The close door button on the elevators in my work building work as follows:

1. After summoning the elevator, if I enter and press the door close button, the door immediately starts to close--even if I have not selected a destination. If I do not press the door close button, the door closes automatically after several seconds.

2. If I press the door open button to interrupt a door closing, as soon as the door finishes opening the door close button makes it close. If the door close is not pressed, the door closed on its own after approximately five seconds.

3. When the elevator arrives at a destination floor, if I press the door close as soon as the door finishes opening, it immediately starts closing. If I do not press the button, the door opens, waits several seconds, then closes.

Conclusion: your theories on elevator operation are inconsistent with experiment.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/insidenova/2010/12/the-great-el...

If you're a fire fighter using an elevator you don't want the doors to automatically open or close when you get to a questionable floor.

When the fire key is turned the doors are manually controlled and only respond to those buttons.

Otherwise, the Open door button is for people wanting to feel good and the Close door button might as well be controlled by Schrodinger cat.

Adding another data point: The close button on the elevator in this building here works as expected. Press it, door closes _right away_. Don't press it, wait for the doors to close in a couple of seconds.

I think there is no proof either way. I personally believe in God and am in fact Christian, but that is a personal choice based on faith and I have great respect for people who have chosen other faiths or who believe that there is no God.

This however is different. It can be shown that certain security measures actually are quite useful (sturdy, locked cockpit doors separating pilots and passengers for instance.) It can be shown that others are completely ineffective at their stated goals and seek only to avoid "donothingism" and fall into security theater

No, I think the TSA and religion are quite similar.

that's absolutely right. There is though a difference between a God and Organized Religion. For all we know Q is as God as any other and i do hope what he exists and enjoys the TNG on Netflix as much as i do :)

Arguments are one thing, evidence is something else.

> believe there is no God

That isn't what atheism is, or at least that isn't what most English-speaking people who describe themselves as atheist mean by it. Western atheists think the existence of any deities is unproven; it is not supported by the evidence.

That's not atheism, that's agnosticism.

I'm an atheist. I say the existence of a deity is both unproven and highly unlikely given the current evidence.

I wanted to point out that the door open/close buttons definitely have a function when the elevator is operating in emergency mode.

Allow me to expand further with an example scenario:

First off, an elevator's emergency operation mode is engaged by using a key. You may have noticed the keyhole before in an elevator car; it is typically located near the floor selection panel. It is primarily used by firefighter's or emergency personnel, in order to take control of the elevators.

Next, imagine a hypothetical elevator situation. The elevator is in normal operation mode. You step into an empty elevator car at floor 1, and you select floor 14 as your destination. Someone else enters the elevator car with you, and selects floor 3 as the destination. Now, floor 3 and floor 14 have been selected and are illuminated on the floor selection panel.

Assuming no other factors, the elevator car stops at floor 3, the doors automatically open, and the person that selected floor 3 steps out. But wait... you decide to step out too, because you need to hit the restroom. As it turns out, no one is entering the elevator car that you and the passenger just exited at floor 3. The elevator car is now empty.

What happens now?

The doors automatically close. No one is on board the elevator car that you just exited, and floor 14 is still selected. This is immutable; assuming no other factors, the elevator car will eventually make it to floor 14, or be stopped by other passengers that are waiting for that elevator car before it gets there. In either case, the elevator car is out of your control.

Now, think of it from a firefighter's perspective. A firefighter does not want to be in a scenario where the elevator car is capable of leaving a floor, without his or her express command, regardless of whether the elevator car is being called by someone else, or if a floor has been selected and no one is in the elevator car.

This is what the door close button is for when an elevator is in emergency operation mode. In this mode, the desired floor is selected, then the door close button must be fully engaged and held until the elevator car begins to move. If the door close button is released before the elevator car begins to move, the doors will automatically open, and the elevator car will remain on the current floor.

In emergency operation mode, when an elevator car arrives at the selected floor, the doors will not automatically open. The open door button must be fully engaged and held in order for the doors to fully open. If the open door button is released before the doors are fully opened, the doors will automatically close. This functionality is designed to allow a firefighter to partially open the doors in order to assess a situation (e.g., fire, smoke, etc.), again, at his or her express command. Otherwise, the doors would automatically open fully, potentially exposing the firefighter to flames, or quickly filling the elevator car with smoke.