Especially in the early days of rubber tires blowouts happened all the time. Nowadays usually we don’t think of tires as consumables (When was the last time you bought an extra spare tire for a longer trip?) but I can imagine that they didn’t want to rely on a steady supply of another good they could not make themselves.
Don’t single out the Amish. Catholic doctrine prohibits the use of rubbers as well.
I have never even heard of any restriction against rubber, per se(and the link said only yhat they do not use them in their fields). I suspect that there is a specific issue regarding tires that has been expanded by some local groups to other areas or that there is a misunderstanding in the Yankee community of just what the restriction actually is or is based on.
It’s OK if it’s raining and you want to protect your street shoes.
BLASPHEMY!
Every incidence of walking should be held open to the sacred possibility of water in your shoes!
Zing. 
I mean, did God ever issue an edict against progress? I think we were given brains for a reason…somehow, pretending that a agraian lifestyle with 18th century clothing is somehow ‘holier’ strikes me as funny!
Here is another good Amish Website. It has ads but also lots of information.
:smack:
It’s taking longer than we thought, indeed.
Damn. I came in here to recommend Better Off. Interesting book.
I went to a service at a Reformed Prebyterian church where they didn’t use instruments. Same reasoning, more or less.
(Slight hijack) Laura Ingalls Wilder commented (sorry, paraphrased) that thing like radios and gramaphones (working from memory, here) could be a problem, because they reduced the amount of time a family spent interacting with each other, and made entertainment into an outwardly focused, individual thing. Reduced knowledge of each other, reduced skill (musical, conversational).
I think she had a good point.
From a particular point of view, yes, God did issue an edict against progress - Gen. 11, 1-9. Man proposed to construct the Tower of Babel, and God confounded human languages so the project could not be completed. There are people who view this as a clear indication that God has placed limits on human engineering, and that to supercede those limits is an example of human arrogance, hubris.
In the sixties, there were many of us who questioned many of the fundamental tenets of our society, and one of those tenets was the idea that all technology is inherently good. It would seem that most of the ‘back to the land’ style communes have fallen apart for various reasons, among them the fact that it’s bloody hard work to run a subsistence farming operation. However, some of them have toughed it out and are still around.
As evidence mounts to suggest that human activity may be a factor in global warming, if not its root cause, I find it increasingly difficult to show any disrespect to those people who have found other lifestyles that lessen our impact on the biosphere, even if I do not share their religious beliefs.
Having a strong sense of community, partly achieved through a very strict and thorough examination of the Bible, is part of what has allowed the Amish, Old Order Mennonite and Hutterite groups to survive where many hippies and survivalists have failed.
I’ve been depressed since last night, and I gotta say…that made me smile. Hehe…