Questions to Ask Non-Believers

The questions

Open any question to see why it works.

1. 1

   How would you describe yourself: atheist, agnostic, none of the above?

   The label people choose is a statement about tone as much as belief. Plenty of people who believe in no god still decline the word atheist because it sounds like a position they have to defend, and knowing which word they are comfortable with sets the temperature for everything after.

2. 2

   Did you grow up with a religion, or with none at all?

   This is the fork the whole conversation runs on. Someone who left a faith has a story and sometimes an injury attached to it, while someone raised with nothing finds religion foreign rather than painful. Ask it early, because every later question means something different depending on the answer.

3. 3

   If you left, was there a moment or was it slow?

   Most people say slow, and the slow answers are usually about a stack of small unanswered questions rather than one argument. When someone does name a moment, it is far more often a person who behaved badly than a book they read, which is worth knowing before you reach for evidence.

4. 4

   What did people assume about you when you first said you did not believe?

   This gets at the social cost, which is invisible from inside a religious community. Answers range from nobody noticed to lost a job or a family, and the size of the cost tells you how carefully you need to tread for the next twenty minutes.

5. 5

   What version of my religion do you find most reasonable, and which version is hardest to take?

   Asking for both halves stops the conversation from becoming a fight about the worst example either of us can think of. It also tells you whether they have met your actual tradition or only the loudest public version of it.

6. 6

   Is there anything about it you miss?

   The answer separates loss of belief from loss of belonging. Music, a set rhythm to the week, and knowing everyone in a room come up far more than doctrine, which usually means the argument you want to have is not the one that matters to them.

7. 7

   Where do you get what a congregation gives people, a group who notices when you are gone?

   Ask this as a real logistics question, not as a trap about whether community requires God. Some people have a clear answer, a team or a choir or a neighbourhood, and some go quiet, and that silence is a genuine thing to talk about rather than a point to score.

8. 8

   What do you do with awe?

   Non-believers usually have a vivid and specific answer to this one: a telescope, a coastline, a piece of music, deep time. It is one of the few places where two people from opposite positions can describe the same experience and disagree only about the cause.

9. 9

   How do you work out what is right when doing it will cost you something?

   Ask about an actual decision they made, not about the theory. Framed as theory it is heard as the old accusation that a person without God has no reason to be good, and the conversation ends there. Framed as a story it gets you their real reasoning.

10. 10

    What do you tell your children about all of this?

    Parents often have not settled this even with each other. The interesting part is what they do about grandparents, holidays, and school, because that is where an abstract position becomes a weekly negotiation.

11. 11

    What do you do at funerals?

    Ritual outlives belief, and this is where people notice the gap most sharply. Ask what they say to a grieving person and what they wish someone would say to them, since the standard sentences all assume a shared afterlife.

12. 12

    When someone says they will pray for you, what actually goes through your head?

    The honest answers run from genuinely touched to quietly annoyed, and the difference usually depends on whether the phrase felt like care or like a verdict. Worth knowing before you say it to this particular person.

13. 13

    Has any argument for God ever come close to landing?

    Some will name the fine-tuning argument or the question of why anything exists at all. Many will say no argument has, but a person or an experience once did, which is a more useful answer than any syllogism and a better thing to follow up on.

14. 14

    What would actually change your mind?

    Be ready to answer it about your own position immediately afterwards, because you will be asked. If neither of you can name anything at all, you are not having a debate, you are taking turns performing one.

15. 15

    What do you think happens when you die, and how often do you think about it?

    The frequency matters more than the content. Someone who says nothing happens and thinks about it weekly is in a different place from someone who says the same thing and never thinks about it, and only the first person wants to keep talking about it.

16. 16

    Is there something religious people do that you admire?

    This gives them room to be generous without conceding anything, which lowers the defences on both sides. Common answers involve showing up for the sick, funerals done well, and organised help that does not depend on anyone feeling inspired.

17. 17

    What is the worst conversation about this you have ever had?

    You are asking for the map of the minefield. Whatever they describe, a cornered feeling at a family dinner, a pamphlet from a coworker, a deathbed appeal, is the thing to avoid doing for the rest of the evening.

18. 18

    Do you think I am being irrational, or just mistaken?

    There is a large difference between thinking a person has reached a wrong conclusion and thinking they are incapable of reasoning. Asking directly forces a distinction most people never spell out, and the answer sets the ceiling on how far this conversation can go.

19. 19

    Is there something about my faith you have wanted to ask and did not?

    Most people have held one back out of politeness, and it is often practical rather than philosophical: how you handle a rule you disagree with, whether you believe the parts you never mention. Flipping the direction is also the fastest way to prove this was not an ambush.

20. 20

    What would make it worth having this conversation again?

    Ends the evening by asking for terms rather than a conclusion. Answers like do not bring literature, or ask about my life and not just my views, are the actual requirements for a second conversation, and they cost nothing to agree to.