Or weird underwear and caffeine rules.

Or the earwig shindigs they get up to

Plenty of people have been shitting on the Mormons for soaking.

As they should

I'm told by an ex-Mormon I know that soaking isn't real, but what they actually do:

1. NCMO - Non-Committal Make Out

2. durfing - grinding with your clothes on but they made up a silly name

Is Orthodox Judaism like being Amish or something?

The concept of "untouchable caste" is so ridiculous to me, like, "oh so I can't date the potter's daughter cuz my father is a butcher and my mom a mortician?, well good luck next time you crave meat or your eleventh child dies of diphteria, you dipshit"

Yeah that one really feels like bullshit to me. At the very least it’s not indoors if I can look up and see the sky

One of the best stories to tell children.

The purpose of the loopholes is to prevent a confrontation between their incompatible beliefs. Then they'd have to actually follow the rules (looking different from others by covering their hair) or reject them (leave part of their identity and community).

All religions have these things they're just more obvious when a group is more strict, or at least casts itself as such.

It's a game. God appreciates you finding the loopholes and finds them amusing to watch.

Well if your God is the Old Testament God... Yes.

I think the light stuff is about not starting of extinguishing fires, and electric lights are considered "fire" to ultra Orthodox Jews. So turning the light switch on is starting a fire, and turning it off is extinguishing one. The oven thing could also be to do with that, as anything that produces heat could also be seen as starting a fire. 5 seconds of research that I did states:

In addition to the general forbidding of all manner of work on the Sabbath, there is a special prohibition against making a fire (Exod. 35:3). The Rabbis considered this to include everything that pertains to the kindling of light, even if no actual work is involved. In modern times, there is a controversy regarding whether the switching on of electric lights and appliances is equivalent to making a fire.

...Orthodox Jews do not use electric appliances on the Sabbath, believing that the prohibition against kindling a fire was not based on the physical effort involved in rubbing two stones together to produce a spark but rather on the thought and planning that resulted in its generation.

For the Hazon Ish, the activation of an electric current and its transmission to sources of power, heat, and light that is produced by turning on a switch is forbidden because it falls under the category of “building” — intentionally causing something to happen. An exception is the refrigerator, which may be opened and closed because any electric current that this produces is incidental and without conscious intent. However, many observant Jews unscrew the refrigerator bulb for the Sabbath.

Lights that have been kindled before the Sabbath, such as the Sabbath candles, are allowed, as are an oven for keeping previously cooked food warm and a burner to keep water warm for coffee or tea. Similarly, it is permitted to leave an electric appliance running during the Sabbath and to use a timer to automatically turn an appliance on or off, as long as the timer is set before the Sabbath begins.

Exodus 35:3

You shall kindle no fire throughout your settlements on the sabbath day.

The purpose of the loopholes is to allow yourself to do the thing you want to do, without feeling bad about it. Since God is omniscient, then any "loophole" you find in the divine rules must therefore be put there with the express purpose of allowing you to do whatever you found the loophole for.

Soaking

Yep you can either be a religious fanatic living in opposition to the world, or you can be more secular and less literal and be part of it. These people want both. They want the advantages of being seen as holy and righteous and above the world, but they also want to be part of it and benefit from its comforts. It is truly an exercise in cognitive dissonance.

Christians have the "loophole" of repentance and atonement and just needing to believe in Jesus, so they can freely sin and not feel bad about it since nothing sticks to your permanent record. Ultra-religious jews do this instead because they don't have a magical "erase" button for their sins built into their doctrine.

I still remember my first moment of disbelief was when I was in Sunday School, probably around five or six years old and the nun was telling us about how prayer was when we talked with God

Me, being an autistic-as-hell little kid said "But I never hear anything back"

The nun goes "Well, you don't always, that's not how prayer works"

And I just bust our with a, "then what's the point? Why bother?"

They made me sit in the corner for an hour, which was fine because I just played Mega Man on my Game Boy with no sound on