Amish using cars and phones

D

Defiant

Registered Member
In the Sunday paper there was a long article about Amish people using non-Amish to drive them here and there. The state is trying to close down the practice because these jittney drivers don't have licence and insurance for carrying people. But that is a different matter.

The question arrives: Is it immoral for Amish people to use cars, even if they don't drive it? How about phone usage? They go around their laws and go out to a phonebooth, thus they can say, we don't have phones installed. Still cheating IMHO.

I think both practices are immoral according to their faith and they are hipocrates to do so. Hey, if your god prohibits to use electricity, then use pidgeons! I don't think their god said: don't drive a car, but you can sit in one....
 
I don't believe their are entirely prohibited from using cars. They almost certainly could never afford to own a car, but I believe there are rules for their using them (just as there have always been rules allowing them to use trains, even when the trains started getting electric lighting.

As for it's being "immoral," it seems to me that it's up to them to define the rules, and there's nothing "immoral" about including loopholes, if loopholes are what they want. Especially so in this case, since I drive in cars every day and don't think it makes *me* immoral.


If I tell myself "I am going to wake up at 5:45 every morning and work out," and then I skip a few sessions to sleep in, does that make me immoral? There I've left myself no loophole, and I am clearly breaking my rule.
 
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Defiant said:

The question arrives: Is it immoral for Amish people to use cars, even if they don't drive it? How about phone usage?
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Depends on what you decide is important. Certainly you have a valid point, but in the grand scheme of things, it's a smaller conflict than, say, a Mormon with stock in Coca-Cola or casino development. And it's irrelevant compared to the idea of an evangelical mercenary.

The flip side is that, while I have no shit to give the Amish in general, I find their spatial separation—a form of flight—a strange and even conflicting contrast to the mastery asserted by religious identity politics (cf Riesbrodt°). From that perspective, it is possible to see these behaviors as positive developments.
____________________

Notes:

° Riesebrodt, Martin. Pious Passions: The Emergence of Modern Fundamentalism in the United States and Iran. (1990). Trans. Don Renau. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1993. (pp. 17-19)
 
Defiant said:
I think both practices are immoral according to their faith and they are hipocrates to do so. Hey, if your god prohibits to use electricity, then use pidgeons! I don't think their god said: don't drive a car, but you can sit in one....
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Religions all over have changed to meet todays societies inventions. Those men who wrote the texts to whatever religion people are a part of never thought about the future of society because there's no God telling them to. Besides that those in charge change their rules and regulations to fit the society of today or else they would not have very many people following their ways for very long.

Look at the Hebrew religion as an example. There are those who follow the Old Testament as close as they can but still are not doing what it commands , those are called Orthodox Jews. They tell everyone else in their religion that they are wrong for not following Gods rules but yet they themselves are always finding work around to get their own lives in harmony with regular society.

As with all religions they weren't ever told anything to do by God, there's no God to begin with and if there were why didn't he tell them to put something in the Bible in case changes happen in the future? If God is all knowing and all seeing why can't he just say to them, put any transportation is acceptable to use or any communication is acceptable to use whenever they wrote the Bible and God talked to them.
 
Pandaemoni said:
...to use trains, even when the trains started getting electric lighting.

As for it's being "immoral," it seems to me that it's up to them to define the rules, and there's nothing "immoral" about including loopholes,
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Well, I would say even steam train is forbidden for them. Also finding loopholes is the exact definition of being immoral. After all their god didn't make those rules for nothing.

It is like jewish kids envying Christmas. Hey, make up something if you want to get presents. If the Amish want to use modern trechnology, they should change their religion, but don't find loopholes...
Or if they want loppholes, how about using modern medicine?
 
cosmictraveler said:
Religions all over have changed to meet todays societies inventions. Those men who wrote the texts to whatever religion people are a part of never thought about the future of society because there's no God telling them to. Besides that those in charge change their rules and regulations to fit the society of today or else they would not have very many people following their ways for very long.

Look at the Hebrew religion as an example. There are those who follow the Old Testament as close as they can but still are not doing what it commands , those are called Orthodox Jews. They tell everyone else in their religion that they are wrong for not following Gods rules but yet they themselves are always finding work around to get their own lives in harmony with regular society.

As with all religions they weren't ever told anything to do by God, there's no God to begin with and if there were why didn't he tell them to put something in the Bible in case changes happen in the future? If God is all knowing and all seeing why can't he just say to them, put any transportation is acceptable to use or any communication is acceptable to use whenever they wrote the Bible and God talked to them.
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So are you suggesting that fiery chariots are obsolete ?
 
G.F. Schleebenhorst said:

What if it was someone was born into the Amish way of life, essentially forced into it?
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As opposed to what? Practicing Jew? Catholic? Muslim? Heterosexual? Republican? Military? Capitalist?

Same thing as any of the above. You make your choices and you live with them.

Maybe the Amish will soon be extinct. As long as this doesn't happen by force, that would seem (to me) a positive development.
 
I recently (3 days ago) visited an Amish city of Lancaster and Strasbourg...I gotta say they are slowly turning against the words of their own bible, that is they are also using gas and refrigerators powered by gas.

As for being driven on cars...I wouldn't agree much there, most of them are obedient to driving in the carriages.
 
Defiant said:
Well, I would say even steam train is forbidden for them. Also finding loopholes is the exact definition of being immoral. After all their god didn't make those rules for nothing.

It is like jewish kids envying Christmas. Hey, make up something if you want to get presents. If the Amish want to use modern trechnology, they should change their religion, but don't find loopholes...
Or if they want loppholes, how about using modern medicine?
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But what id God made up the loopholes too? The fact is "loophole" is a pejorative way of saying "exception" and is you find an ethical system without those, then you've found one no human could ever live with.

The fact that *you* say they can't use trains is not very persuasive, because their God says they can. Let's say that I announce that Jews can't eat beef. After all, they can't eat shellfish or pork, what's with this beef loophole? Who cares what I say? No one. My word is not itself the rule, and no amount of personal (subjective) belief that their rules are "overly" filled with exceptions changes their belief in their own rules.

In any event, not following a rule that your parents taught you is *not* immoral in some binary sense. Immorality is a subjective valuation that we all place on our actions and the actions of others, not a definite "state".

I know that I think using electricity is perfectly moral. I am sure you do as well. If a single Amish man starts using electricity and his community condemns him for it, they might think he was immoral....I would not, because we apply very different standards. If his community did not think his actions were immoral, then I still would not, and by no one's standards would the man be immoral.
 
Umm dont the Amish go and live as the rest of sociaty until they are a certian age and then they chose if they want to go back?

seems better than some other religions i could comment on like the "esclusive breathren" now THERE is a problem
 
Asguard said:
Umm dont the Amish go and live as the rest of sociaty until they are a certian age and then they chose if they want to go back?

seems better than some other religions i could comment on like the "esclusive breathren" now THERE is a problem
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age 16 they are free to live a year in a regular world and than decide to stay or to go...about 10% go
 
The Amish have no rules against using technology, their beliefs are to not become a slave to technology, having it take over their lives being so dependent on it. Just look at regular people's monthly expenses with computers, phones, car payments, insurance, credit cards, utilities and other such things, working day-in and day-out just to pay for those things (not to mention the contracts) that aren't a necessity. Obviously they're going to have to fill some voids, but the Amish tend to stick with tools that they can upkeep themselves, being mostly self-sufficient.

- N
 
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