Questions to Ask an Atheist

The questions

Open any question to see why it works.

1. 1

   Were you raised in a religion, or was it never part of your life?

   This one question splits atheists into two very different groups. Someone who left a faith has a history, a community they lost, and often complicated feelings; someone raised without religion may find the whole subject unfamiliar rather than fraught. Nearly everything you ask afterwards depends on which one you are talking to.

2. 2

   Do you call yourself an atheist, or would you use a different word?

   Plenty of non-believers prefer agnostic, humanist, secular, or nothing at all, and the choice is usually deliberate. Some avoid atheist because it sounds like a position they have to defend, others use it precisely because it is plain. Getting the word right early keeps you from arguing with a label they never claimed.

3. 3

   Was there a moment, or did it happen gradually?

   Deconversion stories are usually slow and undramatic, which surprises people expecting a crisis or a single book. If there was a moment, it is often much smaller than you would guess: a question nobody answered well, a hypocrisy, a death. Let the answer be boring if it was boring.

4. 4

   What do you say when someone asks what you believe?

   Most non-believers have a short public answer and a longer private one, and the difference tells you how much heat the subject carries where they live. Someone who says they usually change the subject is telling you something about their family or their workplace, not about their convictions.

5. 5

   Who in your life knows, and who does not?

   For many people this is the practical centre of the whole thing. A grandmother who has never been told, a spouse who still attends, a job in a religious institution. Asking about the map of who knows is often more revealing than asking about belief itself, and it should be asked gently.

6. 6

   How do you take it when someone says they are praying for you?

   The answers range from touched to irritated to entirely indifferent, and the variable is usually whether it was offered as kindness or delivered as a correction. Asking gives your friend a way to tell you what they would prefer you say when something goes wrong in their life.

7. 7

   Where do you think your sense of right and wrong comes from?

   Ask it as a real question and not as a trap, because most atheists have heard it as a trap many times. Answers typically involve upbringing, empathy, consequences, and the observation that they behave much like their religious neighbours, which is the part worth exploring rather than disputing.

8. 8

   Is there anything you consider sacred?

   This tends to produce the most interesting answer of any question on the list, because most people say yes and then have to work out what they mean. Children, a marriage, a promise, a place, the truth. It also shows that sacred and supernatural are not the same category.

9. 9

   What do you do with awe?

   Standing under a night sky, hearing a piece of music, holding a newborn: the experience is common to everyone and the explanation is not. Non-believers usually describe it as no less overwhelming for having a natural explanation, and how they say that is more informative than what they say.

10. 10

    Do you miss anything about religion?

    The honest answer from people who left a faith is usually yes, and it is rarely about doctrine. What is missed is the singing, the standing weekly appointment with the same people, the meals when someone is ill, the sense of a structure that outlasts you. Community is the part secular life replaces least well.

11. 11

    What do you do at weddings and funerals?

    Religious ritual is hardest to opt out of at exactly the moments when it is doing the most work. Ask what they do with the standing, the hymns, and the prayers, and whether they find their own way to mark those events. It is a practical question and people have practical answers.

12. 12

    How do you handle religious holidays with family?

    Most non-believers still turn up, eat the meal, and sit through the service, and have worked out a personal line between participating and pretending. Where they draw that line, and what they refuse, tells you what they think honesty requires of them.

13. 13

    What are you teaching your children about it, if you have any?

    Parents who have thought about this tend to have a clear answer and it is seldom raise them as atheists. More common is teaching what different people believe and leaving the conclusion open, which is harder than it sounds when grandparents are involved.

14. 14

    What do you think happens when we die?

    Expect nothing as the answer, and then ask the second half: what that is like to hold. Some describe it as restful, some as genuinely frightening, some as simply not something the mind can picture. Do not treat the answer as an opening for reassurance; it is a description, not a request.

15. 15

    How do you grieve without an afterlife to point to?

    Ask this only if you know each other well, and only if you can hear the answer without offering a correction. What people describe is usually memory, continuation through others, and the fact that the loss is complete, which is precisely what they are carrying. It is the most serious question here.

16. 16

    Which religious argument do you find the strongest?

    This is the question that turns a debate into a conversation, because it asks for generosity rather than defence. People who have thought seriously about the subject can usually name one, often about the origins of the universe or about what religion does for communities. Someone who cannot name any has probably not looked closely.

17. 17

    Are there religious people you admire?

    Almost everyone says yes and the examples are frequently personal rather than famous: a grandmother, a chaplain, a neighbour who showed up during an illness. It separates a disagreement about claims from contempt for people, and the answer usually says what they think faith is for.

18. 18

    What would change your mind?

    A fair question, and one worth being ready to answer yourself before you ask it. Some will name a specific kind of evidence, some will say they do not know, and some will say nothing would, which is worth noticing since it is the same closed position they often criticise in believers.

19. 19

    What do believers most often get wrong about you?

    Common answers: that they are angry at God, that they have not read anything, that they are secretly certain, that they must have suffered something. Hearing which assumption lands most often is useful, because it is almost always one you have made yourself at some point.

20. 20

    Do you want to be argued with, or do you just want to be understood?

    Worth asking early as well as late, and worth asking honestly rather than rhetorically. Some people enjoy a proper argument and will be disappointed by politeness; others have had the same argument at every family gathering for a decade. Getting the mode right is what determines whether the conversation is worth either of your time.