Right, some good arguments here. If you don't mind, to continue the discussion a bit further:
>>Because god prohibited these things.
But God didn't, at least not explicitly. The specific instruction is to "do no work on Shabbat". The interpretation is human. I think(and of course Rabbis disagree) that interpreting "flipping the light switch" as work is NOT what God meant, it feels almost like an insult to intelligence to interpret it this way. There is an intention behind it, and I think the intention is more important than trying to be as literal as physically possible. After all doing literally anything is "work" in the sense that there is physical activity happening, you are burning oxygen just breathing, walking creates sound and talking moves the air about - it's all "work" in the physical sense. Why is flipping a switch special? I know the answer to this - because religious authorities have decided that's the case.
But that loops back to the original point - God didn't decide this. Rabbis did.
It's like Muslims are prohibited from consuming alcohol and if we accept that this is a divine restriction, we can still discuss what it actually means for us humans. Some interpretatioms say that Muslims shouldn't drink alcohol because the intention here is to prevent inebriation. But cooking with alcohol is fine because it doesn't lead to inebriation. Some other teachings say that all alcohol is bad. Those teachings conveniently ignore that alcohol is in everything(your average loaf of bread contains up to 2% alcohol by volume, purely due to yeast fermentation), but dogma is more important than reality.
So yes, I think I stand by what I said initially - all of this feels like a game, with some really crazy rules. Play according to the rules and you get eternal salvation. Don't question the rules.
>The specific instruction is to "do no work on Shabbat". The interpretation is human.
This is a good point, but I think orthodox judaism wouldn't say that the interpretation is human. In orthodox judaism, the interpretation of biblical commandments is usually assumed to be oral tradition from god. There are also rabbinic decrees, but these are generally treated with something approximating the force of a biblical command because there's also a biblical command to follow the rulings of the rabbis.
>I think(and of course Rabbis disagree) that interpreting "flipping the light switch" as work is NOT what God meant, it feels almost like an insult to intelligence to interpret it this way. There is an intention behind it, and I think the intention is more important than trying to be as literal as physically possible.
This is speaking like you're not obligated to fulfill the commandments. That's axiom one. Once we have that down, the obvious next question is "what are the commandments." Asking "what is the spirit of the commandments and when can I violate them" is wrong because the answer in orthodox judaism is that you can never violate them. You can make an orthodox argument that electricity should be allowed, the prohibition is definitely rather unbased in actual law imo. But that wouldn't be because it's ok in the spirit of the law, it would be because the law permits it.
>So yes, I think I stand by what I said initially - all of this feels like a game, with some really crazy rules. Play according to the rules and you get eternal salvation. Don't question the rules.
I think I can agree with this. Most of the rules do in fact feel like dumb contrived bullshit. If you actually look at the categories for work on the sabbath it's very clearly stuff that a worker in the BCEs would think is work; lighting fires, doing planting and harvesting, carrying stuff, weaving, making bread, it's all very strange and disjointed from modern reality. And this is supposedly divine decree too, so it's not even the work of ancient rabbis, supposedly.
> I think(and of course Rabbis disagree) that interpreting "flipping the light switch" as work is NOT what God meant
It's amazing that people can just come out and say "I know what the God meant, while people who lived this tradition for thousands of years, carried it over several continents and kept it alive through wars, plagues, genocides, raise and ruin of empires - they all don't know what they're talking about". It certainly is gutsy.
The thing is, there's only two ways to know things, in general. One is experience it yourself - in this case, you go to God, ask Him (or Her, or Them, whatever works for you) what is the meaning of that, get an answer and live the rest of your life according to it (or ignore it if you like, your choice, free will and stuff). Another is trust the relevant authorities - and in this case, those are the rabbis. If you are interested in Judaic tradition, then there's no Judaic tradition outside the rabbis. Of course, inside there's a lot of variety, but if you discard the rabbis, then you've got no Judaism. Whatever is left is not based on Judaic tradition anymore, and then one would have to ask - what exactly is it based on? Why would you believe anything in those texts at all or put any importance into it? Of course, you don't have to - but then the question of what's the right thing to do on Shabbat is moot - you do whatever you like (well, excluding the obvious things like murdering people etc.) and it's fine.
>>It's amazing that people can just come out and say "I know what the God meant, while people who lived this tradition for thousands of years, carried it over several continents and kept it alive through wars, plagues, genocides, raise and ruin of empires - they all don't know what they're talking about". It certainly is gutsy.
I'm just amazed that all of the thousands of years of experience, of wars famines struggle, of tradition of practice of worship of deep religious study was required to come up with a conclusion that somehow flipping a light switch is work. I'm not saying I know better, after all I'm not a follower of this religion, but this article was very specifically about a way to avoid pressing buttons because once again, all of those thousands of years of tradition decided that pressing buttons is work. Ok, cool, I'd like to point out that it doesn't make any sense to me. But then I forgot that religion doesn't have to make any sense to exist.
It's not "work" in the meaning you understand work. You're reading a fourth or fifth party translation of the actual tradition, with the terminology dumbed down to the level that makes it accessible to the layman. It's like reading quantum mechanics book and laughing about how stupid those physicists are thinking quarks have colors and flavors. I mean, do they really imagine they could taste a quark? Surely doesn't make any sense!
> I'd like to point out that it doesn't make any sense to me
It wouldn't. At least until you actually learn the framework and understand the terminology and the rules of it. And it's not supposed to make sense you you anyway - it's not made for you.
>>Because god prohibited these things.
But God didn't, at least not explicitly. The specific instruction is to "do no work on Shabbat". The interpretation is human. I think(and of course Rabbis disagree) that interpreting "flipping the light switch" as work is NOT what God meant, it feels almost like an insult to intelligence to interpret it this way. There is an intention behind it, and I think the intention is more important than trying to be as literal as physically possible. After all doing literally anything is "work" in the sense that there is physical activity happening, you are burning oxygen just breathing, walking creates sound and talking moves the air about - it's all "work" in the physical sense. Why is flipping a switch special? I know the answer to this - because religious authorities have decided that's the case.
But that loops back to the original point - God didn't decide this. Rabbis did.
It's like Muslims are prohibited from consuming alcohol and if we accept that this is a divine restriction, we can still discuss what it actually means for us humans. Some interpretatioms say that Muslims shouldn't drink alcohol because the intention here is to prevent inebriation. But cooking with alcohol is fine because it doesn't lead to inebriation. Some other teachings say that all alcohol is bad. Those teachings conveniently ignore that alcohol is in everything(your average loaf of bread contains up to 2% alcohol by volume, purely due to yeast fermentation), but dogma is more important than reality.
So yes, I think I stand by what I said initially - all of this feels like a game, with some really crazy rules. Play according to the rules and you get eternal salvation. Don't question the rules.