Would you still say the question was meaningless? If not, how can a question be meaningless if it depends on the result of an experiment?
I guess the question will remain meaningless until such evidence is uncovered.
I guess the question will remain meaningless until such evidence is uncovered
Another reason (a stronger one, in my opinion) is that this question is purely a matter of belief and therefore outside of the realm of science. Which may be another explanation why some people refuse to consider the question.
Science folks my return to the question in the future, when there is a hypothesis to test. Right now, it can't. Trying to answer a question by throwing reason out the window cannot be called trying very hard...
Besides, I don't see how being dependent upon the results of an experiment has any bearing on the meaning of the question. The data collected in the experiment may be empirically valid, but the connection between the data and the question is inherently rational, not empirical, and you must already have a set of presumptive axioms in order to connect the concrete data to the abstract question.
I've certainly encountered other people who behave and speak in ways that indicate that they attribute a great deal of meaning to this question (often ironically because they insist on asserting an empirical basis for their faith), so I would not presume to speak for them.
(BTW, note that I'm being pedantic in this thread in order to discuss this topic with a high degree of precision. I'm not trying to create a semantics rathole, honest. But oftentimes clarifying the semantics is necessary to have a productive conversation.)
Why? Is it because we have not been able to answer it yet?
OTOH, I can always answer that 2+2 is 5. And no amount of faith will make me right.
Your line of thinking is begging the question; you pre-suppose that the question is meaningful before you address its meaning.
I say the question "does God exist?" is meaningless because:
(a) it is a simple Boolean yes/no question, but its is asking about the relationship between two incredibly abstract concepts: "God" and "existence". To address the question, these concepts must be defined in precise terms; but being abstract, there is no suitably objective metric to measure their precision against. Therefore, in practice, any logically consistent answer to this question will be a tautology.
(b) the validity of religion is not actually dependent upon the answer to this question; the concept of "faith" precludes the necessity of empirical validation. If you are religious, you may consider it important to believe in God, but this is not the same thing as it being important that God objectively exist.
(c) formalities of thought aside, my underlying metric is how useful answering the question is, not how true it is, and I do not see useful value in answering the question. Asking the question, on the other hand, opens the door to interesting conversations like this one, which give us an opportunity to analyze, exercise and improve our thought processes, which is why I'm participating in the discussion so extensively. :)