Mestroyer keeps saying this is a personality flaw of mine, but I'm not actually interested in what theistic philosophers have to say when questioned directly. Asking them tough questions is like a ritual challenge, which they will respond to with canned responses that don't make much sense to you.
Cultural questions would interest me far more.
"How do your religious beliefs now differ from when you were growing up?"
"What parts of other religions do you find particularly appealing?" (maybe come prepared with some common applause lights) "What about your own religious practice do you wish were more like that?"
And maybe indirectly tough questions, to see what they're thinking.
"if you could improve one thing about the world, what would it be?" (This question can be turned into a trap if combined with the problem of evil - but again, there is little to be gained by ritually combatting them, presenting the parts of the trap disassembled and seeing what their thoughts on it are is more interesting.)
"How accurate do you think our picture is of the historical Jesus? Moses? Noah? Adam and Eve?"
Mestroyer keeps saying this is a personality flaw of mine
An imaginary anorexic says: "I don't eat 5 supersize McDonalds meals a day. My doctor keeps saying this is a personality flaw of mine."
I don't pay attention to theistic philosophers (at least not anymore, and I haven't for a while). There's seeking evidence and arguments that could change your mind, and then there's wasting your time on crazy people as some kind of ritual because that's the kind of thing you think rationalists are supposed to do.
I am about to graduate from one of the only universities in the world that has a high concentration of high-caliber analytic philosophers who are theists. (Specifically, the University of Notre Dame, IN) So as not to miss this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, I have sent out emails asking many of them if they would like to meet and discuss their theism with me. Several of them have responded already in the affirmative; fingers crossed for the rest. I'm really looking forward to this because these people are really smart, and have spent a lot of time thinking about this, so I expect them to have interesting and insightful things to say.
Do you have suggestions for questions I could ask them? My main question will of course be "Why do you believe in God?" and variants thereof, but it would be nice if I could say e.g. "How do you avoid the problem of X which is a major argument against theism?"
Questions I've already thought of:
1-Why do you believe in God?
2-What are the main arguments in favor of theism, in your opinion?
3-What about the problem of evil? What about objective morality: how do you make sense of it, and if you don't, then how do you justify God?
4-What about divine hiddenness? Why doesn't God make himself more easily known to us? For example, he could regularly send angels to deliver philosophical proofs on stone tablets to doubters.
5-How do you explain God's necessary existence? What about the "problem of many Gods," i.e. why can't people say the same thing about a slightly different version of God?
6-In what sense is God the fundamental entity, the uncaused cause, etc.? How do you square this with God's seeming complexity? (he is intelligent, after all) If minds are in fact simple, then how is that supposed to work?
I welcome more articulate reformulations of the above, as well as completely new ideas.