What is the Straw Man Fallacy?

Of all the logical fallacies in the world, this one is perhaps my favorite. More than any other fallacy, this seems to be the one people commit when critiquing the Christian world view. In fact, I cannot think of a single debate, discussion, blog post, article, interview or other interaction in which someone has accurately represented the view of any Christian I have heard of.

And that is the Strawman Fallacy. Misrepresenting the opposing view in order to easily defeat the view which said opponent does not actually have. It is often quite subtle. Mainly because to use an effective strawman, you need to make this "fake" view look very similar to the real view so that people will think you're defeating the real thing.