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Kosmonaut posted:Yes... my dog is too unclean to share a ride with me, but not quite unclean enough not to pay someone $102,000/yr to take care of him. Without even fact-checking this I know there's at least one hole.
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May 1, 2012 03:04
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quote:IN THE MUSLIM RELIGION, DOGS ARE UNCLEAN AND NOT ALLOWED TO TRAVEL IN THE Welp I guess Mitt Romney's a Muslim.
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May 1, 2012 03:27
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Strudel Man posted:That's not really compelling - religious prohibitions often come with ludicrous workarounds. "Wikipedia - Activities prohibited on Shabbat posted:Building Closing an electrical circuit for half a second forms a permanent structure? I didn't realize it was that strict. Isn't it more work to step onto the elevator than it is to press the button?
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May 1, 2012 03:52
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Kosmonaut posted:Closing an electrical circuit for half a second forms a permanent structure? I didn't realize it was that strict. Isn't it more work to step onto the elevator than it is to press the button? Are they allowed to open or close doors and windows?
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May 1, 2012 03:56
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Kosmonaut posted:Closing an electrical circuit for half a second forms a permanent structure? I didn't realize it was that strict. Isn't it more work to step onto the elevator than it is to press the button? I think it's also considered to violate a prohibition on making fire.
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May 1, 2012 04:32
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VideoTapir posted:Are they allowed to open or close doors and windows? I think it was in the Satmar Jew thread, or maybe one of Ari's Ask threads, but there was a 'hint hint' to the fact if you're visiting your Jewish neighbor on the Sabbath and they mention how hot it is, due to summer time, or how cold it is, due to winter, that's a hint for you, as a non-Jewish person, to turn on the air conditioning or heat for them. It's fine if you do the work, they can't. But seriously religion is more loopholes than a Matchbox car set. I'm kinda amazed we haven't heard any crazy poo poo about Obama's kids. Not that much got out about the Bush twins, though I do remember some deal where they got plastered in Texas and the media was kindly warned not to rouse Papa Bear by demanding, you know, equal treatment for the DUI laws Bush himself had passed.
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May 1, 2012 04:47
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I just like the idea that if you're clever enough you can outwit God. I can just see him fuming.
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May 1, 2012 05:06
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That said, as I understand it (after one visit to a synagogue and on and off study of Judaisim over two semesters of a World Cultures course, so take that as fair warning) you will find a significant degree of variance between the Ultra-Orthodox to the less so as to what is and is not acceptable adherence to Judaic law, so there is that to consider.
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May 1, 2012 05:08
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One of my professors had parents that were strict observers, to the point that they left their gas stove on all day. Either it was because they couldn't flip the switch but still wanted to cook, or that they had been cooking when Shabbat started and couldn't turn it off. Odder still, they were atheists; they did all this stuff just because it was their culture and those were the rules 
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May 1, 2012 05:22
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quote:Some halakhic authorities rule that this classic Shabbat elevator does not fully overcome the relevant halakhic issues. Among other things, a person's weight on a downward-traveling elevator can be considered to partly cause the elevator’s descent, and therefore the activation of all electric circuits which come into play as a result of it. Thus, when a person ascends in an elevator, the motor that moves the counterweight down and the elevator car up is operating to counteract the rider's weight, which is a hindrance to make operation of the elevator require more work-energy. However, when a person descends an elevator, the person's weight helps move the elevator in the downward direction, so the person is considered physically to cause the elevator to move down. Accordingly, some authorities permit ascending in an elevator but prohibit descending. It continually astounds me how much human effort goes into coming up with the stupidest poo poo.
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May 1, 2012 20:25
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It really does seem strange to follow the letter of a religious law rather than the spirit of it. I don't think you're going to get into heaven on a technicality.
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May 1, 2012 21:44
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prom candy posted:It really does seem strange to follow the letter of a religious law rather than the spirit of it. I don't think you're going to get into heaven on a technicality. Then again we have an entire wing of our supreme court that decides cases based on what people thought 200+ years ago. There is no hope. 
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May 1, 2012 22:00
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nsaP posted:I just like the idea that if you're clever enough you can outwit God. I can just see him fuming. Things that interfere with God's Plan includes condoms, a small latex thing that many kids in sex ed pop like balloons. If God gets pissy about simple latex loving up His Plan, I bet he gets loving livid at this whole 'don't do poo poo on this day or Else.'
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May 2, 2012 01:01
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Cowslips Warren posted:Things that interfere with God's Plan includes condoms, a small latex thing that many kids in sex ed pop like balloons. If God gets pissy about simple latex loving up His Plan, I bet he gets loving livid at this whole 'don't do poo poo on this day or Else.' Yeah, which are you going to be more understanding about, when someone uses contraceptives to avoid contracting a potentially deadly disease/unwanted pregnancy OR when they are playing with semantics like a weasely lawyer to get around your direct orders?
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May 2, 2012 01:30
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Bruce Leroy posted:Yeah, which are you going to be more understanding about, when someone uses contraceptives to avoid contracting a potentially deadly disease/unwanted pregnancy OR when they are playing with semantics like a weasely lawyer to get around your direct orders? The disease/pregnancy were his will, too. So it seems like in both cases you're sort of giving god the finger.
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May 2, 2012 02:04
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Sarion posted:The disease/pregnancy were his will, too. So it seems like in both cases you're sort of giving god the finger. And that's why I could never be religious. God is supposed to be benevolent but he's giving people serious illnesses and denying them the use of technology we've developed to prevent and treat disease.
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May 2, 2012 02:58
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A friend of mine lost Playstation privileges for a few months when she told her religious (to a degree. Loopholes, right?) mom that the Christian God sounded a lot like the Elder God in the Legacy of Kain games. Said games were branded as Satanic and were taken away. The Elder God is a squid-like monster that feeds on souls. Once upon a time there was a group of people that worshiped the God, and another group that didn't. The god ordered the former to wipe out the latter, and they did, and sealed the survivors away in another dimension. Standard Old Testament stuff. Oh, but the atheists cursed the religious nuts so they became immortal vampires. And because he couldn't eat the souls of the dead as easily anymore, since they didn't die as fast, the god said gently caress It to the once loyal congregation and started having other people wipe them out. That's the general gist. Somehow I see her point.
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May 2, 2012 04:01
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Be fair, Bruce. Deism is still technically a religion.
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May 2, 2012 05:55
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I started volunteering at a Jewish school last week. When I went to wash my hands at the classroom sink, the kids went "NO DON'T DO IT" because the sink was for getting drinking water, not for washing. I had to go downstairs and wash in the bathroom sink. Now, I understand why this rule exists - to prevent bad/gross stuff from getting in the drinking water - but if I washed my hands in the sink, I wouldn't have gotten pee-germs from the bathroom door handle on the snacks! Rules are rules, though. 
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May 2, 2012 06:08
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Mr Ice Cream Glove posted:Incoherent ramblings The best part is that it's from 2010 and been debunked and it's still going around.
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May 2, 2012 07:28
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DarkHorse posted:One of my professors had parents that were strict observers, to the point that they left their gas stove on all day. Either it was because they couldn't flip the switch but still wanted to cook, or that they had been cooking when Shabbat started and couldn't turn it off. Just goes to show how psychologically DEEP some of the programming can go. You know you should/shouldn't do something logically but just CAN'T.
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May 2, 2012 07:38
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Small Frozen Thing posted:Be fair, Bruce. Touche, my friend. Touche.
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May 2, 2012 08:36
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Pththya-lyi posted:I started volunteering at a Jewish school last week. When I went to wash my hands at the classroom sink, the kids went "NO DON'T DO IT" because the sink was for getting drinking water, not for washing. I had to go downstairs and wash in the bathroom sink. Now, I understand why this rule exists - to prevent bad/gross stuff from getting in the drinking water - but if I washed my hands in the sink, I wouldn't have gotten pee-germs from the bathroom door handle on the snacks! Rules are rules, though. How much you want to bet that rule was made for basins without running water?
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May 2, 2012 09:00
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You know, just aside from the whole Shabbat Elevator thing, if god's command is that you take it easy on the Sabbath, how is he not cool with you taking the elevator? How did we get to the point where the legal definition of "taking it easy" is taking the stairs?
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May 2, 2012 09:17
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30.5 Days posted:You know, just aside from the whole Shabbat Elevator thing, if god's command is that you take it easy on the Sabbath, how is he not cool with you taking the elevator? How did we get to the point where the legal definition of "taking it easy" is taking the stairs? Well it doesn't help that Rabbinic Judaism, which is the major form of Judaism in the world today, is rabbis arguing about rabbis arguing about what a rabbi wrote about while arguing about what a certain passage in the margins of the Tanakh (Jewish Bible). The Talmud is literally a copy of the Tanakh with commentary by rabbinical figures.  This is the Vilna Edition Shas (Talmud). The center is the Tanakh itself with Rashi's commentary on the inner margin and Tosafot commentary on the outer margin. I'm not being critical of Judaism, it's just that discussing and debating the letter of the law is integral to the faith.
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May 2, 2012 09:29
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You're slightly off. The Talmud is the Mishnah broken down and discussed line by line pretty much. The Tanakh is just the Old Testament books that come after the Five Books of Moses. The Talmud is the stuff in the middle. On both sides are commentaries discussing the discussion in the Talmud, Rashi on one side and the Tosefta on the other. Rashi was a famous French Rabbi in medieval times, the Tosefta has a few authors, I think a couple were Rashis grandchildren. You see the writing on either side of the columns? Those are notes that refer to when the discussion is referencing other books, or just little notes that expound a bit. I really hate talking about religion on SA, but it turns out I hate seeing things explained incorrectly even more.  Edit: And the Mishnah is the step you missed, the Mishnah being a much older explanation going over the Tanakh and Bible to extrapolate practical laws from the stories and words. The Gemorah is thousands of pages of breaking down the Mishnah. It goes deeper than that though, as we don't consider the Talmud to be a practical source, ie we don't do things based on simple Talmudic discussion, for that we have much further and later books of discussion, most notably the Shulchan Orech which goes over the Talmud and delivers things in a more practical sense. Then in the early 20th century the Kitzur Shulchan Orech came to prominence as a much smaller and simpler collection of the practical laws and practices. I guess what I'm trying to say is, Orthodox Judaism is ridiculously removed from Fundamentalist Christianity with its literal teachings, its basically a polar opposite. You ask how there are loopholes, and the answer is we've had thousands of years to discuss every facet of how the law is to be understood and we don't consider it valid unless you can back it up with a logical argument and reasoning. This is of course not the same as trying to prove the existence of God in the first place with logical reasoning. If this doesn't make sense, I'll have another crack at it when it's not before 5am. Oh look, I've managed to write an essay just because I wanted to correct the description of the middle column of an image as being "The Tanakh". 
jojoinnit fucked around with this message at 10:00 on May 2, 2012 |
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May 2, 2012 09:53
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jojoinnit posted:You're slightly off. The Talmud is the Mishnah broken down and discussed line by line pretty much. The Tanakh is just the Old Testament books that come after the Five Books of Moses. The Talmud is the stuff in the middle. On both sides are commentaries discussing the discussion in the Talmud, Rashi on one side and the Tosefta on the other. Rashi was a famous French Rabbi in medieval times, the Tosefta has a few authors, I think a couple were Rashis grandchildren. You see the writing on either side of the columns? Those are notes that refer to when the discussion is referencing other books, or just little notes that expound a bit. Ah, sorry about that confusion. I haven't taken anything more than a comparative religion course in college when it comes to rabbinical discourse so I was speaking off of what I knew, which ends up is very little.
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May 2, 2012 10:09
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No, it wasn't bad and your point was correct. I just have a compulsion to over explain this stuff. Its complicated, but I have a long history there and its a moot point because it has nothing to do with the thread anyways.
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May 2, 2012 10:32
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A dumb thing that has crossed my Facebook wall: http://www.thetrenches.us/quote:You've failed, media. Best succinct refutation I've found is this Snopes page about other silly college claims: http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/columbia.asp Anyone have links to anything better?
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May 2, 2012 18:07
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If a republican wins the next election, are they going to keep saying that the debt is the highest it has ever been? That's just the dumbest loving talking point. How much of the debt is actually owned by Americans or American interests? I'm just curious.
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May 2, 2012 18:10
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Leon Einstein posted:If a republican wins the next election, are they going to keep saying that the debt is the highest it has ever been? That's just the dumbest loving talking point. How much of the debt is actually owned by Americans or American interests? I'm just curious. Mo_Steel posted this graph a few pages back:  So yeah, 2/3 of our debt is owned by us. But ask most people --  CHINA OWNS US .
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May 2, 2012 18:22
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I don't remember if it was mentioned in this thread or another, but something important to note about the debt is that debt is not an explicitly bad thing for the government or the economy. Debts owed by the government means that there is additional money available in the economy that normally would not be there, which helps spur markets in a down economy when cash flows decrease. Hell, the Clinton Administration had a plan devised about what could happen negatively if we paid back all our debts; it was a serious question to consider because people turn to U.S. treasuries as a method of safe investment; without U.S. treasuries (i.e. US Debt) where would that money be invested? quote:For example: What do you do with the money that comes out of people's paychecks for Social Security? Now, a lot of that money gets invested in –- you guessed it — Treasury bonds. If there are no Treasury bonds, what do you invest it in? Stocks? Which stocks? Who picks? http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/10/21/141510617/what-if-we-paid-off-the-debt-the-secret-government-report It's interesting to see how the debt of a nation like the U.S. really is distinct from the sorts of debts people are used to handling on a daily basis, which I think helps explain why people often turn to analogies like household budgets. The familiar is more easily understood than the unfamiliar.
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May 2, 2012 18:39
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Mo_Steel posted:
It does show you while the government isn't perfect, people actually do think about these policy questions and their implications.
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May 2, 2012 18:52
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jojoinnit posted:You ask how there are loopholes, and the answer is we've had thousands of years to discuss every facet of how the law is to be understood and we don't consider it valid unless you can back it up with a logical argument and reasoning. 
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May 2, 2012 19:26
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Strudel Man posted:And yet somehow, this ends up with "You can't take elevators on Saturday unless they're set to cycle through floors automatically." Thats because the first and biggest rule on shabbat was "don't make a fire". In the late 19th/early 20th centuries when electricity became A Thing there was a lot of discussion on whether or not making use of it was breaking the prohibition against starting a fire. The consensus was to play it safe as you can technically start a fire with a bad circuit (or sparking), so now anything that can be construed as using electricity is avoided unless it's constantly running with no input from a user that can be claimed to have any impact. Some denominations do use things like microphones in synagogues because then the argument becomes more about sound waves than electric circuits, but orthodoxy plays it safe. Shabbat elevators arent used by most people though, its not so much a loophole as an allowance for the aged and infirm, to let them move between floors without them feeling like they're breaking the spirit of shabbat. I do want to point out that you're not supposed to hurt yourself to keep shabbat, thats why these loopholes are made and used. A healthy person is supposed to take the stairs. There's an ancient term for someone who is stupid enough to cause himself damage or discomfort in his zeal to keep all the laws, and its "a chassid shoteh", which translates to "righteous fool". And of course if someones life is in danger all the rules go out to window. We're not stupid, just zealous.
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May 2, 2012 19:34
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From the editorial page of my local newspaper. I know it's low hanging fruit, but this is ridiculous and I honestly still can't tell if I'm being trolled by the newspaper.quote:The opposite of faith is disobedience
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May 2, 2012 21:24
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Your local paper is The Onion? Cool!
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May 2, 2012 21:55
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Fandyien posted:From the editorial page of my local newspaper. I know it's low hanging fruit, but this is ridiculous and I honestly still can't tell if I'm being trolled by the newspaper. Somebody finally tested the infinite monkey theorem and this was the only thing of some coherence to have been produced. It's not a troll, it's a victory for mathematics everywhere! 
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May 2, 2012 23:24
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So, if they disobey the mandate, are they being faithless heathens?
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May 3, 2012 05:01
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my idiot friend posted:Linda Burnett, 23, a resident of San Diego, was visiting her in-laws
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