To cut straight to the chase, there are indeed stupid questions. To be a bit silly about it, if someone asks, 'Why is the sky blue?" when we're talking about George Washington's Farewell Address, they've asked a stupid question. More practically, when an answer is obvious yet the question is put forth anyway, it's a stupid question. Quite a few of us I suspect have teased friends when they produced that sort of query, the one which begs for the 'Well, duh' response. I know I have been on both sides of that, er, question.
Then too, we've all, most of us, anyway, seen courtroom dramas where one attorney directs a question at whoever is on the stand only to have the opposing lawyer yell something like, "Objection! Irrelevant!", or "Objection! Leading the witness!" at which point the judge will either sustain the objection or overrule it. What is the judge in such instances doing? Essentially this: determining whether the question is stupid or not.
Oh, it could be worse than stupid. It could be evil. But as evil is a form of stupidity I'll take it upon myself to overrule that objection.
Maybe a question has no bearing on the issue at hand. Maybe it's a subterfuge, an attempt to distract or divert attention from what's actually being discussed. Maybe the asker simply doesn't know better. In those last cases we might have to tolerate his question for reasons of charity or decorum. But the question itself is still stupid.
There you have it. Put 'There are no stupid questions' on the fire with 'You can't judge a book by its cover' or phrases such as being for peace or education or freedom. When not in proper context to the issue at hand, a question can be stupid. That's simply it.
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