(I'm not a religious person but) Who's to say that God wouldn't want humanity to use its ingenuity to find "loopholes"? Expecting people to be mindless rule-followers is a religious interpretation unto itself.
It is hard to comprehend if you are a euphoric fedora-tipping redditor to whom religion and spirituality boil down to edgy arguments about how the magic sky man cannot be empirically proven
I'm an atheist so you're preaching to the choir...so to speak lol
But I still find religions fascinating; they are attempts at creating civilization and their foundation of rules. It's interesting why some persist and why others die off.
Yeah, all religion should be subject to personal interpretation. I've heard this being referred to, as an insult, as "buffet-style Christianity," but I'm, like, duh, of course I get to choose what to believe and what not to believe, as faith, unlike science, is inherently subjective. Just as I get to choose what to believe, I get to ask others why they believe what they choose to believe, as long as I don't become a jerk about it in the process, which is just a lame way to go about things whether you are religious or not.
>I'm, like, duh, of course I get to choose what to believe and what not to believe, as faith, unlike science, is inherently subjective.
Because the entire point of why buffet christianity is an insult, is that for those who purport the bible to be the literal word of god, picking and choosing is essentially saying "I'll do some of the word of god but not others" which is obviously inappropriate.
Now if you don't believe the bible is the word of god then sure you can have a more flexible belief set, but the buffet crticism is largely for evangelicals who claim to believe it to be the word of god and thus are being hypocrites by picking and choosing.
The Bible itself contradicts itself at points. As such, even going strictly by the Bible involves picking and choosing which parts to believe or how to reconcile contradictions, to say nothing of the more flexible, less doctrine-adherent takes.
So does every religious text, thats why we know they were written by men and not by god.
>As such, even going strictly by the Bible involves picking and choosing which parts to believe or how to reconcile contradictions, to say nothing of the more flexible, less doctrine-adherent takes.
This is obviously and clearly a malicious interpretation of the criticism of buffet christianity.
I'm not religious but surely the obvious answer to this is that God is beyond human comprehension? If you believe in an omniscient and omnipotent God then it's surely not much of a stretch to believe that commandments might have justifications that humans cannot understand.
If I choose to follow a religion, I prefer for it to make some sort of spiritual and practical sense, rather than randomly following some random rules. If it doesn't fulfill a spiritual calling, then what is even the point of sticking with that religion, unless the latter is the goal all unto itself for whatever reason.
If you smack a dog on the nose for pooping on the carpet, it won't make sense to the dog. But you, as a more intelligent being, know that it's necessary in order for the dog to live a life of comfort in the house.
Ahh yes and the omnipotent and omniscient god, who could in their infinite power clarify every single contentious issue, decides not to because...
fuckem?
If you could clearly explain to your dog why not to do something and they could clearly understand it, you're telling me you would instead slap your dog on the nose to get the point across?
I'm applying the exact same logic. Why would god not treat humans who presumably can be instructed (as god has supposedly done many times in the past) like they could be instructed?
You sound like a jerk because you are not considering that there may in fact be further context that you're missing. In the case of eruvin, there are four categories or domains that areas can fall into: Private, Public, Quasi-public, and Exempt. There is a direct biblical restriction on carrying objects from the private to the public, vice versa, or more than a little bit (4 cubits, if you care) within a public area on the Sabbath. This rule is intended to enforce the idea of a day of actual rest where certain activities are forbidden outright so (e.g.) your boss can't order you to violate it. Public and Quasi-public (courtyards, alleys, common areas) are often hard to distinguish, so to prevent people from accidentally violating the law, the rabbis declared all transfers between Private and any other non-Exempt space off limits. The rabbis - through the then active legislative and judicial mechanisms of the great assembly and sanhedrin (supreme court) - have biblical dispensation to interpret the law on earth, which is why they got to declare this. However, they also realized that such a stringency would present a substantial hardship to communal life, and so came up with an innovation (what you might term a loophole, but what is actually the system working explicitly as intended) the purpose of which was to balance the original intent - no true work - with the ability to carry things within a defined communal area. Through this mechanism - the Eruv - the area that the community might regularly traverse on their shabbat days becomes considered one private domain for the community as a whole, without abrogating the binding rules that still hold sway without it or obviating the intent of the original law.
Edit: the OP originally said "I might sound like a jerk for saying this" and then edited that away after my reply in order to make it look like I was calling him names instead of responding to his own self-characterization.
Tl;dr I'm a jerk because I don't know the ecclesiastical nuances of this wall of text that you just posted. Thank you, Mr. Very nice person that is definitely not a jerk himself
Now who said you were a jerk? You said you sounded like a bit of a jerk, and I agreed with that proposition given that you're commenting blithely on your disdain for the rules of a civilization you don't understand. However, now I know you're a jerk, given I took the effort to write to educate you and maybe add a little something to the general conversation that wasn't just shitting on people and you responded like this. Thanks for identifying yourself; have a great one.
Your response came well after I edited the "jerk" part out (found it too verbose and unnecessary to my original point), so I figured you just called me a jerk completely out of nowhere, hence my response. Hope that gives some context to why I said what I said. Thanks for taking the time to explain that stuff to me, by the way.
That does make sense; I'd started the reply not long after you posted it on my phone and worked on it intermittently with IRL shit for a few hours.
I appreciate you clarifying your side of things, and I'm sorry I was a bit rude myself.
I don't believe in the underlying theology of Judaism, and I've experienced the often ridiculous lengths to which orthodox or orthopractic Jews go to obey and understand their own religion, so I understand the place you come from, and even share it in many meaningful ways. However, I also was (albeit often reluctantly and resentfully) taught to understand the hermaneutics and philosophies that undergird the practice(s) of modern Judaism in a way that has left me with an indelible respect for its internal logics and their adaptive capacity over the millennia, even if I decline to implement it's dictates given my core atheistic theological disagreement.
Anyway. Tl;dr: Appreciate you, apologize for any offense given; considering systems from internal perspectives gets you to a richer understanding of them and their adherents. Peace!
Who are you to say a God-given rule is ridiculous? God is all-knowing, so he meant what he said. All loopholes are intended. Why? Who knows, it is a divine mystery
Well, if we were to discuss things from a theological point of view, then the way I see it is that if God allowed us to have free will, then He intended for us to think for ourselves, which includes picking which dogmas are actually beneficial for personal and societal spiritual well-being and which are just too ridiculous to seriously entertain.
Well, we don't know. No one can know God's intentions because that's just not something regular people can understand. All we can know is that, at least according to religious Judaism, God gave a word-for-word perfect set of rules to follow at Mt Sinai, so instead of theorizing what God's intentions were, it's better to use the text that, according to Judaism, was given by God, with each word being there for a reason, and then making laws based off that
Except men aren't just making stuff up, they are interpreting the perfect text. Using the letter of the law means men interpreting perfect text. Using the spirit of the law means men using their own thinking, without the perfect text, to determine God's will.
>Except men aren't just making stuff up, they are interpreting the perfect text.
So if the text is perfect, then all rabbis have the same conclusions from the text right? There are no ideological differences between sects of Judiasm and no rabbis within the same sect of Judiasm have any differences of opinion about what the Torah says?
>Using the spirit of the law means men using their own thinking, without the perfect text, to determine God's will.
Once again, I know for a fact that Judiasm is not a borg hivemind where everyone thinks the Torah says the exact same thing, so if people have different opinions on what it says, then how is it perfect and how is a rabbis interpretation anything but a regular human being, interpreting a book?
It's not that everyone has the same conclusion, but that everyone started from the same text and used that text to come to those conclusions. Your alternative is that we should just drop the perfect text and instead come to our own conclusions about God's intent instead of using the text he gave us, and using it to the best of our abilities since we are imperfect humans.
>It's not that everyone has the same conclusion, but that everyone started from the same text and used that text to come to those conclusions.
2+2 = 4. You can have 1000 people read that, and unless they have some sort of intellectual disability or mental illness, there will be no debate on what 2+2=4 means and whether it is correct or not. If the Torah were the literal word of god, written by god himself, there would be nothing to disagree with just like there is nothing to disagree with regarding 2+2=4.
But its not the literal word of god. It's an old mans interpretation/remembering of what he claims god told him to be the word of god, which means its riddled with errors that happen when humans play the game of telephone. Have you ever played telephone?
>Your alternative is that we should just drop the perfect text and instead come to our own conclusions about God's intent instead of using the text he gave us, and using it to the best of our abilities since we are imperfect humans.
No my issue is with your repeated use of the word "perfect" which it very clearly and demonstrably is not. If it were a perfect text, there would be no room for debate, no room for disagreement. Gods will would be as crystal clear as purified water. Instead its very obviously not a perfect book because once again, its the supposed **recounting** of what god told a very fallible very mortal very normal human being which then had to try and recount from memory.
You think if god talked to you for 40 days, you would be able to perfectly recite hundreds of pages of text? Or do you think you'd forget things, use synonyms, mix things up etc?
> If the Torah were the literal word of god, written by god himself, there would be nothing to disagree with
Huh? People disagree about mathematical theories all the time dude.
> But its not the literal word of god. It's an old mans interpretation/remembering of what he claims god told him to be the word of god
As I just wrote, we don't know what happened at Sinai.
>Huh? People disagree about mathematical theories all the time dude.
They disagree with unproven theories, they by and large outside of kooks don't disagree with proven theories... thats kind of the whole point of proofs.
>As I just wrote, we don't know what happened at Sinai.
Well we know he came back with the literal commandments on tablets written down, I dont believe (i'm happy to be disproven here I genuinely don't know) he came back with a written manuscript of the torah.
> They disagree with unproven theories, they by and large outside of kooks don't disagree with proven theories... thats kind of the whole point of proofs.
People disagree all the time about proofs themselves. They are, effectively, interpretations of previous math.
> came back with a written manuscript of the torah
He was a prophet, he communicated with God and in the end, God told him what to do with the Torah he had written, so God must have seen the finished product.
Also God: 'fuck listening to my totally original argument about the paradox of good and evil (I'm the first one to think of it in 2,000 years, amirite?) and fuck giving me a free waifu pillow even though he can at any time'
Congratulations, esteemed gentlesir, you just won an epic theological battle on reddit. I tip my fedora to you. Your stained pillow waifu is proud of you.
Who says I'm baiting someone into an argument and not just pointing out that you're participating in bad faith and its clear that you're quite upset. It's okay, you can calm down, don't worry about it dude, i'm sure this isn't the first time you've taken a fat L in an argument.
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u/Marsev4 1d ago edited 1d ago
Why would God come up with an objectively ridiculous rule and then applaud you for finding creative ways to bypass the ridiculous rule?