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Sabbath mode

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Re: Sabbath mode

#91

Post by seszett »

ars wrote: post #78
seszett wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, my objection was not on the "belief" part, it was on the "letter of the law" part. Atheism is just not something that has laws that can be interpreted or not. You can't be a "devout atheist" or a "non-practicing atheist", or practice parts of atheism but not others, it makes absolutely no sense. Atheism is by definition a binary property. If you wanted to list different categories including non-religious ones,…

> You can't be a "devout atheist" or a "non-practicing atheist", or practice parts of atheism but not others, it makes absolutely no sense. Sure you can. You can believe God exists, but decide, like an atheist, not to follow any rules because you don't think God cares. You can believe God exists and cares, but did not actually make any rules. You can Believe God is actually the laws of nature and is omni-everything,…

I don't want to get dragged in an argument about what atheism is, but the commonly accepted definition is that it is nothing more or less than the belief that no god exists.

The big bang has exactly nothing to do with atheism (why bring it up at all ? it's just a science topic) and "believing that a god exists but deciding, like an atheist, not to follow any rules" is not being an atheist. It is being a believer in some god (so, a theist) as well as an anarchist.

ALL your examples were people that are very clearly not atheists, since all of these examples involved believing in one god. They are only various examples of monotheist practices.

There can not be branches of atheism - and I know I'm exposing myself to a misguided answer making reference to the no true Scotsman fallacy, but it would be wrong. The very etymology of "atheism" leaves no place to branches: if you believe that a god exists, good, even if you think there is only one this still leaves many ways to believe in it... however, if you believe that no god exists, which is what atheism is, there is only one way for something not to exist at all.

There is a fundamental difference between believing something exists and believing something does not exist. Believing that it does not exist is a very simple belief, with no possible nuances while believing in the existence of something does leave place to interpretation.

Re: Sabbath mode

#92

Post by ars »

ithkuil wrote: post #81
ars wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's clear you are not allowed to transact business on the Shabbat. But is your computer allowed to? Not so clear. Different Rabbi's have ruled differently, that's why they are different. Some say don't take any transactions at all, other say it's fine to collect the info, but don't actually bill. Letting the computer serve web pages is fine though, computers don't have to keep the Shabbat. The issue of business is t…

I'm _I_ collecting the money when a third party (or automated process) deposits it on my bank account? It would be the equivalent of delegating that responsibility to a non-jew. I don't know how would that be ruled, but I remember reading that it's allowed to let non-jew servants perform tasks on the sabbath, though I have no idea if it's accepted by the Hasidics.

> I'm _I_ collecting the money when a third party (or automated process) deposits it on my bank account?

Yes. You don't have to physically touch it to own it. There is a concept of "clearing", once the money clears it's yours. The dispute is if it's enough to avoid clearing payments, or if you should avoid taking any orders altogether.

> It would be the equivalent of delegating that responsibility to a non-jew. I don't know how would that be ruled, but I remember reading that it's allowed to let non-jew servants perform tasks on the sabbath, though I have no idea if it's accepted by the Hasidics.

The rule there is not in dispute, Hasidics are the same as any other observant Jews.

The rule is you can not pay a non-Jews to work specifically on Sabbath. However you can pay him to work, and let him decide when to do it, as long as you give enough time to complete the work not on the Sabbath, if he decides to work on the Sabbath that's none of your concern, he's not Jewish as is not required to keep the Sabbath. You can also pay by the week and then the payment is not for the Sabbath.

Incidentally a slave (even a non-Jewish slave) is not allowed to work for you on Sabbath, also animals are not allowed to work for you. Computers however are not alive - automatic processes are unquestionably permitted. AI (if it's possible, which I don't think it is) will be very interesting.

Re: Sabbath mode

#93

Post by shmerl »

matt_morgan wrote: post #41
MichaelAza wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a non-observant Jew and have several observant friends. I always joke with them that Jews are the first hackers, finding ways to circumvent their own religious laws. Some other clever hacks "exploited" by Jews over the years: * Say a door needs to be opened by a button. For some reason which I can't quite remember right now, you can't just press the button to open the door, but say that after you press the button…

My favorite is Eruv[1], which in my neighborhood and others in NYC is tiny thin wires strung between streetlights to "enclose" a neighborhood. In some of our big storms recently many of the wires have come down, limiting people's mobility. To call all this hackery "circumvention" is not accurate ... one way or another, in building & using tricks to live with them, you are being "observant," by remembering and practic…

It's not really a circumvention, but I'd call it a hack indeed (i.e. an ingenious solution[1]). It works by modifying the subject of the law. I.e. Jewish law forbids carrying objects between public and private domain on Shabbos. What is considered private and public domain has quite clear definitions. So using that method (of connecting areas with some wires or ropes) one changes the status of the area in light of the law from public to private domain. I.e. the law applies all the same, but its subject is different, so carrying becomes permitted.

[1] http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/meaning-of-hack.html

Re: Sabbath mode

#94

Post by ars »

seszett wrote: post #91
ars wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can't be a "devout atheist" or a "non-practicing atheist", or practice parts of atheism but not others, it makes absolutely no sense. Sure you can. You can believe God exists, but decide, like an atheist, not to follow any rules because you don't think God cares. You can believe God exists and cares, but did not actually make any rules. You can Believe God is actually the laws of nature and is omni-everything,…

I don't want to get dragged in an argument about what atheism is, but the commonly accepted definition is that it is nothing more or less than the belief that no god exists. The big bang has exactly nothing to do with atheism (why bring it up at all ? it's just a science topic) and "believing that a god exists but deciding, like an atheist, not to follow any rules" is not being an atheist. It is being a believer in s…

So clearly you belong to the branch that just ignores the topic of where existence comes from.

I define God very simply: That which created existence.

You can not just disbelieve in existence, so you have to clarify what kind of atheist you are.

You are probably using a definition of God as: An intelligence that created existence.

Re: Sabbath mode

#96

Post by oh_sigh »

ars wrote: post #75
StavrosK wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same can be applied to everything, so God wants there to be sin. If God wanting sin to exist means that sin is fine, why are the loopholes necessary? Just sin. If God wanting sin to exist doesn't mean that sin is fine, then loopholes may also not be fine, even though they exist.

You completely missed the point. God allows sin to exist so that you the person don't do it, as commanded. If God made sin impossible then how can you reward people for following the commandments? The loopholes are different - God did not say "don't try to find loopholes, God instead made very specific commandments, with clear holes in them". You are mixing physical impossibility with carefully studying and following…

How do electric circuits correspond with commandments made in the BCs?

Re: Sabbath mode

#97

Post by seszett »

ars wrote: post #94
seszett wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to get dragged in an argument about what atheism is, but the commonly accepted definition is that it is nothing more or less than the belief that no god exists. The big bang has exactly nothing to do with atheism (why bring it up at all ? it's just a science topic) and "believing that a god exists but deciding, like an atheist, not to follow any rules" is not being an atheist. It is being a believer in s…

So clearly you belong to the branch that just ignores the topic of where existence comes from. I define God very simply: That which created existence. You can not just disbelieve in existence, so you have to clarify what kind of atheist you are. You are probably using a definition of God as: An intelligence that created existence.

You are just trying to bend definitions to make them agree with what you're saying.

The common definition for "god", from http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/god#Noun is "A supernatural, typically immortal being with superior powers".

The "supernatural", "being" and "superior powers" parts are very clear. If you can accept that a supernatural being with superior powers created existence, then you cannot be atheist.

If you believe that what you call "God", with a typically monotheist stance, is whatever created "existence" whatever that means, and whether or not it was a natural process or a supernatural being, then your personal definition of "God" is not the common one, and you should have given it earlier.

Also, I do not ignore the topic of where existence comes from (although that formulation sounds quite weird to me) but I leave it to science, and I am not an atheist either. I do have difficulty following the reasoning of occidental monotheists though, who seem to try very hard to spin their definition of a single "God" in order to claim that atheists are just believers like any other theist.

Re: Sabbath mode

#98

Post by DanBC »

oh_sigh wrote: post #96
ars wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You completely missed the point. God allows sin to exist so that you the person don't do it, as commanded. If God made sin impossible then how can you reward people for following the commandments? The loopholes are different - God did not say "don't try to find loopholes, God instead made very specific commandments, with clear holes in them". You are mixing physical impossibility with carefully studying and following…

How do electric circuits correspond with commandments made in the BCs?

One reason: "Is it fire?" -- see also the Feynam chapter "Is Electricty Fire?"

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_on_Shabbat

EDIT: this is an NSFW site and might be dodgy. http://www.e-reading.mobi/chapter.php/71262/46/Feynman_-_Sur...

> A footnote: While I was at the conference, I stayed at the Jewish Theological Seminary, where young rabbis—I think they were Orthodox—were studying. Since I have a Jewish background, I knew of some of the things they told me about the Talmud, but I had never seen the Talmud. It was very interesting. It’s got big pages, and in a little square in the corner of the page is the original Talmud, and then in a sort of L-shaped margin, all around this square, are commentaries written by different people. The Talmud has evolved, and everything has been discussed again and again, all very carefully, in a medieval kind of reasoning. I think the commentaries were shut down around the thirteen– or fourteen– or fifteen-hundreds—there hasn’t been any modern commentary. The Talmud is a wonderful book, a great, big potpourri of things: trivial questions, and difficult questions—for example, problems of teachers, and how to teach—and then some trivia again, and so on. The students told me that the Talmud was never translated, something I thought was curious, since the book is so valuable,

> One day, two or three of the young rabbis came to me and said, “We realize that we can’t study to be rabbis in the modern world without knowing something about science, so we’d like to ask you some questions.”

> Of course there are thousands of places to find out about science, and Columbia University was right near there, but I wanted to know what kinds of questions they were interested in.

> They said, “Well, for instance, is electricity fire?” “No,” I said, “but… what is the problem?”

> They said, “In the Talmud it says you’re not supposed to make fire on a Saturday, so our question is, can we use electrical things on Saturdays?”

> I was shocked. They weren’t interested in science at all! The only way science was influencing their lives was so they might be able to interpret better the Talmud! They weren’t interested in the world outside, in natural phenomena; they were only interested in resolving some question brought up in the Talmud.

Re: Sabbath mode

#99

Post by dfan »

gvb wrote: post #4

Funny true story: My friend bought a fancy new stove. After owning it a couple of weeks his wife commented that the oven didn't work on Thursdays. Odd. So he investigated... and he found that indeed on Thursdays, if he tried to turn the oven on, it reported an error code 5A66. After a bit of searching in the user's manual, he discovered (a) that the stove had a Sabboth mode (b) the "error code" was actually SAbb rend…

Our oven has a Sabbath mode. We looked it up online and half the hits were forum threads with people asking "I accidentally turned on Sabbath mode, how do I turn it off?"

Re: Sabbath mode

#100

Post by morgante »

ars wrote: post #73
bryondowd wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a theory. If the site had an issue, they would be unable to do anything about it that day. Could be too much of a liability, so they shut it down. Or maybe I'm applying too much thought to it.

If that was all it was they could easily hire a non-Jew to monitor it.

You can't hire a non-Jew to specifically monitor it on the Sabbath.
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