when you claim that Jews are trying to trick God,
Well it's an opinion not a fact that the mental gymnastics is an attempt to trick. We aren't even completely aware of our own biases and cognitive distortions or inner workings of our own minds. So statements like that are opinions. I stated my opinion and if there is evidence that would make the opinion look less reasonable than people are free to share that evidence. Ultimately it's merely a cynical take on an observed phenomenon.
When you claim that the explanations of Jewish ideas are the result of "being pedantic" you are stating an untruth
whether something is pedantic or not is entirely opinion. Not a fact that is true or untrue. It's a cynical take that you disagree with and that is fine. If you want to give a less cynical take than that is welcome in this thread.
You keep making a claim about a bottle of water in a car. This is also untrue.
I am friends with a Jewish family who does this thing where they put a water bottle under the drivers seat to trick God into thinking they are in a boat. They claim the command is about "traveling over water". My opinion is that they are lying to themselves about the spirit of the rule. This may be unique to that family or a small sect of Judaism and not representative of the larger orthodox community. However my points about a Eruv line and things such as automatically starting ovens being legalistic interpretations that disobey the spirit of what God intended still stand. Again you are taking a tiny part of what is said and missing the larger point. The argument essentially being that these legalistic interpretations are nonsense and disobey the spirit of what God intended.
I could be way off base, but my points aren't being addressed by you other than by the semantic equivalent of saying "nuh uh"
Should I comb through your ramblings and find more things you wrote that are untrue?
I am sure there is plenty I have stated that is untrue. Thats not really how debate works though. If a fact is wrong prove it, for example if i say the obesity epidemic in germany is the worst in the world and you point me to a study disproving it. If an opinion is wrong than just state your opinion in plain english so people can get an alternative point of view. If an argument is wrong because the conclusion does not follow from the premises or there is a better explanation for the premises than share.
Maybe you teach a critical thinking class or something but argumentation doesn't seem to be your strong suit. I have taken a critical thinking class in college. I passed and it was insufficient for debate and the point of the class was to be better at recognizing bullshit. So it did attempt to tune your bullshit detector, but the knowledge in the class was insufficient for debate.
Even providing good arguments is insufficient for debate. making a good argument involves the use of pathos, logos and ethos. While in debate you can waste a lot of time on pathos and ethos, though they should likely be included somewhat to overcome the bias of judges. What you really need to debate well is the ability to rocognize your opponent's arguments, steel man them and to offer good rebuttals. Not rebuttals to their conclusions. Those rebuttals are meant for a new thread but instead rebuttals to their premises. If you can't put your opponent's argument into a syllogism than you likely don't understand their premises enough to attack them.
Again I will break it down and give you an attack vector, which you will likely ignore.
syllogism
P1 God has written plainly the rules he wants followed in the Torah, and extrapolations of what is plainly obvious is a fools errand
p2- many Jews extrapolate things from the commands that are not plainly obvius like Eruvs.
conclusion - the Jews who do this are on a fools errand
This interpretation you can than ask
"does this accurately reflect your claim" It handcuffs the person to the claim while ensuring you understand their actual claim. Rephrasing it this way also has the benefit of removing the inflammatory language you are picking up on and if that sort of thing makes you emotional it's easier to apply logic.
one attack vector may look like the following;
P1 God has written plainly the rules he wants followed in the Torah, and extrapolations of what is plainly obvious is a fools errand
The rules are not as plainly written as you may think because some things do in fact get lost in translation. Let me explain an example of how the Torah is not as plainly written as you believe.......
Work is just the translation of the original hebrew and doesn't capture the full meaning of the word. Here is a better explanation and why there may be some confusion given that english translations do not give the full meaning.
"The Hebrew language has two words for "work"--avodah and melachah. Avodah is a general term meaning work, while melachah has a very precise halachic meaning. On Shabbat, melachah is prohibited. Our Sages explain that melachah refers to the activities which were necessary for construction of the Mishkan, the traveling sanctuary which the Jews took with them throughout their desert wanderings.
The Torah specifically mentions two melachot, kindling a fire and carrying. The Mishnah further explains that 39 different categories of melachah went into building the Mishkan. While these categories of labor refer to the construction of the Mishkan, they actually encompass all forms of human productivity. These melachot are not a haphazard collection of activities, and do not necessarily represent physical exertion. Rather, the principle behind them is that they represent constructive, creative effort, demonstrating man's mastery over nature. Refraining from melachah on Shabbat signals our recognition that, despite our human creative abilities, G‑d is the ultimate Creator and Master."
https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/95906/jewish/Melacha-A-Unique-Definition-of-Work.htm
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p2- many Jews extrapolate things from the commands that are not plainly obvious like Eruvs.
Destroyed mostly by the response to premise one as well which touched on this. However I would like to emphasize that the rules in books that old are not plainly obvious and it really extends beyond translation issues. Even if something was written in plain english back then the times have changed and we would need to debate the concepts behind these rules to see how to apply those principles to a modern way of living.
Rosend,
You need to calm down and take a step back and re frame your opponents arguments. so you can understand the logical argument, avoid getting sucked in by red herrings and inflammatory language and focus on defeating the argument or if you can't than conceding.
I would absolutely crush you in a debate. All I would have to do is start my round off with some inflammatory language and throw a bunch of red herrings into my argument and my syllogism would likely go unattacked and still stand in the final round. I could likely argue that the president is a reptile in a humans body and still defeat you because you'll get distracted by inconsequential bullshit.
