, I would teach my brothers and sisters in Christ to feel honored at being descended from a long line of God's wondrous living creations, and for sharing the amazingly complex biochemical processes those ancestral benefactors endowed us with. I'd praise our evolutionary legacy and I'd thank our Linnean cousins; from the microbes to the primates, for through them God bequeathed unto us the finest instrument and possession we will ever own: Our human body and our human brain.
If I was a Christian I'd be down on my hands and knees once a day, thanking God for belonging to the Cosmos in all it's resplendent majesty. I'd study every branch of science I could and hunger for more. If I were Christian, I'd be teaching biology and chemistry and astronomy in Sunday Schools to eager young Christian children who would learn reverence for those fields of knowledge and treat them as Holy and Divine. They would "ohhh" and "ahh" at the pictures of God's cosmos from powerful telescopes. They would be fascinated with God's intricacies found in a leaf revealed under the microscope. They would find exhilaration looking at the nucleus of a cell and the heart of life's DNA double helix, or the world of the atom; all part of God's infinitely artistic Creation. Rather than trying to deceive people about God's prowess, I'd work to reveal it to them. Because science inspires mankind with precious insight into the mind of the Creator of all that exists. Far from being something to fear, science is the most powerful testimony to the Creator who crafted our natural world.
If I were Christian I would be filled with pride and wonder that my blood, organs, skin, and hair, are made from the elements cooked inside of ancient stellar furnaces. And I would weep with the glorious joy that I am made of star dust.
All of this; I'd be shouting from the tops of buildings, in classrooms, at Church, across the radio waves, and through the optical fibers of the Internet, as evidence for God's brilliance and love and beauty.
General Tactics: Professional Intelligent Designists/Creationist clowns are shills. It's their job, nothing more and nothing less. They probably don't see it as lying anymore than an ad exec who crafts commercials for Coca-Cola sees what he does as lying. They're PR and advertising talking machines. Being overly "nice" to them will not help you; they will take advantage of it and lie even more. You will be called a Darwinist, a materialist, an ideological trainwreck on par with Nazism or Stalinism, and of course you will be called Godless or some way, shape, or form. In the process they will say that scientists are now discarding evolutionary biology and accepting Intelligent Design.
To them it's necessary to fight rhetoric and metaphor with the same. You want to refer to so-called Intelligent Design Creationists as what they are metaphorically every time you can. I suggests using the term creationist at all times, or if you really want to cut them hard use the term flat earther. (Why do you call me a flat earther? Flat earther is a term for folks who deny observable facts and reasonable inferences because they feel it conflicts with their personal religious interpretation. Most Christians are not flat earthers in this sense and have no desire to be perceived as medieval ignoramuses. Sadly a minority has been hoodwinked by creationists-AKA flat earthers using my definition- and those folks are exception)
This is the most devastating question you can ask them: What specifically is the scientifically testable theory of Intelligent Design Creationism in the context of biodiveristy?
They will usually answer with an attack on evolution in which case you say "I'll stipulate purely for your benefit and in the spirit of goodwill that evolution does not even exist. Now, with that generous stipulation, what is the scientifically testable theory of Intelligent Design Creationism in the context of biodiveristy?
Or they may respond with "Complex things don't arise by blind chance or from simple things"
Response: "Every bird one earth started from a single cell, same for spiders and houseflies ... are you saying spiders intelligently designed their eggs every step of the way as they developed or that spiders are intelligent?"
If they try saying that the spiders themselves are intelligently designed, simply say "You just assumed your conclusion in your premise which even the ancient Greeks knew was a logical fallacy but again in the spirit of goodwill I'll give you another chance ... You said complex things don't arise on their own without intelligent design, are you saying that spiders are intelligent designers when they make spider silk, or webs, or baby spiders? This is what you want to teach as science?
Possible followups "Ok so the claims of Intelligent design then allows for complexity to be frontloaded into nature. So if a single cell can become a baby chicken in a few weeks, surely the same frontloading could produce a bird from a single cell in a few billion years right?
Any other ideas, thoughts, questions, suggestions?