Interesting. Now that I looked the term up, there are more than one of them in the area. I’d never have known.
I also found the articlethat I read that first informed me of the fishing line and what-not.
My issue isn’t with the intelligence or presence of brainwashing among the faithful, it’s with the logic problem the OP is having, nicely illustrated in Mathus’s post above.
Yes, yes. You’re very clever.
Wow. There’s something wrong with you.
I don’t see how it’s a logic problem. The proximate cause of their deaths was using an unsafe appliance used ONLY because of religious restrictions. They didn’t die in a car crash, they died using an appliance no one else would use that way.
But, I think it’s bullshit to give Christmas trees a pass here. There is no logical reason to drag a ticking firebomb into your house and let it dry out even more while slathering it in lights and extension cords. It’s only a “secular” tradition at this point because of the overwhelming Christian nature of America has permeated the culture so thoroughly.
There was a recent fire where three kids died because they were so concerned about Santa Claus getting burned on coals that the parents shoveled the hot ashes into a metal bucket, which eventually killed all the kids in their sleep. Where was the outrage over tricking kids into believing in an imaginary being? It sure sounds like an “idiotic Christian tradition leading to the death of three children.”
I’m on board with this pitting, but it’s not fair to hold different religions to different standards, just because one is so popular that people don’t even notice it anymore.
It’s a “logical problem” because the activity undertaken (that is, keeping food hot while unattended) isn’t in itself inherently dangerous, or no more dangerous than other activities, and in any event isn’t actually mandated by the religion.
Just like the guys killed driving to Church while not wearing seat-belts could have walked to Church, or worn seat-belts, these Orthodox folks could have used a proper utensil for keeping food hot while unattended, or alternatively, eaten cold food.
This device was invented based on the sabbath restrictions: http://www.beyondbubbie.com/my-dad-the-inventor-of-the-crock-pot/
Obviously, it is now used (safely) by legions of non-Jews to heat food unattended.
There is nothing inherent in the religion that made them do what they did, using a faulty hot-plate to keep food hot unattended, let alone made them do it without having proper fire alarms. Blaming their deaths on “religion” is, quite simply, dumb. Their religion may be absurd or it may not - that has nothing to do with it.
Untrue, they used it for what it’s meant to be used for…to heat up food. Whatever the reason was for heating up the food is irrelevant.
You’re preaching to the choir…I would never put lights on a real tree, we use artificial ones for this exact reason. But again, the reason for the Christmas tree is irrelevant…the relevant point is whether or not it’s a reasonably safe habit.
I’ve been thinking of that case ever since this most recent one happened. Again, the problem isn’t that the fireplace ash was cleaned out nor why it was cleaned out, it was that it wasn’t disposed of safely. They might have cleaned out that ash for a completely non-Santa related reason and the same exact result would have happened.
I agree that religions should be held to the same standard, but in this particular case the religious aspect is incidental. If this family had donated their hotplate to Goodwill, and someone bought it and used it because their stove was broken, and it shorted out and the house burned down, would it still be the fault of religion?
Malthus, Sarahfeena - you are missing the point. The danger or lack thereof of what was done has been stated as being immaterial. The fact that the actual issue was a mistaken belief in what was safe or risky is irrelevant.
What matters is that religious beliefs are, in the very small and very hateful minds on display, stupid, as these tiny minds do not share the beliefs. The point is to witness against religious beliefs, at least minority ones, to proselytize intolerance and mockery of those who have such beliefs. While not only having no understanding of them but have no intellectual curiosity about them either.
You know I have a hard enough time with some of the ultra-Orthodox who are, shall we say, sometimes a bit judgmental, of how secular Jews like me live (and more so secular Jewish females who may not dress modestly enough or want to pray at the Western Wall). The assholes in this thread make the ultra-Orthodox come off as models of live and let live tolerance. No small accomplishment that.
Atheism is a proud intellectual tradition. A pity that it gets tarred by this sort of scum.
Okay, so we already have a Jewish analogue to a Christmas tree: the Menorah. Conveniently for our analogy it even uses fire. If someone burned their house down because there was a Menorah accident, I wouldn’t be jumping to mock that. Why? Because having a simple physical decoration/ritual item as part of a holiday doesn’t strike me as absurd as god be okay with you making food but not touching a button. Can I objectively quantify just how much more absurd that is? No. But we don’t all regard all religious practices or beliefs as equally absurd, right? Going to Church once a week to hear a sermon doesn’t strike you as absurd as using an e-meter to audit the secret aliens inhabiting your body, does it?
So if someone died from an electric shock from a faulty e-meter, wouldn’t it seem more absurd to you than if someone happened to get into a car crash on their way to church? More pointlessly tragic? More worthy of mockery?
Wait, are you trying to imply that I’m some sort of lying secret Christian sympathizer? That I’m unwilling to criticize Christianity and I only claim I am so that I can criticize Judaism?
I covered this above, but I wouldn’t say that driving somewhere is “needlessly risky”, it’s simply the routine way that we travel. It’s dangerous to a small degree regardless of purpose. It’s not nearly as negligent as leaving a hot plate, something that’s among the most dangerous common items you can have on hand, on all night unattended in the house with your sleeping children. Car accidents, if not brought on by someone’s own stupidity like drunkenness, are not nearly so obvious and negligent a danger.
My criticism of your analogy to Christmas trees was many-pronged, the secularity of it was only one aspect of my criticism of the analogy. Christmas trees are not commanded by Christian dogma - Christmas trees have nothing to do with the creation of Christianity or the Bible, they were just a later addition to co-opt local holidays into Christianity. Whereas observance of the Sabbath and the various silly cheats to get around it are a core tenet of Judaism. But as noted above, having a decorative ritual item around that presents a non-zero danger does not strike me as absurd at this scenario. To come up with another example - if the eruv, the string that ties together neighborhoods so that they trick god into think it’s one house, were made of a heavy cable material, and it snapped and killed someone, I would think that was also absurd, because it would also be a childish work-around to cheat a rule that was already stupid in the first place.
I think you misunderstand my motive. I didn’t come in here frothing at the mouth talking about how stupid it was that someone was killed. I would’ve thought that, but tens of thousands of people die every day for stupid reasons. My participation was only because I despise people who rush in to absolve religion of any negative effects of their stupid beliefs, especially if they’re selective about which religions they’ll defend while condemning others.
By this definition, no one could ever violate the spirit of the law while following the letter of the law. By your definition, there is no spirit of the law. Are you suggesting that god made people do the silly rule dance for no reason? That there’s no greater purpose served? If there is a greater purpose, then couldn’t we acknowledge that there are times when this purpose is thwarted by a letter-of-the-law interpretation of that law?
If you tell your kid “don’t reach into the cookie jar and grab a cookie until after dinner”, and your kid then knocks the cookie jar to the floor, breaking all the glass, and eats one, and says “I didn’t reach into the cookie jar! I just took a cookie off the floor!” would you praise them for following your rules correctly?
A defendent has an adversarial relationship with the prosecution. Legal systems have protections for people because the law is not omniscient nor perfect. God has no “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard. Laws can be interpreted in ways that run counter-intuitive both to grant the greatest possible benefit of the doubt on someone who is under threat of being harmed by justice. God has no need for legalistic protections of people due to imperfect knowledge. He’s omniscient, omnipotent. Your relationship with following god’s rules is nothing like a prosecutor/defendant relationship.
If you feel that obeying god and living as he commanded is the highest possible goal - and with your eternity in the balance, how could it not be - then how could you risk running afoul of his rules by trying to cheat him on cutesy technicalities? There’s no reason to suspect that you “get off on a technicality” with an omniscient, omnipresent, brutal, narcissistic dictator. You better damn well try to comply with what it is he wants you to comply with - and if you don’t think that’s important, why are you even going through the motions at all?
Not only are you wrong about my motivations, but you are far more toxic than I am. I have not personally insulted anyone in this thread, and in the one instance that a person felt that I was personally insulting them, I explicitly apologized. You, on the other hand, have personally attacked me repeatedly even specifically calling me “scum”. Justify this.
I’m scum because I’m willing to attack when kooky stone age beliefs result in the burning fiery horrible death of 7 kids?
No, I’m scum because I’m not following your demands for special privilege. I’m not willing to say that religion has some special place among kooky beliefs that keep it from being criticized the same way you could criticize any other silly supernatural destructive belief system.
You’re probably one of those people who portrays Richard Dawkins as some fire-breathing hateful bigoted militant man when he’s actually polite, nuanced, and careful. Because his main goal, as is mine in this thread, is attacking the special privilege that religion demands to be excused from scrutiny that we aren’t asked to grant for any other similarly unsubstantiated belief. I’m sure your only idea of someone who upholds the “intellect atheist definition” is someone who’s willing to make very soft, mild criticisms while also giving lipservice to the special privilege from scrutiny.
I have no particular hardon for religion. I’m an equal opportunity skeptic. I go after alt med nuts, exploitative “psychics”, and all sorts of other supernatural nonsense with the same philosophy. But only in the case of religion do people imply that I’m violating something sacred by daring to scrutinize it, and that I’m scum for being critical of when fucking absurd religious belief causes harm.
If you caught me in a thread about how a kid died because their parents decided to treat them with a homeopathic “treatment” in lieu of real medicine bashing the homeopathic belief system, would you say that I’m small minded, hateful, and preach intolerance? If not, you’re saying that your pet pre-scientific absurd beliefs are not subject to the same scrutiny at those.
I didn’t make this personal with anyone. You made this personal with me by calling me small minded, hateful, and scum. I attacked beliefs, not individuals. Your behavior in this thread has been more apt of your description of me than mine has been. You should apologize for your mischaracterization of me.
If there is a spirit of the law to follow it’s because God says there is one. You are in no position to second guess God and his intentions. You do what he says or he’ll send a plaque on your entire village. That’s the way it works.
However, there are other requirements to being a good Jew besides not making a spark on the Sabbath. Being an intelligent person who does not foolishly cause death by leaving a fucking hot plate on all night is an important part of being a good Jew, expressed in many ways through Rabbinical teachings. As I said before, the problem here is missing the forest for the trees. They did not ignore the spirit of the law concerning work on the Sabbath, they ignored all the other laws that told them to be sensible people. The people who do this are like many fundamentalists who strictly adhere to the simple rules because it’s easier and doesn’t require sound judgment, or you know, thinking.
You don’t have to do what he says. You can just run a string around your town so that you fool God. Hyuk hyuk. He’s such a rube.
True, fundamentalists of all stripes are unthinking, it’s what keeps 'em going.
The point is to illustrate how utterly stupid the people who follow your religion too hard become. All religion is nonsense, but embracing that nonsense to the exclusion of every-day sense is highly damaging. Not just because it makes people too stupid and afraid of monsters in the sky that they keep hotplates on through the weekend. But because it ruins lives by focusing them on utterly worthless pursuits.
You’re looking at it wrong. The activity isn’t keeping food warm. It’s keeping a hotplate unattended for a day. Only fools do that. And in general, religion is one of the few ways to turn a normal person into a fool.
The point of the hotplate is to follow a rule, but not have to suffer the consequences.
I’m on a low carb diet. But I don’t count cake as a carb, because Jesus. Great. You’re still a goofball.
Good news for the village dentist, though.
There is absolutely nothing in the law that requires use of a hot plate, and absolutely nothing in the law that requires ignoring safety. So, the fact that this happened is not the fault of the law. This happened solely and completely because someone didn’t understand or heed the risks of keeping a hot plate on all day and night.
True enough. It just requires you sit in the dark like a fucking primitive. A cost that most people won’t pay.
Her stupidity is obvious. And I agree, it’s her fault. Her motivation to act stupidly was that she follows a stupid religion too hard.
If you get killed because you’re stealing money for meth, I don’t blame the gun, or even the addict entirely. I put some blame on the meth. Because it’s what causes a normal person to do stupid things. Stupid things like having a string around your village. Or a key built into your belt buckle. Or building elevators insanely grinding along to every floor wasting everyone’s time, because someone’s too much of a pussy to actually accept the rule and live with it.
Religion is meth that’s gentler on the teeth. Blame the addicts all you want, but as long as it’s around, it’s gonna cause problems.
It’s true that using a hotplate in that fashion is exceedingly negligent, the law and tradition do require people use workarounds for routine functions. And those workarounds are going to be less than optimal in their nature, and one of the deficiencies could be safety. It’s such a hassle and hindrance which is why it’s bizarre for it to nominally be a break and something someone should look forward to - a day of rest.
He’s a nice Jewish boy, God does him a solid once in a while.
I’m sorry, it must be awful to know what happened so nearby as a result of that smoke.
I wondered if people still used shabbos goys; my mother did this for some neighbors when I was quite young.