I think that you are approaching this wrong. If you had a chance to interview Dawkins, would you ask him “Why don’t you believe in God?” Probably not, it would be rather disrespectful, since he publicly articulated his position many times and asking it again would imply that you didn’t bother reading any of it. You ought to afford a similar courtesy to these guys, as well. Besides, presumably you want to gain some information from what they say, and asking questions with obvious answers wastes this “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity”. These people have probably already publicly discussed the standard generic questions like the ones you listed.
Try pretending to be one of them and answer your own questions. Do you find their reply obvious? Then don’t ask that. Not sure what they would say? Then you probably want to familiarize yourself with their research and their stance on the relevant issue, etc, then try to answer them again. Pick the questions where your model of their reply is low-confidence. When you formulate your questions, consider a template like “in your you say that <...>, but it is not clear to me how follows from , could you please explain?” Or “In you state that is true because , but suggests in that , which I have trouble reconciling with what you wrote”. Etc.
If you actually put some homework into preparing your questions (few non-theists bother, since “theists are clearly wrong”), not only you are likely to learn something new, you might impress them enough to stand out and be invited for further discussions, or even a get a recommendation letter out of it.
I think that you are approaching this wrong. If you had a chance to interview Dawkins, would you ask him “Why don’t you believe in God?” Probably not, it would be rather disrespectful, since he publicly articulated his position many times and asking it again would imply that you didn’t bother reading any of it. You ought to afford a similar courtesy to these guys, as well. Besides, presumably you want to gain some information from what they say, and asking questions with obvious answers wastes this “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity”. These people have probably already publicly discussed the standard generic questions like the ones you listed.
Try pretending to be one of them and answer your own questions. Do you find their reply obvious? Then don’t ask that. Not sure what they would say? Then you probably want to familiarize yourself with their research and their stance on the relevant issue, etc, then try to answer them again. Pick the questions where your model of their reply is low-confidence. When you formulate your questions, consider a template like “in your you say that <...>, but it is not clear to me how follows from , could you please explain?” Or “In you state that is true because , but suggests in that , which I have trouble reconciling with what you wrote”. Etc.
If you actually put some homework into preparing your questions (few non-theists bother, since “theists are clearly wrong”), not only you are likely to learn something new, you might impress them enough to stand out and be invited for further discussions, or even a get a recommendation letter out of it.
I completely agree, but unfortunately I don’t have much time left in which to prepare. Again, I wish I had started this process sooner.
Many of those who responded, agreeing to set up meetings with me, directed me to relevant readings. So I’ll be somewhat prepared for most of them.
I won’t ask any questions to which I can guess the answer with high confidence.