this post was submitted on 06 May 2024
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I can't believe all this religious people that pull off these loopholes really believe in a god...
If it really exists, it's gonna bust your ass.
In some religious traditions, it's not believed that they're loopholes, or cheating.
If the written rules are the precise literal words of your deity who can make no errors, then if something is technically allowed it's allowed on purpose.
The deity wouldn't make a mistake or try to trick people into following a rule that wasn't written.
Yahweh says no tending a fire on Saturday. Alright, what is "fire"? Is electricity fire? Is it a prohibited labor? Time to think.
God says no eating creatures of the land or sky. Well, otters aren't of the land or sky, so fair game.
Allah says no pork unless your life depends on it. Is processed porcine collagen still pork if it's used in artificial heart valves? What level of chemical transformation is required to remove the "pork-ness"?
The belief that a deity cares about the spirit of the the written rules and not the words is itself a religious belief.
Which, in some religions, means it's open to debate to figure out exactly what it means. :P
I wonder why your comment is being downvoted. As if understanding people different from myself is a bad thing.
I was wondering that myself, but I'm not one to complain about Internet points.
My theory is people have an unrecognized internalization of the new testament attitude towards a legalistic approach to religion, which is ultimately where the "spirit vs the letter of the law" phrase originates, albeit in the context of "between love and the law, choose love", not "don't eat fish because I'm not great with words and forgot to mention them".
I'm the stories, Jesus is pretty strongly against not only the legalistic approach but also any religious law beyond "I rock, be cool, follow your heart".
Which adds a bit of irony to all the Christian schisms over minor points of interpretation, including the schisms over this very point I'm making right now.
Also fun: there's a legalistic debate about the merits of legalistic debate versus perceived intent or purpose in the talmudic tradition going back thousands of years.
No irony, these were in essence about the very core parts, namely nature of God.
Miaphysites and monophysites believe that human nature and divine nature of Christ are inseparable or one and the same. This poses some problems for both religious and worldly hierarchies.
Then whether there is the trinity or it's one common entity or something else, and the divine nature of the son. More or less the same.
I mean, I'm not a specialist and I'm simplifying things, but still core Christian beliefs and the philosophy behind schisms one can describe on a few pages. These are not hard to get. It is all about politics in the societies in which the centers of various branches of Christianity existed.
It's basically that the Roman Church didn't quite like the idea of having the divine in every human. The divine is much more convenient to be limited to the central hierarchy. Then after the Arab conquest of a lot of the Christian lands it had more relative power and made it canon.
The East-West schism is more nuanced, but mostly was about politics too, and the interpretations more convenient for the Western feudalism and the Byzantine system which was still kinda feudal, but differently.
At the same time Eastern and Oriental Catholic churches (Armenian Catholic, Chaldean, Greek-Catholic) are in many things more similar to, well, the churches they split from, except for accepting the authority of the Pope.
Oh, I get that the schisms are very political and complicated, but I still think there's a bit of irony in "love God before arguing over details" being met with "but what is God, really?"
It's not like, hypocritical or anything, just a bit ironic.
I mean, the first phrase kinda contains the answer that God is love. Well, at least for miaphysites it's a perfectly good description. There is the Nicene creed yadda yadda, but generally Armenian and Coptic priests seem to be fine with such an interpretation.
It's depressing, not ironic. There's the song "Wings" by Nautilus Pompilius (Russian rock band popular in the late 90s), this kind of depressing.
Eh, potato po-deep-theological-rifts. :)
As a pretty nonreligious individual, I don't have much connection to think of it as depressing.
You profess to be less than an expert, but you're definitely more knowledgeable than I on this topic, so maybe you could help me with a question?
I seem to recall there's a term for the various sects that eschew a lot of the more complex doctrines in favor of a "return to basics" or individual style, Quakers being the one that comes to mind.
Do you know what that's called? As a layperson nonbeliever, that particular thread has always seemed to capture the core of it, or at least the "love and kindness" part that appeals to someone who doesn't need it for a deeper life meaning or purpose.
I'm non-religious in terms of believing in magic and guys on the sky, but I understand what spirituality is and how it makes people different.
I also deeply respect a few writers whose works I've read and people I've met, influenced by it.
And I respect the fighting spirit. May not always have as much of it as I'd like.
It's not about connection, it's about in one case it being perceived as some emotion allowing you to come out against the whole world for what you consider good with your head up, and in another case it turning into some set of sophisticated mystical explanations why you are a slave, and the latter having somehow descended from the former.
Protestant? Reformist?
Well, those include many branches which may not be always in that direction.
I don't know.
That thinking only works if you don't realize that it's all in interpretation, its not a loophole persay it's a series of loopholes you sorta work around and jump through.
Loophole to me means that you found a way to cheat the system.
If you believe your deity is entirely onboard with being a rules lawyer, then finding clever ways to do things while following the rules is just "following the rules".
If your deity says no firestarting on a Saturday, so you start it on Friday to use Saturday, why would you be in trouble for following the rules?
So if I get some to agree that fire is only flame from wood grown from trees native to Israel, then I can barbecue on Saturday and it's Kosher.
( The idea being that if rules are allowed to be interpreted, then they can be interpreted into anything. If electricity is fire (many Jewish sects say yes), then my sect can say oxidized propane isn't fire and also be correct.
Yup, that tracks. As you mentioned, there are disagreements about the exact meaning and consequences of the prohibition already, so if you can find source material to back your argument, you can argue it.
They don't view it as interpretation, but as closer to a legal argument. There's the written law, and that's what matters, the deity won't judge you based on unwritten laws, because their goal was to write down the criteria that you'll be judged by and the rules you need to follow, not to judge you based on your ability to infer the intent of the rules based on what they told you. Similar to how, when you go to court in the legal system, you're judged by the law as written, not by the intent of the congressperson who proposed the law.
The belief that it's the spirit that matters and not the letter of the law is itself a religious belief derived from early Christian rejection of the legalistic aspects of Judaism. It's why so many people in this thread have such a "well of course you're not supposed to debate the semantics of your religion, you're supposed to know what God meant and do that instead". Same for when someone "cheats" the legal system to "escape punishment" by "getting off on a technically", since what they did was supposed to be punishable. Legally, that's called "following the law", or "making a valid legal argument".
Some religions and people just don't hold that belief, and so "what if an argued position clearly subverts the intent of the rule" just isn't a compelling negative consequence, it's just part of what happens with debate.
It's got no bearing on either of our points, but I believe the Jewish interpretation isn't that electricity is fire, generally, but that incandescent lightbulbs violate the prohibition on "igniting a fire", and that many other applications violate prohibitions on things like "lifting", "doing work", or "cooking".
So electricity isn't the issue, but rather what you do with it, and even if you argue that it's only fire if it's Israeli wood, you'd also have to argue that BBQ wasn't cooking.
Unfortunately that was original the interpretation. It has since been amended into "building a circuit" and/or "doing work" as explanations. Of course neither of those hold up because turning on a water tap or turning a door knob aren't prohibited.
So there is no basis for following laws. It's only tradition and tradition can be however you define a word.
BBQ can be declared as not cooking by definition just like turning on a cold water faucet is declared as not work by definition.
I'll admit that I'm not entirely sure what point you're arguing anymore. If you think religious law is malleable through argument, then religious law changing after argument or discussion isn't a problem, it's just how it works.
Wouldn't you know, there's actual debate with citations about faucets and the circumstances In which they're permitted or not. It's not "all work" that's prohibited, but specific categories in certain circumstances. I'm neither a Rabbi, a scholar of talmudic law nor even Jewish so my understanding of the specifics are only about as deep as curiosity has taken me over the years. I don't think the specifics matter for this discussion.
Yes, there's nothing actually tangible about any law, religious or otherwise that compells people to follow it beyond cultural momentum. Words lack inherent meaning and it's only through shared convention that we agree on meaning or order in our society.
No one legit believes any of that shit or they wouldn't sin in multiple every fucking day.
They believe in whatever suits their interests best.
The loopholes were pulled throughout history so people don't remember the old ways after a couple generation and stop asking why things are changing. If the church kept telling people to fast for 40 days they would have lost a lot more believers way sooner.
The church still tells people to fast for 40 days. I’m in Greece right now visiting my partners family and they’ve just ended their 40 day fast. So not sure where you get that from, unless you’re referring to the Western churches, in which case yes, the fast has been abandoned. But in eastern churches all meat, fish, dairy, egg, alcohol, rich/fatty foods and olive oil (depends on the church that one), is banned and followers are expected to spend those days focusing on their faith, attending church and praying. The very religious restrict themselves to one meal a day after sundown, usually a bean soup of sorts or bread and water (my father in law does this). The faithful are also expected to abstain from things like video games, television etc and engage with family, volunteer and do something for nature and people, but that’s not really followed by many.
Technically they should be abstaining from labor as well.
Any pro-labor aspects of Christianity is always ignored, and abandoned whenever an ancient institutional denomination (Catholic or Orthodox for example) loses actual power against state and more importantly, business.
Tricking god is a big deal and totally fine depending on who you ask
you reminded me of this as well https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jun/09/residents-divided-over-plans-for-eruv-in-north-london
Dude wtf
Can you believe that?
no, but they do
Oh, that's nothing compared to what's going on in Judaism...
My favorite is the string they put all around Manhattan, so that they can trick God into thinking that they're really at home while running errands on shabbat.
Eh, they don't really view it as "tricking God", because in their view you can't trick God.
It's pretty specific that you're not allowed to transfer things between "domains" in specific ways, and that a domain is a property of enclosure, not ownership.
The intent was clearly to keep people from leaving their communities on the holy day, given that the stories talk about bringing things into and out of Jerusalem being the problem, and use "home" in the context where a new Yorker would reasonably call Manhattan home.
Further, if your religion is literally the source of "the spirit versus the letter of the law" reaction of Christianity, then it follows that your religion might take a more legalistic approach to religious interpretation than the breakaway sect that's influenced much of the English speaking worlds conceptions of how people should engage with religion.
It's not so much "tricking God" as "shuddup God grown-ups are talking".
That's awesome. "God, you specifically gave us a list of rules, one of which says we're not supposed to listen to unilateral commands from the heavens, so you coming down and giving your opinion on this is kinda out of line" and then God's just like "...You know what? Fair. Point taken, carry on."
I love that that's just a part of the religion, and it pretty clearly underlines the "you're supposed to think about and debate this stuff" part.
Except... that rule is actually an extremely liberal interpretation of the original scripture. "It is not in heaven" refers to Deuteronomy 30:
Which is basically a lot of words to say "what I'm asking of you is not impossible". Rabbi Yehoshua quoted that verse as kind of a wordplay (since Rabbi Eliezer made a voice appear from heaven), and Rabbi Yirmeya twisted that to say "it no longer belongs to God, he can no longer decide".
BTW - if you read the original text in the Talmud, and ignore Rabbi Yirmeya's interpretation and Rabbi Natan's supernatural story about God proclaiming "My children have triumphed over Me" (we can determine that these two are later additions because the Talmud makes sure to give credit to the tannaim that added them - unlike the original tale which is uncredited) you get a whole different story about how Rabbi Eliezer is doing all sorts of "miracles" trying to prove his authority while the rest of the Sanhedrin standing there unimpressed because unlike the unwashed masses this kind of performance usually works on - they know how these magic tricks work, and would very like to get over that part and continue with their halachic discussion.
At any rate, the twisting of the scriptures is very very common in the halacha. The very "rule" that presumably allows them to twist the scriptures is also a twist of the scriptures. Deuteronomy 17 says:
Which basically says, again in so many words (I think God knew his words were going to get twisted, so he took the extra effort to be very very clear and precise. It didn't work), "if there is a dispute go to these people who have the authority to judge, and act according to what they rule". Which is pretty much how a judicial system operates. But they took this passage and said "see! it says right there - 'they shall tell thee, thou shalt do'. This means you have to do e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g we say! No questions asked!"
And to this day, Jewish people would still quote that part to prove that the Talmud's authority is legitimate while completely ignoring the context it was taken out of.
Michael Chabon's "The Yiddish Policeman's Union" sent me down a rabbit hole of reading up on all the loopholes, I forget what they're called now, but they're pretty fascinating.
People are different. Some Hasidic groups (like those easy to see in Manhattan of what I've heard) do that and even more stupid things, similar to talismans and such. But Judaism frankly doesn't even have an idea of schism, so.
Exploiting a series of obscure antiquated strictures to convince yourself that you're going to get a big reward in the afterlife is central to all sorts of religious traditions. Its no different than chasing loopholes while filing your tax return, and then applauding yourself for winning a big rebate check.
In a world run by petty bureaucrats and dogmatic priests, why wouldn't you believe that God was the most petty and dogmatic of them all?
I don't think that this will convince you, but still:
I think it's a mistake and assume that all religious people are stupid or don't have an internally consistent worldview.
Christians (catholics, especially) know that they can't avoid sinning. That's what repentance is for.
Disclaimer: I'm an atheist myself, but I've outgrown my Richard Dawkins phase.