RFID, Sign of the (End) Times?

andy753421 writes "Wired is running an article featuring Katherine Albrecht who, with her new book 'The Spychips Threat: Why Christians Should Resist RFID and Electronic Surveillance', is warning that RFID tags may in fact be the "mark of the beast". Among her arguments are that in a futuristic world anyone who wishes to buy and sell goods would be compelled "to receive a mark on their right hand or on their foreheads," as is foretold in the book Revelation. Others are skeptical saying that many new technologies, such as the printing press, bar-codes, and several others, have also created fears about the beginning of the end."

Comments

Religion is being replaced, not just displaced

[dsanfte]

Religion is really about defining for us what the purpose and meaning of our lives is, or should be. In this respect, America and the west at large is definitely losing its religion. It isn't simply becoming a-religious though; religion is being replaced in our society even more than it has before by the indirect worship of materialism.

How do we define our lives? Work... for most people, whether they believe it or not. Kids ultimately, I suppose. Money, absolutely. The dreams the majority of us hold usually are tied to acquiring copious amounts of wealth, things, gadgets, cars, property, etc. This wasn't always so, it's actually pretty new.

It's important that people realize this, though. The hole that religion filled/fills in the minds/hearts of the public is now being filled by other things tied to capitalism/materialism at large. We don't see it, because just as a fish submerged in water, we do not know what it feels like not to be wet.

One thing is important: This current indirect worship (nobody goes to pray at the Sony store, but they sure spend a lot of time at the mall) of technology and materialism cannot fill any permanent voids in our lives. Our computers and cars won't sing our praises when we're gone, and if our kids are caught up in acquiring their own wealth and living for the present, neither will they. In the end we are (though I am atheist, I must use the term) spiritually bankrupting ourselves in the name of present gain. I just don't think it's worth it.

It may not be Christian, but it's catholic

[lord sibn]

Many people fear the "end of times," "the mark of the beast," and all that.

Many catholics fear it as well, but what they do not realise is that the Catholic Church (by which i do not mean merely the RCC) pray for the return of Christ at every mass offered. This implies necessity of this "mark of the beast."

Regular people, many Christians, many Catholics hope to stave off the apocalypse by rejecting anything they construe as the mark of the beast. The first step in the sequence of all things apocalyptic. Yet the Catholic Church teaches that the the return of Christ (the apocalypse) FOLLOWS the mark of the beast. Additionally, the apocalypse is supposed to be a GOOD thing. Too many people are afraid of the wrong things.

You believe in the apocalypse? Fine. Welcome it. There is no reason to be afraid.

You don't believe in the apocalypse? Hey, your call.

Either way, there is no reason to live in fear.

Re:Fallacy

[Anonymous Coward]

It's certainly not a "pointless fairy tale" to millions of people. In fact, the Bible is the most literarily validated books in history--and that's no fairy tale.

Orthodox Church & Protestantism on Revelations

[jdfox]

To this day the Eastern Orthodox Church does not consider it part of the Canon.

I was baptised Orthodox, and I can assure you that that's not true. It's considered by the Orthodox Church as part of the Canon, but is not read as part of Divine Liturgy. A PBS documentary once mistakenly claimed the Orthodox Church doesn't consider it part of the canon, and this mistake has been widely repeated ever since. Walk into any Orthodox church this morning, and have a look. Most English-speaking Orthodox churches use the Revised Standard Version with Apocrypha, which includes the book of Revelation.

There's an Orthodox monastery above the place on the Isle of Patmos in Greece where St. John the Divine received his Revelation, and the spot where St. John is said to have written it is a site of frequent Orthodox pilgrimage.

The Orthodox Church teaches that Revelations is a divinely inspired book, but should not be taken as a literal account of future events.

In fact, the Book of Revelations was a controversial addition to the early Bible, and several Bishops argued against including it in the canon due to the difficulty of interpreting it, and hence, its potential for abuse--particularly the type of abuse so typical of fundamentalists, who keep claiming that the end times are upon us. Other portions of the Bible specifically warn against doing this, because only God knows the time when the world will end.

Neither did Martin Luther:

"About this book of the Revelation of John...I miss more than one thing in this book, and it makes me consider it to be neither apostolic nor prophetic...I can in no way detect that the Holy Spirit produced it. Moreover he seems to me to be going much too far when he commends his own book so highly-indeed, more than any of the other sacred books do, though they are much more important-and threatens that if anyone takes away anything from it, God will take away from him, etc. Again, they are supposed to be blessed who keep what is written in this book; and yet no one knows what that is, to say nothing of keeping it. This is just the same as if we did not have the book at all. And there are many far better books available for us to keep...My spirit cannot accommodate itself to this book. For me this is reason enough not to think highly of it: Christ is neither taught nor known in it" (Luther, M. Preface to the Revelation of St. John, 1522).

Luther didn't think that the Catholic Church was infallible in determining canonicity, and rejected Revelations, and the Epistles of James (he called it an "epistle of straw"), Jude and Hebrews. Yet the Protestantism that he was instrumental in founding still fiercely defends the Catholic/Orthodox Canon of the Bible, including the Book of Revelation. On the other hand, they reject the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches' teachings on it, and on much else besides.
I haven't entirely worked my own beliefs yet, but this contradiction never made any sense to me.