My friend Fred Eichleman shared with me the following story in a email...

That was not the apologetic approach that I would have taken (nor I...JTW). Our
pluralistic Orthodox friend was confronting our atheist friend in
our living room because he was trying to teach Annie, our daughter,
that evolution was correct. He was saying that humans are monkeys.

She, our orthodox friend was exasperated in debating him and finally
resorted to calling him a monkey. He was hurt and called her
arrogant. It happened before we could stop it.

Afterwards, I warmly confronted my atheist friend on why he was
hurt. He had just said that humans were monkeys! That meant he was a
monkey! I told him he should be a proud monkey and not embarrassed
to be a monkey, IF that was what he really thought.