Reply #61: I posted about this above.

[July]

To me there is no issue if someone looks down on my views or I look down on theirs -- we don't have to agree with others' ideas, and we're free to conclude that they don't make sense, or even that they are strange, deluded, and so on (this applies to believers looking at atheists as well as to atheists looking at believers). It's not elitism, it's making up one's own mind on a subject.

It's elitism when one treats the person, rather than the ideas, as someone "lower." We should all be giving each other respect for our right to think and believe what we like, and in practice that means not shoving our opinions on others who don't want to discuss the topic, not expecting others to be like us, not demanding that our beliefs and opinions become the law. That is disrespectful of the individual person who makes up his own mind and comes to a different conclusion than we might.