We have all heard this one. Usually from some teacher when we were in grade school. "There is no such thing as a stupid question, so ask whatever you want to ask!"
I agree that you should always question everything and ask about things you do not understand, or even ask about things you understand to gauge the understanding of somebody else.
But there really are stupid questions. For example I would like to paraphrase something Richard Dawkins said during a presentation he made... somewhere...
Anyway, during the question portion of the event, an audience member stood up and asked something like "If there is no god, then what is our purpose here?"
Mr. Dawkins reply was something like "I have no answer. That question does not deserve an answer. What do you mean purpose? What a profoundly silly question. Why do we have to have a purpose? You could easily ask 'what is the purpose of a mountain?' You could say a mountain provides a habitat for animals, changes weather patterns... but those are what a mountain does, not its purpose, the mountain is not there just so it can do those things. Just because you can chain the words together and form a grammatically correct question, does not mean it is a question worth answering, it is just silly."
So I believe there are stupid questions, such as the one above that people ask out of sheer ignorance, and there are also questions asked that just make no sense, and are usually asked by small children (though I have met a few adults), such as "How many elephants can a chicken foot?"
There are also stupid questions that make sense but are based on false premises so can not be answered even if you wanted to. "How many mice would it take to eat all the cheese the moon is made of?" "What is the easter bunnies address?"
Of course you could try to explain that the moon is not made of cheese, or that the easter bunny isn't real, but that is not really answering the question.
I agree that you should always question everything and ask about things you do not understand, or even ask about things you understand to gauge the understanding of somebody else.
But there really are stupid questions. For example I would like to paraphrase something Richard Dawkins said during a presentation he made... somewhere...
Anyway, during the question portion of the event, an audience member stood up and asked something like "If there is no god, then what is our purpose here?"
Mr. Dawkins reply was something like "I have no answer. That question does not deserve an answer. What do you mean purpose? What a profoundly silly question. Why do we have to have a purpose? You could easily ask 'what is the purpose of a mountain?' You could say a mountain provides a habitat for animals, changes weather patterns... but those are what a mountain does, not its purpose, the mountain is not there just so it can do those things. Just because you can chain the words together and form a grammatically correct question, does not mean it is a question worth answering, it is just silly."
So I believe there are stupid questions, such as the one above that people ask out of sheer ignorance, and there are also questions asked that just make no sense, and are usually asked by small children (though I have met a few adults), such as "How many elephants can a chicken foot?"
There are also stupid questions that make sense but are based on false premises so can not be answered even if you wanted to. "How many mice would it take to eat all the cheese the moon is made of?" "What is the easter bunnies address?"
Of course you could try to explain that the moon is not made of cheese, or that the easter bunny isn't real, but that is not really answering the question.
