As the title says..."what's your favourite question to ask a theist"?
You may have many favourites...I would like to hear from you guys about yours.
I have a personal favourite which I often use when they start spouting their spew that GOD wrote the bible at the beginning of time, he created everything....
"OK. If GOD wrote the BIBLE at the beginning of time like you say...some 14.5 BILLION, that's BILLION years ago, What language was it written in?"
Most theists I know don't even know what language JESUS spoke. It's sad really.
Another of my favourites is this one...
"Why did it take GOD 10 BILLION years to make the planet EARTH and then a further 4.5 BILLION years to make MAN?"
There's always a spewy reply of some sort or another which usually gets my goat and the theist is appalled at my outburst of laughter.
So come on you guys....let 'em have it....share your ammo with us.
Excellent question, Darrell!
And if you're "born again," do you get two?
What was Jesus's sexual orientation?
That could never go down well. Maybe among the younger generation. He did surround himself with all guys who wore dresses.
Interesting you should ask that --
Mark 14-51, 52 - the scene is the garden, where Yeshua (Jesus) was arrested:
14: 51 And there followed him (Jesus) a certain young man, having a linen cloth cast about his naked body; and the young men (soldiers) laid hold on him.
14:52 And he left the linen cloth, and fled from them naked.
Who was he, and what was he doing there?
Now there were many versions of the Gospel of Mark floating around at the end of the first century, C.E., and many of them were forgeries - some writers of the time, who felt they had something to say but that no one would listen to them, would write something and maintain that a relatively famous person wrote them, to gain readership for their ideas. There were also copies of Mark's gospel, that had been edited by scribes, with words added and/or deleted to make the gospel say what they felt it should say.
In 1958, Biblical scholar Morton Smith, while indexing a library of ancient tests in the Mar Saba monastery, SW of Jerusalem, uncovered a volume, purported to have been written by none other than Clement of Alexandria, himself. Translated, the volume said that Mark had written a gospel for the common man, then moved to Alexandria, where he added to this volume, additional writings intended only for those more knowledgeable, writings that revealed more of the "secrets" that Jesus had confided to his disciples. I could spend pages expounding on whether or not experts believe a) the Clement volume was authentic, and b) the "Secret Gospel of Mark," to which Clement referred, was written by the same anonymous author who quilled the Gospel of Mark, but I'll make a long story short, by saying the jury's still out.
HowEVER, for your perusal and consideration, here's a segment from (maybe) "Mark," as offered by (maybe) Clement:
In this, Jesus has just raised a young man from the dead,
"The young man looked at him (Jesus) intently and loved him; and he (the Young Man) began pleading with him (Jesus) that he (the YM) might be with him (J). When they came out of the tomb, they went to the young man's house, for he was wealthy.
"And after six days, Jesus gave him a command. And when it was evening, the young man came to him, wearing a linen cloth over his naked body. He (YM) stayed with him (J) that night, for Jesus was teaching him the mystery of the Kingdom of God. When he got up from there, he returned to the other side of the Jordan."
I just find it a bit interesting that some young man, with "a linen cloth over his naked body," keeps popping up (no pun intended, you know me) --
As I mentioned, there were a lot of "if's" involved. It just seems strange that both the "Secret" Gospel and the Canonical one seem to have one or more young men flitting around with linen cloths over their naked bodies.
A final thought on that - face it, we're all naked under our clothes, but when describing how we're dressed, one rarely emphasizes that obvious fact. Yet the writer of both pieces ascribed to "Mark," appeared to think it important to stress that the young man was naked under the linen cloth - why would that be important, unless his nakedness was a relevant point?
You think that at one time being 'naked under our cloths' was the norm, and cloths the ab-norm?
It just shows that whoever wrote that part of The Bible was not very skilled at using the red herring technique.