Questions to Ask an Atheist
Twenty questions for an actual conversation with an atheist friend, colleague or relative, ordered from easy ground toward the harder ground. They are written to be asked in good faith rather than as a debate script, and the guide covers what to do with the long lists of a hundred questions that circulate online.
20 questions, each with the reason to ask it · includes a conversation guide
The questions
Open any question to see why it works.
- 1
What does the word atheist mean to you?
Start here, because the label covers a wide range. Some people mean they are certain there is no god, many mean only that they are not convinced by the case, and the rest of the conversation goes differently depending on which you are talking to.
- 2
Did you grow up in a religion, or with none at all?
The two paths produce very different people. Someone raised inside a faith is usually responding to one specific tradition, while someone raised without any may have no strong feelings about the subject at all.
- 3
If you left a faith, was there a moment, or was it gradual?
Most people describe a slow drift with one memorable moment attached to it. Asking for the moment gets you a story rather than a position, which is a much better place to start than an argument.
- 4
Was there someone you had to tell, and how did that go?
This is frequently the hardest part and it is rarely about theology. Expect answers about a parent, a spouse or a small town, and follow the relationship rather than the belief.
- 5
What do people most often assume about you that is wrong?
Common answers are that they must be angry, that they worship science, or that they secretly believe anyway. Letting them correct the record early is what makes the rest of the conversation honest.
- 6
Where do you think right and wrong come from?
Ask it as a genuine question, because it is the one atheists most often hear as an accusation. Answers usually involve empathy, social agreement or consequences, and are worth hearing all the way through before responding.
- 7
What do you do when something is genuinely unfair and nothing can be done about it?
This gets at the practical version of a very large question. It tends to produce something specific, such as what they actually did during a particular illness or loss, rather than a statement of position.
- 8
Is there anything you do that looks a bit like a ritual?
Many people who hold no belief keep practices anyway: a minute of silence, a visit to a grave, a grace said at a family table. The answer is often more surprising to them than to you.
- 9
What do you think happens when we die?
Expect a plain answer and resist filling the pause afterwards. The follow-up worth asking is whether that view changed how they think about time, rather than whether it frightens them.
- 10
Has your view ever come close to changing?
A fair question that allows for movement without demanding it. Most honest people have at least one experience they could not explain and still did not find persuasive, and that story is worth hearing.
- 11
What would change your mind?
The useful version asks for a specific kind of evidence rather than a general standard. If the answer is nothing, notice that the same question is worth turning on yourself before you press it.
- 12
Is there anything you miss about religion, or envy about it?
Common answers are the singing, the built-in community, and having somewhere to go when someone dies. This is usually the most candid moment in the whole conversation, so do not rush past it.
- 13
How do you handle religious family occasions: weddings, funerals, grace before dinner?
A practical problem everyone has had to solve. The answer shows where their line sits between respect and participation, which matters a great deal if you share a family with them.
- 14
Do you raise your children with any of this, or none of it?
Non-religious parents have generally thought about this harder than religious relatives assume. Ask what they actually say when a child asks about death, or asks whether God is real.
- 15
What do you find valuable in religion even though you do not believe it?
It invites generosity without asking anyone to concede anything. People often name very specific things: hospitals, choral music, a grandmother, the practice of confessing something out loud.
- 16
Is there a religious argument you think is actually strong?
Asking for the best case rather than the worst is a rare courtesy and usually gets a considered reply. If they cannot name one, note it quietly rather than scoring the point.
- 17
What is the worst argument you have heard from your own side?
This lets them criticize their own camp, and people are almost always more forthcoming here than about their disagreements with you. It also tends to lower the temperature by several degrees.
- 18
Where do you find awe?
Better than asking about meaning, because it asks for an occasion rather than a philosophy. Answers are concrete: a place, a piece of music, a night sky, watching a child work something out.
- 19
What gets you through a genuinely bad stretch?
Ask this only once the conversation has earned it. The answer is usually about people rather than ideas, and it is often where both of you notice you are describing the same thing in different words.
- 20
What would you want me to understand that I have not asked about?
A closing question that hands the conversation over. It also catches the thing they have been waiting the entire time to say, which is rarely what you would have guessed.
Having the conversation
Practical guidance for the conversation itself.
Asking in good faith
Asking in good faith
- Decide before you start whether you want to understand this person or win. Both are legitimate, but a conversation trying to do both does neither.
- Ask one question and then be quiet for longer than is comfortable. The second half of an answer is the part worth hearing and it only arrives if you wait for it.
- Do not treat an answer as an opening for a rehearsed reply. People can tell within a sentence whether you were listening or loading.
- Avoid the tone of quizzing someone on their own life. Where did that come from is a better question than how can you possibly say that.
- Be willing to answer every one of these yourself. Most of them work in both directions, and offering yours first changes the whole register.
About the lists of a hundred questions
About the lists of a hundred questions
Long numbered lists of questions for atheists circulate widely and are usually built as debate ammunition rather than as conversation. Read in order they land as a cross-examination, and the predictable result is that the other person stops answering somewhere around question twelve. If you have found such a list and want to use it, take four or five questions from it that you would be genuinely interested to hear an answer to, ask those, and abandon the numbering. The value was never in the volume.
If you are the atheist being asked
If you are the atheist being asked
- You are allowed to say you have not worked something out. Nobody asking has worked everything out either.
- Answer the question that was asked rather than the one you have answered fifty times before. They may not be the same question.
- If the conversation has become an audition, name it plainly and lightly. It usually resets rather than ends things.
- Ask the same question back. Most of these are more interesting when both people have to answer.
- Family is not the same as debate. With relatives, the useful topics are usually funerals, holidays and children, not arguments about evidence.