The scientistific community is identical to the scientific community, in case anyone was wondering…

So the scientistific community is not to be trusted on the issue of evolution, but those who believe, as an article of faith, that it didn’t happen should?

You’re insane.

After all, shouldn’t all the combined Intelligence of all the worlds scientist be able the do what chance encounters with random chemicals, without a set of instructions, accomplished about 4 billion years ago,according to the evolutionists, having no intelligence at all available to help them along in their quest to become a living entity. Surely then the evolutionists scientists today should be able to make us a ’simple’ cell.

If it weren’t so pitiful it would be humorous, that intelligent people have swallowed the evolution mythology.

Beyond doubt, the main reason people believe in evolution is that sources they admire, say it is so. It would pay for these people to do a thorough examination of all the evidence CONTRARY to evolution that is readily available: Try answersingenesis.org. The evolutionists should honestly examine the SUPPOSED evidence ‘FOR’ evolution for THEMSELVES.

Build us a cell, from scratch, with the required raw material, that is with NO cell material, just the ‘raw’ stuff, and the argument is over. But if the scientists are unsuccessful, perhaps they should try Mother Earth’s recipe, you know, the one they claim worked the first time about 4 billion years ago, so they say. All they need to do is to gather all the chemicals that we know are essential for life, pour them into a large clay pot and stir vigorously for a few billion years, and Walla, LIFE!

Oh, you don’t believe the ‘original’ Mother Earth recipe will work? You are NOT alone, Neither do I, and MILLIONS of others!

It also seems like you’re wrong to criticize Glen for asking his question. God is justice…? While that isn’t quite as bad as the questions being discussed here, it’s pretty bad. Certainly, it’s not unreasonable to assume that one doesn’t mean that God is actually justice, but, rather, something less literal. And in such a case, it’s perfectly appropriate to ask what the heck the person making the seemingly non-literal claim actually means.

On the other hand, if one means to make the literal claim that God is justice, then I suppose it’s just pretty clearly false, since God is supposed to be an intelligent being and justice can’t be an intelligent being. It seems conceptually impossible.

Julian’s right about this. Look, just because it’s a common thing for analytic philosophers to ask what something even means doesn’t mean that such a tactic is in any way the wrong move to make in a particular circumstance. I imagine you’d agree with that. But what you don’t seem to be willing to acknowledge is that there’s an enormous and relevant difference between your tree example and asking what the insane-sounding questions that started this discussion mean. You might think that those insane-sounding questions are fully meaningful. Maybe they are. Maybe my intuition about this is just wrong. But they certainly aren’t as obviously meaningful as the statements that your “B” is questioning in the example. not even close.

And, lastly, if you can’t explain what a question means to MOST very smart analytic philosophers (this would be a proper subset of analytic philosophers, of course), that’s reason to think the question don’t mean anything. Or do you think analytic philosophers just don’t have a firm enough grasp on what it means for a question to be meaningful? (Which would be odd, since they are a group of people with a reputation for focusing too much on semantics!)