Religion vs. Questions

[winkio]

I had an interesting thought: the best way to troll religious people is to keep asking them questions.  I think that on some level, people adopt religion so that they don't have to deal with uncomfortable questions.  I've noticed that in arguments, the religious people tend to favor using explanations of their own viewpoint or to try to explain the opposition's viewpoint instead of questioning the opposition.  Similarly, it seems religious people always have an answer for something.  Why did my dog get sick and die?  Because it was his time, because he sinned, because god wanted it that way, etc.

I myself do not fear questions.  I know that I can't answer some things, and I'm not going to fool myself into thinking I can.  Does anybody else think this is a legitimate way to view religion?

[ForeverZer0]

I am educated on the Bible and I do believe in God, though I would not consider myself a person of faith, I do believe it. A person feeling the need to give an answer no matter what is that person, and has nothing to do with religion. Not everything that occurs in this world has to have some higher meaning or purpose. Some things just happen.

In my own personal opinion, I find the non-religious scientific types always seem to have to come up with some wild explanation instead of just saying "I don't know" or "there is no explanation for it", no matter how incredible that explanation may be, especially when it comes to attempts at disproving religious matters.

[Blizzard]

I am educated on the Bible as well and while I do believe in a god, I do not believe in the Christian god (at least not anymore). I don't think faith is bound to religion since I have a strong faith, but it's not blind faith.
Anyway, I think it's an interesting concept. I know that I usually ask the other side questions. But I don't think that it works because of winkio's observation, I think it works because asking questions is an attacking position while answering them is a defending position. If you are not defending your or your point of view, you are in an advantage position. The defending person can't possibly have all the answers so at one point that person has to back up. And the more that person was trying to defend themselves, the more not knowing one answer makes them look like a loser (in the context of the debate, not in general). Another thing is that people often don't know their viewpoint well enough so if you keep asking questions and dig deeper and deeper, at one point they will have no answer, because they haven't thought about that yet.