For some reason that makes me think of the first 30 seconds of this:
(slightly NSFW)
Yeah, that’d be fun for someone in a mobility scooter. Wait for the right floor, gun it and pray!
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What about a clapper or motion-detection light?
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They’ve thought of everything. From the second Wiki link:
They also permit walking past a house with a motion sensor which switches on a light if the street is already well-lit (not of benefit), but not if it is dark.
No tricking God.
(How opening a lamp box, or setting a timer on Friday, isn’t tricking God, I have no idea. But the de-rabbanan have never made any sense to this athiest goy.)
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Voice commands? If you can ask a non-jew to push the elevator button, can you ask your digital assistant?
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It’s worse than that. You aren’t allowed to carry keys. That’s “work”. But this helpful tutorial tells you how to trick g*d by wearing your keys as clothing, but be sure not to take your key “tie clip” off of your tie when unlocking your door, because then you would suddenly have done “work.”
It’s weird that people so worshipful of an omniscient, patriarchal deity think He is both so petty as to care whether you carry a house key in your pocket on the Sabbath, and so stupid that He can be fooled if you wear your key as a tie clip.
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Nope, nope, nope. Just stop. You’re going to get in trouble.
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Um, I’m pretty sure it’s not about “tricking” a deity, it’s just people following a set of customs and trying to negotiate for themselves how they are going to apply those in the modern world in a way that makes sense to them? All our lives are filled with small, useless customs that we perpetuate for our own comfort and to belong to our culture whether we realize it or not. This is an unusually specific one, but that’s no reason to be condescending about it.
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We’ll have to differ on this. Either you are carrying a key or you aren’t. It still serves the same functional purpose whether you are carrying affixed to your tie or carrying it in your pocket. I’d say that it is very much trying to pull a fast one on gd to believe gd doesn’t want you to carry a key but won’t notice if you affix it to your clothing. This is really the crux of all the Sabbath tricks, like leaving your stove on, or the elevator running. They are all ways to get “work” done, while maintaining the very thinnest veneer that you aren’t doing “work” if you set the process up beforehand. The elevator motor is still making sparks and using up power. Work is being done. The fact they didn’t press a button doesn’t make that not work. As with so much theology, there are layers upon layers of rationalization, so much so that the results have morphed dramatically from the original scripture.
I don’t think that religious philosophy is inherently deserving of “respect”, no more so than political philosophy.
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Dude. These people are making illogical rationalizations because they want to. Even if you are right, you are unproductive. No one is going to stop doing whatever they’re doing with their keys, religious or otherwise, because somebody on the internet told them it was dumb. So just leave them alone. The topic closes automatically in 4 days- you could do something better with your time. Have fun.
edit: I’m not being condescending or sarcastice when I say do something better with your time - I used to think like you and spend all my time arguing with people about why religion was wrong. It was emotionally draining and it took up all of my time. Please, have a snack, go outside, do something nice.
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Agreed; the whole perspective about “tricking” god comes from a Christian-centric perspective that views the relationship between man and god as inherently adversarial and god as particularly trigger-happy. In Judaism, the perspective is vastly different, to the point where there are Jewish stories dating back literally thousands of years of god losing arguments with the Jews and respecting the outcomes of such arguments, instead of smashing the Jews for their impertinence.
Or, to sum it up: Judaism is about adherence, either in letter or in spirit, to a code of conduct, and that’s why we, as Jews, are so rules-lawyery as a culture, by trying to find acceptable rulings and workarounds.
In contrast, Christianity is about faith, not deeds, and thus has the innate cultural perspective that such acts of “rules-lawyering” are somehow in violation of that faith, and views such actions as “cheating” or “tricks”. And, yes, that attitude is common even among atheists who are sourced from Culturally Christian backgrounds and societies.
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So, your posts are inherently “something better” but people you disagree with’s posts are not? Seems kind of convenient… 
That’s only true for some Christians, such as Southern Baptists. For many Christians, such as Catholics, following Church Orthodoxy is the key to salvation.
Meanwhile, Paternoster elevators seem like death traps…but I’d still ride one. They are less scary than the manually controlled Coit Tower elevator (don’t know if they’ve modernized that one since I visited it years ago.)
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I didn’t realize there were huge philosophical differences like that. That’s a really helpful clarification. 
Explains a lot about the philosophies of atheists coming from Christian cultures.
I was raised half-and-half in a Muslim and culturally-Christian-but-not-really-religious environment and no one really forced me to comply with any traditions but they’re still a part of my life.
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They exist. Visit Cedars Sinai hospital in Los Angeles on a weekend.
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I’m sure there are long analytical arguments made about motion sensors that probably boil down to ‘try to have all the ones you might trigger disabled on shabbos, but if you trigger one you don’t know about you’re not a terrible person’.
You can go become a rabbi, but first you’d have to pick a denomination and a school and go study for a number of years. A decent percentage of orthodox Jewish men get rabbinic training to the point that they have ‘smicha’ and are rabbis, but they go on to not have congregations and to work in non-religious fields. I have a friend who’s a CPA who I always refer to as Rabbi, but it’s not unlikely that none of his coworkers know he’s got anything but CPA training.
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Again with the sparks and power. That’s not the issue. You are defining “work” in a way that these believers do not. Yes they’d be violating the shabbos if they believed that the issue was using electricity, but they do not.
I think it’s completely fair to criticize any idea that’s actually part of the chain of justifications that lead to shabbos elevators, but not red herrings like “use of electricity”. For my part, I’d say completing a circuit is no more a building of a structure than is the act of placing one book on top of a table.
Agree with you wholeheartedly on the keys. Always seemed like a cheap trick. On the other hand, if I could build a key into my belt, and maybe use applepay on a watch, I could go without pockets in day-to-day life. That’d be neat.
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We still have 4 around here, 3 of them in public buildings. Never any problems. If you grow up with them, it’s perfectly normal to use them. I guess it was the same with Londoners jumping on and off buses.
Also, everyone around here grew up riding around in this.
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Or, being said while riding a killer paternoster. It’s got a whole Uroboros thing going on there.
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As a former Catholic and complete non-expert, i’m gonna have to disagree here. Following church orthodoxy is done because of faith in the ‘fact’ that Jehovah is guiding the church. Faith is still the primary motivator in Catholic doctrine.
edited for capitalization
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Hey! I resemble that remark.
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