I find most interesting the question of which God/religion to believe in. How do they deal with the fact that the actual, historical reason that they believe in their specific God/religion is because they were born into it (most likely - not true for everyone). Have they ever considered switching religions? What was their reason not to do so?
This usually leads to very interesting discussions on the "proofs" of their religion. And they tend to be interesting indeed.
Also, I might start the debate off by more general questions, e.g. "how do you define evidence, what do you consider knowledge to be", etc. E.g. I really want to understand how they know that their God/religion is founded on truth, and not on "alien teenagers", Matrix, etc. At least theoretically.
I find most interesting the question of which God/religion to believe in. How do they deal with the fact that the actual, historical reason that they believe in their specific God/religion is because they were born into it (most likely - not true for everyone). Have they ever considered switching religions? What was their reason not to do so?
Seconded.
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.