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The Zen of Quakerism (2016)

(www.friendsjournal.org)
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quacked ◴[] No.44447143[source]
It's always weird to see Quakerism be mentioned somewhere else. I grew up Quaker and still sometimes attend Quaker meeting, and I related to his ceiling-tile counting; I used to count the wooden boards that formed the ceiling of our meetinghouse.

The best part about Quakerism, in my opinion, is that it teaches a very hearty disrespect of un-earned authority without teaching disrespect for the concept of authority itself. One of my favorite anecdotes is a group of Quakers who refused to doff their hats for the King, as they only doff their hats for God.

There's another old practice of refusing to swear on the Bible before telling the truth, as that would imply that they weren't telling the truth before they were sworn in.

I find the inclusion of Zen in this article is interesting, as you won't find the word "Holy" or "God", used, and "Spirit" is only used twice, once to comment on how he felt pressured to receive a message from it. The original purpose of Quaker silent worship was to remove the church-imposed barrier between man and God (the "Holy Spirit") so that anyone could be a mouthpiece for the wishes and desires of the Spirit. Modern American Quakers, especially the ones who write in Friends Journal, tend to be pretty secular.

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yjftsjthsd-h ◴[] No.44447278[source]
> There's another old practice of refusing to swear on the Bible before telling the truth, as that would imply that they weren't telling the truth before they were sworn in.

I've always found it extremely odd that anyone swears on the Bible, since it pretty plainly says not to do that:

Matthew 5:33-37

“Again you have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn.’ But I say to you, Do not take an oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. And do not take an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from evil.

https://www.esv.org/Matthew+5/

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n4r9 ◴[] No.44449045[source]
There's a great John Stuart Mill quotation from On Liberty related to this. In the UK it used to be the case that you were barred from testifying in court if you declared yourself an atheist.

> Under pretence that atheists must be liars, it admits the testimony of all atheists who are willing to lie, and rejects only those who brave the obloquy of publicly confessing a detested creed rather than affirm a falsehood.

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treetalker ◴[] No.44453232[source]
In law school we were taught that swearing on the Bible (and/or belief in God or some higher power) had been thought necessary to give competent testimony because that belief ensured truthfulness (or made it more likely) on the premise that, even if a falsehood were not detected and punished in court, the higher power would surely punish it later or in the afterlife. (In other words, fear-based testimony.)

And we were taught that the need to swear or affirm truthfulness nowadays simply evinces the requisite understanding of the seriousness of testimony in court / under oath — and, by extension, that the testimony must therefore be truthful in order to duly perform the judicial function of arriving at an accurate understanding of past events and realities.

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1. n4r9 ◴[] No.44454385[source]
Yeah, it makes sense from the Christian perspective. But it falls flat when the person giving testimony doesn't believe in the afterlife. It's as if they think atheists are just being performative.