There is no similarity between the questions "are you still beating your wife" and "are you a born-again Christian."
The first is a trap with a lose/lose answer built in.
The second is a legitimate question. There is no down side to answering "yes."
Dear xzins,
In terms of their content, there is no similarity.
In terms of their logical structure, there are deep similarities.
Both sentences include imbedded unspoken premises.
To answer "yes" or "no" to either question is to confirm the unspoken premise.
At least the unspoken premise of "Have you stopped beating your wife?" is relatively straightforward: the premise is that the person queried has been beating his wife.
In the second question, when a Catholic is speaking to a non-Catholic, there is not only an unspoken premise - what is meant precisely by "born again," and that premise may vary from non-Catholic to non-Catholic.
Thus, to avoid misunderstanding, when a Catholic answers this question to a non-Catholic, he should take care to explain what he means by his answer.
To do otherwise is to very possibly foster misunderstanding, and potentially to induce another to believe that which is false. These are sins against the truth.
sitetest