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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."
Get it? Huh? Huh?
// This is not a sig.
Just because those other inventions weren't the mark doesn't mean this one isn't.
every society has had an end, the mayans, egyptians, romans, greeks
it all comes to an end, if you truly think the culture of greed, capitalism and consolidation can continue for ever then you are deluded, so when that time comes how will we know ? at what point do we give up and start again ? 20 years ? 50 ? 100 ? 500 ?
its not IF but WHEN
The only reason barcodes weren't the mark is because they can't mark humans. People have ebbed RFID tags into themselves.
I don't preview or spellcheck.
The closer we are to their "End Times", the better. No?
In this case, the cult is Christianity. If they were any other group, we'd be laughing at them. Unfortunately, they are large enough that their crazy belief system may cause trouble for the rest of us (yet again).
why are you guys posting articles by some flakey Christian who thinks progressive technology is the devil?
now maybe Christian fundies can occupy themselves railing against something harmful, rather useful things like evolution or Middle East peace talks.
Apparently some Christian nut has finally caught on to what us Slashdotters have been saying for years! RFID chips are the Mark of the Beast, and the Beast himself... well let's just say he's in his sixth year of power.
Albrecht's entry into the Christian book marketplace has not marginalized her voice in the media or with the RFID industry.
That worries me, somewhat.
Note: I am Jewish.
some people are sceptical of claims that RFID presages the end of the world. How utterly shocking.
40 years ago, it was the 'social security card'....20 years ago people said barcodes were it.. in anoher 20 it will be something else... no need to panic.
Now if some guy with horns and a tail, and breathes fire, comes out waving an RIFD injection machine THEN you can panic..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
you may defeat the beast by wearing a tinfoil hat (or glove)?
^[:q!
This is a little different. There really are passages in the Bible signifying the placement of a mark on people that is required to trade, and people are already using these things as debit cards at night clubs. I guess that people don't mind getting a chip injected after a few beers.
I love these crackpots! Every time they start to go off on me on the mark of the beast and the new world order and the euro being the one world currency I remind them that we already have a one world currency. It's called MASTERCARD. You can buy anything anywhere with your credit card and it can be tracked by our loving one world government.
I guess it's a bit late to bitch about being tracked and scanned. Just try to live without Visa or MC. Can't rent a car, can't get a hotel room.
And then he did that thing with that stuff and it was like, wow...
Every day Slashdot gets closer to looking like it's April fools day every day. This is not a serious story and should never have made it to slashdot. The next article I expect to read is about a lunatic who's done "scientific testing" to determine which tin foil hat arrangement is more effective "shiny side up" or "shiny side down" in blocking out the goverment mind control rays.
AccountKiller
i think we can all bite our tongues here for the good of the world.
we all know rfid in the form of identification may be cool but it is a little too big brother. if the religious right wants to use the bible as THEIR reason it is bad, i say let them do it. they have a slightly better grip on government than nerds.
-- lol pwned
I should note that I'm not some kind of nut. I'm just saying, if you're going to build up an argument like that, this is WAYYY easier than most of the popular conspiracy theories.
And, hey, if TV bores you, you should listen to some of them. It's amazing how they are constructed, and it's even more amazing the assertions that people will make.
OBVIOUSLY Aliens crashed at Area 51, bringing a message of peace (see, the aliens are always so evolved that they became pacists).
If that'st the hallmark of a conspiracy theory, then this one stands head and shoulders above the crowd.
I did my master's thesis in Brainology on it.
...relative to their believe is that the "mark of the beast" means that you have to recant your faith to recieve the mark. Unless they can make that claim and back it up, it's a meaningless claim. Bar codes supposedly have "666" encoded into them, but that is only because of ignorance of what the bars mean, and I don't remember anyone recanting their beliefs to get one assigned to their body.
It seems like every generation comes up with a sign for the mark. Here is my brief history of the mark of the beast. Feel free to add yours.
Social Security Numbers
Punchcards (They used to be included with your utility bills)
Drivers License Numbers
Credit Card Numbers
Bar Codes
IP Addressess
Bill Gates full name converted to ASCII and summed.
CPU IDs
and now.... RFID (Which is really just a modern bar code.)
I think the "mark of the beast" might be figurative language in the book of Revelation, but talking about apocalytic literature can be like running the Boston marathon is quicksand. It is amazing how a 10 page book of the Bible could be expanded into a 2000+ page box set and miniseries. Maybe 666 is just a number that represents imperfection three times over.... What? I pity the fool that says the mark of the beast isn't a literal number stamped on the forehead... Ow, don't hurt me Mr. T....
Revelations is a perfect specemin of apocalyptic literature. Here's a good definition of such literature: Hermeneutics.
It's written to warn and to use descriptive language to explain what the future holds. The idea of head and right hand are frequently used to depict what we think (head) and what we do (hand). As such, in this particular instance, the warning is not when we have implants in our heads or hands, it's when we think and do evil things.
Interpreting apocalyptic literature as truth verbatim is not only stupid, it's dangerous.
This is my digital signature. 10011011001
Everyone who thinks that somehow, someday, everything is going to switch over to an RFID system are insane.
Lemme tell you why: The Black Market
The black market is never going to dissappear. It is fueled by personal anonymity and cash (because cash money is anonymous).
While the black market isn't necessarily something to be proud of, it shows up whenever there are market inefficiences or certain niches that aren't being fulfilled.
Money from the black market is like money from Bush's tax cuts... it trickles down into the rest of the economey and boosts it up.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Actually, Robert Rankin proposed something rather similar in his (bizzare and humorus) book East of Ealing. It was written and is set before the days of RFID tags, and features barcodes instead. Like in many of his stories, the End of the World is prevented by the heros. Froogle link
she'd be happy to see another sign of the End Times. I mean, teh Rapture is upon us!!!
The traditional view of all major Christian churches and
the reformers is that the pope is the antichrist and the
Roman Catholic church the great whore.
http://www.rev14.info/
I have a list of all the major churches who had the
pope is the antichrist in their Confessions of Faith*,
including baptists, presberterians, luthereans, methodists,
calvanists, and more on my website.
If this view is correct, that the pope is the antichrist, and
the roman catholic church is babylon the great, than obviously,
the mark of the beast also already has (and does) exist. I
also have this on my website - the traditional, gospel view
and interpretation (as if the bible had something to do with
the gospel!!)
With the Roman Catholic church continued to be involved in
numerous scandals, including the raping of more than
10,000 boys by its priests, claiming that the mark of the
beast is something other than what traditionally Christians
have said it is probably has political consequence as well:
It allows apostate Christians and silly idiots continue to
fellowship wiht the Roman Catholic church instead of splitting
with it and refusing to have anything to do with it.
The mark of the beast == microchip implant means
continuing to look the other way with the rapes of little
boys.
http://www.rev14.info/
Let's grant for a moment that the literal Rapture will come, perhaps right out of the "Left Behind" books. Even so, isn't it sort of silly to worry about RFID? Won't getting the mark of the "Beast" have to accompany some sort of decision that you know has religious weight behind it, in the sense you know you aren't just choosing to buy and sell, but to "pay" for the privilege of buying and selling by following the beast. In other words, you don't have to worry about Satan doing the equivalent of, say, hiding at the county fair, and substituting his "666" for the stamp they give you to let leave to get lunch and then come back, right? Perhaps this is supposed to be interesting as technology that would allow the Beast to, uh, do his thing, but when all you really need is tatoo technology that has been around for thousands of years to mark people with "666", how is it interesting in that way either? In any case, we should all welcome the Rapture. If believing the Bible more or less literally is all that is going to get me eternal salvation, I know I for one would rather go ahead and have the tiny demon flies come now, so that I know to change my mind, instead of after I'm dead when it's too late. All the same, my guess is this has real political implications. For example, I think a lot of conservative Christians dislike the UN in part because they think it may eventually be the tool of the Antichrist.
the approaching singularity, the use of RFIDs, possibly inside human bodies, the so called end of the mayan calendar in 2012, the nearing of the 6000 year time limit of biblical prophesy... interesting times are ahead that's for sure.... other than that.. I'm withholding my statement just yet... I'd rather keep my eyes (and my mind) open to every possibility.
could it be?
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.
Barcodes and print can be covered. Credit cards and magnetic stripes have to be practically inserted into the machine to read em.... the field strength is too weak otherwise. If you keep em in your wallet your are safe.
All of the other technolgies that might be used to track your actions require you to willingly and deliberately use them. You don't have to use plastic to pay for purchasses is one example. Use cash.
With RFID tags, they can be read from within metres of you so anyone just passing by you on the street can access all of the tags on you if they like. Anyone outside your house can read all of the RFID tags on your household equipment, books, porno, etc and figure out a bit about you completely without your knowledge.
RFID is this technology that nobody really cares about except the people who would want to misuse it and the tinfoil hat brigade. Problem is that the tinfoil hat brigade will be made out to look like crackpots by the people who seek to abuse the technology.
I drink to make other people interesting!
Christians worry about the end times because they want to take the day off and *be sure* that they won't have to face their boss about it the next day.
If only that had been arbitrarily put in and Revelations left out. We'd all be talking about how Jesus went to hell and that after the Apocolypse, if those who ascended to heaven asked to for clemancy for those in hell, it would be granted. Guess it just didn't have the fire and brimstone to keep the stupid peasants under controll that all the 666 bullshit and no redemption theme Revelations does.
The worst thing about modern so called "christians" is that they don't know thier own history.
*** Sigs are a stupid waste of bandwidth.
Oh, wait, I left part out of that that I thought was in the article.
There are programs discussing the implantation of these in people. It's being piloted in the military as a way of tracking medical records, and there are already medical trials of having this inserted into people.
Verichip is pushing for people to get implants, and bars and clubs in other countries are already using them as debit cards linked to your tab.
So, the implants are here, and people are already using it to trade. There has been discussion of a national program to implant Americans with these, and it's being backed by a former head of the FDA (I forget the dudes name).
That's where the idea that it's the mark of the beast comes from.
Remember that the answer is 42. Don't forget your towel, and above all else DON'T PANIC. Please remember too that God's final message to his creations was "Sorry for the Inconvenience." This too shall pass.
Troll? Brilliant.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
There are dozens of ways we enumerate people today. Social Security Numbers, driver's license, telephone, voice mail box, theatre ticket numbers, just because it's not tattooed on your body doesn't mean it's not your number. If the radicals want to take a position, they have more than enough other issues to yell about, this is just the latest addition to the bottom of the list.
Though all these things are physically separate from your body. When we get into tattoos, RFID, implants, etc., I think that's where people think a line has been crossed, because an identifying change has been made to your body, a change that may be difficult to escape or leave behind.
DNA sampling and fingerprinting seem to blur even that line. It's something you can't escape or leave behind, but it's not something that's added to you, it's an inherent quality of you. These seem to be the current "front lines" for this issue, so I don't foresee the disconnected identifiers becomging a hot topic until dna and fingerprinting becomes completely acceptable. Then they'll move on to the more obscure and disconnected things.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
The end of the world has to come sometime, right? I think we can all look forward to the speed and efficiency that RFID will provide to this process. RFID will allow all of the scanning and sorting to be done remotely, in a fast, efficient, and automated manner. Consider the alternative: Waiting in some enormous line so that some flunky can manually verify your identity (using some old-school Mark of the Beast, e.g., SSN, driver's licence), all to find out which oven you should report to and which sort of eternal damnation is best suited to your needs. Imagine everyone going to the DMV at once, and you get a sense of the horror this would entail. I say if we need to end this thing, let's do it as quickly and efficiently as possible. RFID might not be the final solution, but it is clearly a step in the right direction.
Seems like an easy way to get around the end of the world
Is this an end-of-world special?
Love thy nerd!
Fundies are fun!
We CAN get along!
"It's funny. Laugh."
Hope be with ye,
Cyan
Does this mean the X-ists will finally come and take us away in their pleasure saucers as Bob predicted?
Blessed are the 1337, for they shall pwn the earth.
Well, image your SSN as a common primary key across several databases such as credit card records ,bank records, national identity card, tax, criminal records, and library. Now immagine it imbedded in your right arm or just in your driver licence in you wallet and readable at 10 or 20 feet. Now imagine it read everytime you enter a store, check out a library book, buy a hamburger, sit at a computer terminal, or drive by a stoplight.
Stop letting the fact that religious people are leary trick you into dismissing the threat as a fantasy.
It's just plain silly to use religion to try to manipulate politics this way. Anybody can see why RFIDs are simply not economically viable.
I am currently working with one of the RFID companies that is "working" with Wal-Mart on the actual implementation of RFID. Let me tell you that there is no foreseable ROI in the near future. Currently at a cost of about 25 cents a tag, it is much too expensive to be worth it for anyone. The technology is in its infancy so there are so many problems we have encountered so far.
One of the problems is the tags. Not only do they cost so damn much, but they are also not very high quality. There's a feature called "locking" which allows you to set a number on the tag and not allow it to change, but when using this we have too high a failure rate to be effective (10-30% depending on the tag type). So we had to turn off the locking, meaning its much easier to change the unique number associated with the tags (which will be a problem when tags hit the retail sector) and now we only get around a 1-2% failure rate. But when doing high volumes, even this small percent is expensive to deal with.
Another is the hardware. Part of the tag writing problems we have seen may be due to the tags and/or the reader/writer units. But right now, some tags get created and written to with no problems, but when they go by a reader, the reader just does not see a number on that tag, meaning as i said before its either a bad tag or some sort of incompatibility/problem with the reader unit. Currently we are trying to get the tags applied cost effectively, but unfortunately its pretty much boiling down to using people to grab tags from a RFID printer and hand-apply everything.
We have also been having trouble verifying all the product on a pallet, and certainly cannot expect to read 100% of product 100% of time. Some product is easy to see, but depending on the density/material in the materials on the pallet, it can be very difficult to read many of the tags.
Software is another hinderance. While the company i have been working with has had its large share of problems in the last few months, they are getting better, but still are not perfect. And unless things work perfect, it can cause so many problems. One small chink in the software can make it inoperable (essentially crashing the software a-la Windows), but the software is slowly getting more and more stable.
We have six billion people on the planet. Over the next five hundred years, hundreds of billions will live and die. Most of them will spend most of their lives suffering terribly. They will starve, kill each other, rape, drug themselves to death and more.
If the six billion alive today suffered through the apocalypse now, it would prevent the suffering of hundreds of billions. More, really, since you can extend this for as many thousands of years as you like. It's clear that the sooner the world ends, the fewer people will suffer, and the sooner those of us who are righteous will be in heaven.
Just one of the reasons God is clearly a son of a bitch.
Coz we are living after the rapture.
Think about it.
1. There aren't many nice people around.
2. We all have a nagging feeling that there is someone, or several someones missing from our lives - a girlfriend? A wife? A supportive friend?
3. All the people in the churches are evil.
I.
Rest.
My.
Case!
--------------------------------------------- "In the end, we're all just water and old stars."
Lucifer - he is the fallen angel, the "Prince of Light".
:)
and GUESS what radiation and microwaves and electricity
all are?
yep - you guessed it - they're all "waves" - just like light
is.
so you worship your technology, do you? well LOOKEE here,
we got a surpriiise for you
oh - and to cap it all? i heard that some RFID chips
can be made to work by utilising "heat" as a power source.
and GUESS where the hottest parts on the human body are?
p.s. no i'm not a christian. i might be insane, though...
RFID are insidious for all kinds of reasons but the "mark of the beast"? People who think such should be be herded onto an island and forgotten about.
Oh, the threat of loss of all privacy is real and should be taken seriously. its tust the 'threat' of the mythical 'end of the world is near' should not be taken too serious.
The world will go on. Just a bit more restrictive and less pleasant to live in.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
http://www.thebeastmovie.com/ i bet that movie is about RFID mutants that will take over the world.
If you take the mark of the beast and worship his image, you will go to hell. (Already now you are on that road, but you might still repent. If you take the mark and worship the image of the beast repenting will not be possible for you. We do not want you to go to hell, so we do not want you (or anyone else) to take the mark and worship the image of the beast.
Spelling/grammar nazis welcome (English is not my first language and I am trying to improve my spelling/grammar)
That's why Revelations is so popular: you can make it say whatever you want.
The "mark" of the "Beast" is our own DNA, and we had it all along. But only now are we actually marked by it.
The End.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.
It's not about whether things like numbers even exist or not. Even a bar code or RFID is just a number, much the same as 666 is a number. What matters is whether than number is turned into a mark, which I believe is a reference to effectively tagging people with a number ... in some trackable form (certainly not evisioned by either the writers or original translators of the Bible). We do know this kind of tagging took place in the Nazi concentration camps.
The mark apparently is predicted to be in the form of a number. But generally people did not fear numbers as a result of that. Numbers were used in commerce long before Revelations was written.
What is still puzzling is that what the wording of the Bible seems to suggest is that "The Beast" itself (probably a reference to Satan or an agent of Satan) is numbered (specifically with 666 or 616 depending on which version or translation of the Bible you read, or how it is interpreted).
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
I thought the end of days meant the second coming of christ. wouldnt that be a good thing for christians? I had the impression that there were several large 'christian' groups actively engaged in various attempts to bring about 'the end of days' -- like providing worldwide 'christain radio' coverage so that 'all may hear gods word' and working to have solomons temple rebuilt in israel etc.
The dude's name is Tommy Thompson and he was the former head of HHS, not the FDA. And, although he said he'd gladly get an RFID tag -- and in fact recommended that every American did -- now that he's no longer head of HHS (and, I suppose, no longer on the take from the RFID powers-that-be) he said that he's not getting tagged until he's convinced it's safe.
If it's not one thing it's your mother.
with "In God We Trust" on every dollar we spend?
Are you?
Cults need centralized leadership to tell its adherents what to do and what to believe...
Pope, anyone? Christianity is a cult, albeit one that combines the most popular Christian (meaning, Christ-believing) and pagan ideas in the early centuries after the supposed death of christ. Rome simply realized that it was going to be too hard to exterminate the Christians, so they folded them in with some Pagan stuff, got Paul (a Roman Citizen and a Jew!) to make it a little more marketable (just like they recently did away with limbo to make Catholicism more popular in Asia and Africa), and canonized the bible themselves with their own selection of Bishops in 313 AD.
Also, Christianity is not diverse, it's divisive. Until l500 you wouldn't let commoners in on even reading the bible, and were corrupt all the way to the top until someone got sick of it, changed the bible, and started their own and new version of Christianity. Just like the Calvinists, Mormons, Evangelicals, Lutherans, Anglicans... nothing more than bunch of cults who choose to believe different parts of their own dogma derived from most of the same book.
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.
occultae nullus est respectus musicae - originally a Greek proverb
Err, the Babylon referred to is located within modern day Iraq.
Just ask Bush and Blair.
What an arbitrary number, but maybe that's the point. Maybe the number doesn't mean anything - it's just a symbol attached to an apopolyptic story.
I spend my days working as an electronics technician, a job that will have you spend many hours in front of digital readouts with numbers fluctuating adnauseum. Some years ago my job entailed calibrating pneumatic transducers that converted voltage, current, or pulse width modulated signals to an output of specific pneumatic pressure. The process of watching a gauge quickly transition from 15.00 to 0.00 PSI and back left quite a few instances where I caught the ominous 6.66 on the readout as the value passed by. The volt meters did it. Power meters do it. If we had metric time, clocks would do it too.
I wondered if 666 supposed devoid of any meaning. Maybe some clever writer just decided to throw out any old number realizing that when every single person, object, and action had a number or worth assigned to it that the occurrence of that "magic number" would appear more often. As the number appeared more readily, "the fear" is instilled in the populace at an increasing rate. Eventually people would be driven nuts thereby killing each other in a panicked frenzy.
I hope that's not the case, but who knows...
This is *old* news. I saw this my my google.com/ig about 5 days ago.
"And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. " -- Revelations 13
The mark, name or number must all be the same, of course, since it is the mark, name or number of the beast.
Internal RFIDs certainly won't leave a visible mark, or nobody would accept them, and they probably won't all look the same. Forget that one.
RFIDs will likely be from multiple manufacturers, so the same name won't appear in all of them.
Every RFID will have a different number (or else there's no point to them), so the "number" one that everyone fears doesn't apply.
What scares me the most is devout people who don't even read their own religious texts, instead relying on scaremongers looking for profit or followers (or both, they are usually intertwined) for their information.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Protestants do not follow the Pope. Maybe some do, but at least most do not.
Ignoring end-times psychosis, what is the reason why the "mark of the beast" is evil? Could it be something to do with the commoditisation of human beings? RFID would fit right in... I'm not saying that these groups are right, but when you look at why such things are seen as being evil or wrong by religious groups, they often have a certain consistency, and are in fact a pretty mainstream view.
Quoting from revelations isn't going to help their cause, but it is surely entirely possible that such things as RFID could, in some sense, be symptomatic, or even causative of what people who consider themselves spiritual would perceive to be a decline of civilisation.
Even if the delivery and mythos is nutty, this doesn't mean that the message itself is!
Wikileaks, no DNS
Get one implanted in your left hand or in your neck or back of your head or something. Just avoid the right hand or forehead. Disaster averted!
Truth isn't flamebait.
occultae nullus est respectus musicae - originally a Greek proverb
I have frequently wondered what the origen of the word 'Amen' is.
Wikipedia tells all
Are they aware that it's 618, not 666? Perhaps Satan's bad at Math?
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
That I'm worried about is the one we will probably bring on ourselves by our stupidity and unwillingness to listen and work with those around us.
"The boy is dangerous, they all sense it, why can't you?"
I would make sure that it was implanted in the right hand and had 666 written all over it just to freak the Christians out.
Pope, anyone? Christianity is a cult
You mean "Catholicism is a cult", and 1,630,000 hits can't be wrong.
Think frog in the boiling pot analogy.
That people will believe anything patently false if it's repeated as truth often enough?
DIFR!!! Oh My God!!! DIFR is the Hebrew word for 'Marijuana' and everyone knows Marijuana is the Devil's Weed. Tomorrow is Sunday so we should be alright. Better unplug the broadnband just to be safe.
The three 'guard' bars, the long vertical pairs of thin lines that occur at the beginning middle and end are similar to the way 6 is represented on the right right of the two panels of the bar code - two thin vertical lines.
Similar, but not identical. Each guard bar has five cells (01010). The 6 of a UPC barcode has seven cells (0000101) and is easily distinguishable from guard by the white bar to its left.
LOL...!!!
You can't bring about 'the end of days' the best you can do is have "faith." When God collects the faithful and the "in-crowd" gets "left-behind" then it's time to worry about things like ID tags.
The 666 mark was code for NERO. Just ask the Catholic Church who canonized the Bible in the 4th century at the III Council of Carthage. When Revelation was written it was revealed to the seven churches that 666 was code for NERO. Much of Revelation has already come to pass. Any good Biblical Commentary, especially historical ones, such as the NEW JEROME BIBLICAL COMMENTARY will confirm this. The anti-christ has alread been. Also in other books of the NT we are told there are many anti-christs and that these are 'anybody' who denies Jesus was God in the flesh. It is as simple as that. Also Jesus himself tells us that we do not know when the end times will come. Only 'my father' in heaven knows. Plus the last POPE and the current POPE believe in Evolution. What we have today are modern literal interpretations (historical revisionism) of what should be a historical literal interpretation. Just as the Catholic Church who have no problem with catholics working on tech.
What is still puzzling is that what the wording of the Bible seems to suggest is that "The Beast" itself (probably a reference to Satan or an agent of Satan) is numbered (specifically with 666 or 616 depending on which version or translation of the Bible you read, or how it is interpreted).
Under hypotheses that support RFID implantation == The Mark, the number 666 identifies the Beast as the issuer of the RFID tag and appears in the header of the response that the tag returns.
Of that bank commercal were they rivited the barcode on to the peoples foreheads.
~All hail our new ant overlords!
... can I have Katherine's car?
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
The Holy Bible points out that we will truly NOT know the end times, for Jesus will come as a theif in the night and take all the believers that are not intended to stand at the end times and bear witness. That's right, folks. While you shouldn't be living like there's no God (For you'd be WRONG...), you should worry about living the full life that Jesus promises you if you walk along his path. Hellfire and brimstone, the world is coming to an end, will NOT convert those that don't believe.
Only His truth will do that.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
I hate RFID tags as much as the next guy, but isnt calling the mark of Satan just a -little- extreme?
What drunk Christian is saying this? Christians believe there is an end coming, carried out by God. So....?@#?@$# are some Christians saying we should try to stop God from fulfilling the prophecy in the bible?!?!?!?! It's Christians like such that give Christians like me a bad rep. I for one welcome the nearing end.
What do I have to do to get a sig around here?! www.bearscanfly.org
Then this is the most wonderful thing imaginable. If Christianity is true, then the possibility of eternal life is real, doing something good is meaningful beyond just how it makes you feel, etc.
I realize this is flamebate with the average Slashdot crowd, but since you guys normally appreciate contrarian views on a topic.
I believe the mark of the beast refers to the fatal wound which the beast receives to its head and also to its shrivelled hands. Revelations says that the world will wonder (be amazed) at the fact that the beast recovered from the fatal wound.
It is a kind of resurrection for the beast, i.e. the beast is the antichrist. Revelations speaks of the beast as the one that was, now is not and yet shall come. This also mirrors Christ who was, is and always will be. I.e. the beast and the antichrist are somewhat synonymous.
The fact that if one walks into just about any Christian church in America and asks who knows these things, only a few hands will go up, and a few minds will recall the fact, is far more indicative that any end times are upon us. It is also the cause of such pointless writings such as those the slashdot article is about.
As someone already pointed out, in apocalyptic literature, hands and heads refer to wisdom and power (or what we think and do). The beast has been confined to the abyss, and will rise back out to everyone's amazement.
If one realises these things, the probability that RFID is the mark of the beast approaches zero like x^(666).
Furthermore, I won't be getting any RFID implants, because the thought disgusts me, it might hurt, and it might eventually be used for something unjust. It'll have little or nothing to do with my religious convictions and interpretation of Revelation. I don't need a religious reason for not accepting RFID.
06-06-06 :O
it was simply part of that pagan stuff that was folded in by the Roman church to allign it with other popular beliefs of the day
Monogamy, now so heavily endorsed by the Christian right ("a marriage is between one man and one woman") was attached to Christianity by Roman society (which was, unusually for its day, monogamous). The Bible contains plenty of references to the proper ways to have many wives.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
n/t
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
If Albrecht's thoughts had been aired in, say, Tehran, they would be dismissed as the ravings of a fanatical mullah, unable to come to terms with the modern world and so bent on rejecting it as the devil's work, quoting an old, crude text from the pre-modern era as evidence that he was absolutely correct. But instead they come from downhome, primetime USA. Oh, the irony!
Las qué passoun
tournoun pas maï
When I was young back in the late 70s, there would circulate a story in the church that some old person received their social security checks mistakenly from the future. Usually the future date was the mid 80s and the check said "Not cashable without the mark of the beast" or some stupid thing.
The older and more cynical I get, the more I think this level of "discourse" is more effective than trying to reason with people about issues like rampant RFID usage.
Conservatives push these low-level buttons all the time. It's people like Al Franken who profess that they are too good to do the same who thereby limit their available sophistic tools.
Our intelligent designer has never created an animal that we couldn't improve by strapping a bomb to it.
I read the article and all I got was that she wanted to stop the use of RFID. If she is a Christian wouldn't she approve of this as it is the will of God that his son return? Wouldn't it be a good idea to let the end come?
... over tagging a few Christians? Some of them are pretty hot ...
People who live in Australia are lucky. They have 999 years.
It's nice to believe that there were "true" christians while the catholic church was around, but that's simply wishful thinking. Until Martin Luther's little rebellion took hold in the 1500s, if you called yourself a Christian, 99% of the time you were Catholic. I don't think anyone needs to elaborate on how far off the mark Catholicism is from anything represented by Christ.
I don't think Paul was an agent of Rome, but I absolutely think that they made a calculated effort to popularize his views, especially regarding whether Christians should follow Jewish law. Romans wanted to de-emphasize the obvious link to Judaism so they could claim the church for themselves.
I think you should learn a little about theology and church history rather than a bunch of crazy conspiracy stories if you want to talk rationally..
If you're truly an atheist, then why look further than obvious political power struggles which formed Christianity? If you want to give them a pass due to some emotional attachment, that's your failure of thought, not mine.
Christians are people trying (but mostly failing), to be like Christ and trying, (but mostly failing) to follow him. He was the smartest guy who ever lived, and you just have to read what he said and get to know him rather than judge him by the failures that follow him - idiots like me.
We don't write off technology judging it based on my mother's skill at a computer (she did a word processing course no less!), so don't do anything similar such as write off Jesus because of the skipful of mistakes his followers make.
I agree - so many christians are stupid, and I'm one of them (which doesn't mean I agree with the RFID = end times stuff - I thought it was all picture language. The book of Revelation is prophecy and the bible says that God speaks to his people in riddles - I would never be as definate about the interpretation in revelation as that RFID person is).
2p
Eh, I was offering in what little I knew about it since nobody else did.
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.
When I'm selected as Pope, I'm going to issue a divine edict to remove that damn book of Revelation from the Bible. It's a bunch of crap, and gets all the Christians twitchy and freaky every 1000 years or so, thinking that the end of the world is coming - etc. next thing you know, they're seeing Jesus on french toast and electing any damn fool who claims to be Christian.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Being raised a devout Catholic, I have to say this:
..) Followers unite into a "church" ..) This "church" becomes a major political party. ..) Church approves of and wages bloody wars on infidels [Inquisition] ..) Inner squabbling leads to three rulers claiming dominance [Papal Schism] ..) **** ..) Almost at world-wide domination in the 20th century!
For an outsider, most of the new testament looks like this to an outsider:
1) Man and woman engage in pre-maritial sex, woman gets pregnant. Father considers finding new woman to knock up...
2) Woman claims 'divine' miracle to escape village mockery. Villagers buy it?!?!
3) Child has some social/behavorial problems, reading too many religious texts at a young age, believing himself to be the next coming of god.
4) Child manages to recruit some poor uneducated fishermen into his self-made cult.
5) Unconscious man in comma mistakenly believed to be dead wakes up, miracle cited.
6) Drunk party-goers at a weddding ceremony mistake water for wine, miracle cited.
7) Child walks on a coral reef/sandbar, friends think he is walking on water.
8) Stories spread & distorted through "word of mouth", child becomes famous.
9) More followers join cult, start preaching about the demise of those who do not follow their teachings.
10) Government gets suspicious of this new "terrorist" group. Executes leader (child).
11) Followers go into hiding.
12) Many years later, they come up and spread the stories... Later write them into gospels.
13) Some of these followers are also imprisioned, appearing to be lunatics/terrorists...
14) ****
[The ordering of these is likely inaccurate, but the events are accurate]
Interestingly, I learned in a Catholic high school that the 4 Gospels were written ~50 years after Jesus **died**. How well could you write about something that happened 10 years ago?? How about something that happened 50 years ago? 50 years later, how many people are going to be alive to verify/contest your story???
This fact seems to be heavily obscured... And of course, the Testaments have undergone revisions since then. Also the 4 Gospels are basically the same in content, so three seemed to have mainly copied off the 1st, and just re-wording them for different audiences.
If Jesus were alive today, he would be ex-communicated by most/all Christian groups, deemed as an international terrorist, and executed... And none of this would make the news in the US...
I don't know that to think about Revelation. I do know that there are many practical guidelines for living life that people have mistakenly mis-understood to be divine regulations in the Bible.
In that context and given that 2000 years ago, countries were still collecting taxes and taking census of their people, my guess is that Revelation is a warning about what could happen in a tightly-run society that documents, measures and meters out every little thing. What would happen in a restaurent if you only gave them 90% of the amount on the bill...? Would they let you walk away? Would the manager get involved? In India today, they would thank you smilingly and you would leave. In the US, there would likely be consequences... Which is quite ironic!
And considering technological & political trends nowadays.... yes, we have much to be concerned about.
That's when the Unix timestamp rolls over. -CF
There is one more thing I would like to point out, if you are an atheist and find that the Christians you know gleefully support war and Bush's proactive foreign policy, I say to you, don't be fooled by them. Those Christians have bought into the lie that war is the only way to solve our current national problems, they have sacrificed their religion in favor of their political agenda. They have ignored Christ's message of love and peace in favor of a message of nationalism and selfishness. Those people are all-too-eager to sacrifice 100,000 of God's children in Iraq in favor of God's children in America. The only time I would ever justify war is in self-defense, the wars in the middle-east are not wars of self-preservation; they are wars of the all mighty dollar and economic-preservation.
You seem to be able to see through a lot of Dubya's Bush-shit. Very interesting.
However, think about this: why was it that Dubya was re-elected, mostly by "Bible-believing Christians" in the Southeastern, Midwestern and Intermountain West? Especially when you consider implantable VeriChips were approved for human use by the FDA during George W. Bush's first administration. This would mean that the Mark of the Beast, if RFID is really to be used in this way, was approved on George W. Bush's watch. And they re-elected the bastard!
My quetion to you: is George W. Bush the "Beast From The Sea," and is Dick Cheney his "False Prophet?" Or is it the other way around, with Dubya the front-man for the real Beast, Cheney? Or do you think this is not the case?
Another question and I'll wrap it up: what do you think of scholars who believe that the Book of Revelation is an allegory for Roman persecution of Early Christianity, both Hebrew and Greek, and the destruction of the Great Temple by Roman forces under Emperor Titus? Are you aware that Nero Caesar has a value of either 616 or 666 according to how you transliterate it in Hebrew and valuate it according to Hebrew Gematria?
I'm just curious. I was a believer, I'm not now. As a woman, I consider Christianity to be repugnant, just like I do the Judaism I was born into and the Islam that was basically Judaism made palatable for the Arabian tribes. Most non-Abrahamic religions are quite patriarchal as well. However, I would not consent to implantation of VeriChip. I find it an unacceptable breach of my privacy, and potentially hazardous to my health. It's also...umm...spooky, if you know what I mean. No freakin' way. Hang it around my neck, put it in my employee badge. That's OK. Implant it? That's where I draw the line.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
relax, you have more time than that, it's actually 03:14:08 UTC on January 19, 2038
...to frame the debate as "the end of the world." No, it's not going to be the end of the world. RFID is a great way to track inventory, but it's also a clever way to spy on everybody and track their every move. And the problem with that is the potential for the abuse of power. ABUSE OF POWER is what we have to fear with no governmental controls on this technology. Not a ridiculous "end of the world" scenario. Albrecht may be leading the charge to collectivize people who are against this technology in order to devise some way to "handle" them later. Good lord, anything but an honest public exploration of the issues. Deception seems to be the fast track to bringing change to the masses.
Might as well quote the Bible...
Revelation 13:16 He causes all, the small and the great, the rich and the poor, and the free and the slave, to be given marks on their right hands, or on their foreheads;
13:17 and that no one would be able to buy or to sell, unless he has that mark, the name of the beast or the number of his name.
13:18 Here is wisdom. He who has understanding, let him calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man. His number is six hundred sixty-six.
What if they (whoever they are, you KNOW WHO they are, don't you?) replace cash-money for RFID-card-cash? Then everyone would be obliged to use RFID in everything. Don't tell me you really think Bush (or anyone else) wouldn't do that if he could. Complete knowledge (and control) over the market, yummy.
Where is that guy who'd die defending what I had to say when I need him?
Cash is printed with a unique serial number on each bill. Mints track the institutions they give money to. Those institutions track the money they give you.
Oh, and there's always http://www.wheresgeorge.com/
hmm it seems that your use is of "begging the question," although correct, is ALSO incorrect. That's quite a linguistic dance you've done.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
666 was just a hebrew code for Nero Caesar. Unless someone clones Nero and he takes over the world, regulating all commerce, the "Mark of the Beast" is a false prophecy.
Revelations should be removed from the bible. It was proven wrong when Nero died.
For more info on Nero and 666, go to the bottom of this page: http://www.bibleandscience.com/history/roman.htm
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Fallacy: The Bible or any religious book predicts events in the real world.
Don't get the Mark imprinted in your forehead or right hand, instead opt to have it implanted in your left buttocks. After all, we're admonished to turn the other cheek.
This lady sounds like a Seventh Day Adventist. I used to work for and with a couple of them. They are a very devout and hipocrital group. And the article is exactly the way the "end of the world" was going to happen according to them. I was alittle taken back at first, and found their ideas slightly intriging. After some research on my own, I realized two things, 1) They Believe that they are the lost tribe of Isreal, 2) They think that the Catholic Church broke the coven with God by moving the Sabbath Day from Saturday to Sunday, their lore says that the Catholic Church did this because they are controlled by the devil. They are essentially a cult of Christians, a very strange group. It's kinda sad really, to live in fear, I guess it helps to live in fear as a group.
http://www.diagnosis2012.co.uk/3.htm#Beyond%202012
The end times may come, or will come... but its has nothing to do with
any religeons, much to the christians disapointment, it will be a spiritual
awaking that will finally realise the fact that all religeons are complete
hog-wash bull shit crap.
Welcome to the Federation of Cosmin planets and aliens... Religeons have
dont nothing but caused all the complete missery of millions. Our final
lifting will be getting rid of religeons and living in peace for once, and finally
growing up out of the pathetic dark ages.
http://www.drboylan.com/
Read http://www.worldaffairsjournal.com/article1.htm
Maybe thats why American Public Christian servents have sold/given 960+ nuclear bombs to all parts of EUrope in prepartion
for counter strikes against Iran.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
You mean Michael Jackson knew way back in the 80s?
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
If not an "invisible man", then what? The big bang? Where did the energy for the big bang come from? There has to be an origin for it, right? You argue that it's crazy to believe in God, but I believe it's even crazier to posit that the universe came into existence on its own, purely by chance. I think one has to accept that there is some forces or materials that transcend time, that have always been there, because if you linerally follow history, you have to have something that was there, in the beginning, that doesn't have a "parent" or ancestral force. It makes much more sense to me that this uncreated force would be intelligent, than it does to assume that billions of chance interactions between quarks would randomly lead to DNA being assembled to make you and me.
The Bible is actually very logical, and its entire focus is to defend the message that you dispute. God gave life to a perfect universe and to humanity as an expression of love. He gave us the ability to choose so that we would have the ability to worship him. Worship requires free will - if people don't have the ability to reject God, then worship is impossible, and humanity is no better than a collection of computers.
With this free will, humanity has chosen to reject God, because we have presumed that we can make perfect decisions ourselves. The trouble is, our decisions reflect our own will, and it's usually impossible for everybody to have our own way.
God does not force himself on people because he loves them enough to give them choice. If you choose to live your life apart from him, he will not force you to live with him after you leave this world either.
The point of God coming to Earth as Jesus was to demonstrate the perfect way to live, but also to pay the penalty for humanity's disobedience so that we could choose to submit to God, even after the wrong choices we've made in our lives that have been rejecting God.
Christianity is all about choice and logic. No Christian who understands and believes what he or she practices believes that people can be forced to believe. The reason they are Christians is because the message they've been told makes sense to them.
It's just plain silly to use religion to try to manipulate politics this way
Its fun. Americans are just so damn gullible. It is like taking candy from a baby. Ever wonder why there is a trade deficit? Only Americans can spend more money than they make on shit they don't need. The democrats should get in on this game.
You don't have to be smart to use a Mac, you just have to be smart enough to buy one
Yeah, I already know about this. Some dumb ass put a little piece of paper in my apartment door one day that read "spychips.com Rev 13:16-18". As you might guess, Revelations 13:16-18 is that oh so happy and all too oft quoted section about the number of the Beast.
I find this crap so banally boring. I mean, lookit--Revelations itself is chock full of stuff that you could spin into whatever apocolyptic message you want to. The fact that people are so pathetically boring as to only focus on a couple or three passages is at least as depressing as the fact that they feel the need to make up apocolyptic crap in the first place.
Oh well. By the way, if you're high or tripping sometime and you really want to freak yourself out, go read Revelations. Whole thing is whacked out on the weirdness. And you don't even have to get a bible, you can get as many translations as you want from http://www.biblegateway.com/ .
Furry cows moo and decompress.
to put it in fully modernized terms, maybe the concern is about creeping invasion into personal autonomy by organized money and commerce.
when those books were written, the writers had a clear idea of the two competing influences in their own culture. there was human development in the mental and spiritual sense, and then there was material life. the same binary pair exists today, except that material culture, by far, outweighs inner self-culture as a pursuit or a preoccupation.
the writers of those old books were party to a framework of ideas that was all about the improvement of human beings. if you were a participant in that culture, then you saw your life and everything in it as material for your correction and your betterment. you didn't want to allow materialism for its own sake to take root because you understood it as a hindrance. your excess was going to weigh you down.
all the exterior stuff...politics, secular life, accumulation of a lot of money... was a distraction or even an opponent to your improvement. however, they understood that an opposing force was also necessary. the Roman empire was effectively a symbol of all that rolled into one... the vice and the greed but also the tester and the opponent that made you strong by challenging you.
so originally at least there was not a taboo on money or material things, only an admonition to keep things in their right order.
fast forward to 2006. today all we have is the dominant material culture. the money, the "Roman empire" if you will, won. we call ourselves "consumers." the authorities call us "civilians."
meanwhile the other alternative concerning correction and betterment is almost completely off the radar. what remnants there are, are often expressed in radical terms. if religious people often seem alarmist or excessive, it is because they have only tiny portions of their own philosophies in place and it all comes across as being very unbalanced and fractured.
but if it is possible to read between the lines, maybe we can see that the technology alarmists are mirroring the excesses of the blind and total pursuit of material advantage back to us.
i agree with the opponents of RFID but i would word my concerns differently. society needs to use wisdom and discretion with certain kinds of development, and adopt technology where there are general benefits... not merely a benefit accruing to existing centres of money. we need to be able to say no to commercial interests and lobbyists. note we don't need to mention evil or the anti-Christ. the mere mention of corporate interests and lobbyists is enough.
at this late date however i don't know if saying "no" to runaway commerce would make room for the better life envisioned by the writers of those old books. the sad probability is we will fill the vacuum with *another* opportunistic technical solution and keep on going the way we are going.
That's pretty cool. :)
Furry cows moo and decompress.
Yes, scientific analysis has affirmed the theory that The Mark of the Beast and RFID tags are one and the same. The Antichrist will manifest. After a period of sustained visitation by demons and hellfire, Category 5 fire and brimstone should begin raining down on Earth, followed by 100% eradication of humanity. The sorting of human souls will then commence, and all souls with Level 4 or higher Good Quotients will be diverted to Heaven for infinite happiness, while those with Category 3 or lower Good Quotients will be diverted to Hell for infinite damnation.
The facts all point to it.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
As such, in this particular instance, the warning is not when we have implants in our heads or hands, it's when we think and do evil things.
Thanks for reminding me of this! Years ago, I remember suspecting these symbols to being TIME. On your hand, you have a watch, and in your mind you have a watch, and it is the way of society, the big beast, that drives time. Time is also money.
Blah blah. I used to think about this stuff to try and understand the philosophical roots of biblical study. What a trip!
Now I have to agree with you. This is an easily misconstrued topic of discussion!
Interpreting apocalyptic literature as truth verbatim is not only stupid, it's dangerous.
Any kind of philosophy can be dangerous if it's applied. There is no such thing as safely applying philosophy, because then it becomes doctrine and doctrine leads to murder. Philosophy is meant to enrich our lives, not cut them short.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
You're talking about the Holocaust Deniers, right?
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
When your primary means of getting your message out there is Coast to Coast AM with George Noory, you've got to wonder how far from the pack you've strayed. OK, so now she's got a book.
Big achievement. Her website reads just like every other paranoid schizo that proclaims the world is coming to an end because of a rock on mars that looks like a skull or they see Jesus in a pancake. In short, if they have surveillance cameras, they're evil in her book.
I had a sucky sig.
Ok, so RFID is baaad. Who cares what spin the Christians put on it....at least they would be doing something right for a change....so help them pamplett the world with Revelations flyers. I will and I'm pagan...why?!
1.) Evangelicals have awesome grassroot connects and powerful political ties...if anyone can stop it they can.
2.) Who cares, there is a saying, anyone that is an enemy of my enemy is a friend...same here.
I hate the things and think they should be illegal because they infringe upon our privacy. I think coorprate business has gone too far. I think we need to set aside our differences and help each other over come this crap! IMO.....
Not a geek just looking for one.
Problem solved.
RFID reminds me of XML. It does have some limited applications, but we hear way, way too much about them relative to their actual benefit.
We already have barcodes. Barcodes are reliable, cheap, can be quickly read, and work well for most goods. If you have many boxes of something being shipped somewhere, it's much more reasonable to just slap barcodes on the boxes.
RFID is handy for objects that are all different shapes and sizes, where a failure rate is acceptable (just pass it back through the reader until it beeps, like we do with barcodes today). The obvious application is retail checkout -- but beyond that?
People have vastly inflated notions of the locational accuracy that can be obtained with an RFID tag, as well as the failure-to-read rate, how easy it is to avoid blocking the tag's transmission (your hand will block the read), the range at which the tag can be read, and so forth.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
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.
Despite the fact that Christianity tries to hijack the use of the word "good", you can be a perfectly nice person without believing in the translated political ravings of long-dead cult leaders. The only alternative to Christianity is *not* materialism, cruelty, etc.
You need not be greedy or obsessed with consumerism to reject Christianity.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
3. The current VeriChip has nothing to do with buying or selling.
, 00.html/
Oh YES it does. Read this:
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,61357
Quote: "Applied Digital Solutions CEO Scott Silverman said he believes the company's VeriChip -- a subdermal microchip that uses radio frequency signals to broadcast an identification number to a scanner -- could someday replace credit cards."
The word "antichrist" appears 0 times in the book of Revelations.
"Antichrist" appears only in John's epistles and it's in the plural -- "antichrists" are people who deny Jesus's messianic status.
All's true that is mistrusted
Ain't there always something that means that "the end times" are drawing near???? Seems like every time anything happens "its the end times"....
I don't think that Christian would be even able to "accidently" and without a "deep conviction" take on the mark of the beast without having said strong convictions against it before hand...and not because somebody said it was the mark...but personal conviction. Second, I think the whatever the mark "is" would need to mean something beyond just buying and selling goods...I need to stress the word "mean"..not what it would prevent you from doing if you didn't have it..like shopping.
What better way than to engineer a fool's religion based on twisted truths and outright lies, line it up so that to follow that religion properly you need to at some point resolve yourself to shooting at other people who follow a slightly different color of the same lies and twisted truths.
Why not drop in a few lines of 'Prophecy' about marks of the beast and not being able to enter the kingdom of blah blah blah if you are so tattooed, or whatever.
Yes, VISA = 666. (VI= 6, Z=6 in one Ancient language and A=6 in the neighboring country's alphabet.) Yes, money is the root of all evil. Sure.
The lie is that the 'Kingdom of Heaven' is a place with gate-keepers and bad-deed counters rather than a state of being which can be reached by anybody if they are willing to do the soul-work required.
Be nice to people. Be aware. Be willing to learn. Be willing to access your will power and make your own choices.
That's it. Growth comes from within, not from without. Grow enough, and you will transcend this reality and reach the so-called kingdom. (Just a higher state of being.) All the fancy mysticism and church-going nonsense about not getting caught with the Mark of the Beast is just a misdirection designed to keep all the little Christians acting like scared food.
For goodness sake! Credit cards are just plastic. --Sure, love of the material world can keep you bound up in this reality, and sure the banks are nasty and manipulative. But so what? Your own intent and decisions are what bind or free you in the end. You can buy a sandwich or pay your rent and it's not going to make a lick of difference to your spiritual progress if you know how to keep things in perspective. The Bible is a lark; Telling us that some people get into Heaven and some people don't? For one thing, there is no Heaven; it's just a metaphor for enlightenment and spiritual transcendence. We are all part of God already, so the only way to get 'Left Behind' is to choose not to grow; to choose not to see. --Going to church, doing and believing as you are told by governments and clergy, fearing when your fear buttons are pressed. . , these ways are not the ways to reach your higher self. Your higher self only grows strong when you use your mind to question and challenge and push and think and act. Religion is about abandoning all that stuff.
"Do Not Follow. Not following is a Key!"
You see. . , if God is truly infinite, then what can possibly not be God? You? Me? --How arrogant to suggest that we are beyond the infinite! We are all part of God.
We are all free if we choose to be so. Recognize RFID for what it is and act accordingly. Do not mindlessly fear it because some 2000 piece of fear-mongering spiritual propaganda tells you to stop thinking rationally.
Have a good night.
-FL
Authoritarianism is when a government believes it is God and that it has the right to determine who lives or dies. Thats where we are going and it could destroy America and the rest of the world with it. Seriously...
I mean, why are they even worried about RFID tags? The REAL mark of the beast is in bar codes.
UTF-8: There and Back Again
We Gnostics don't buy Revelations, or 'apocalypse' as you put it, same meaning, in the Bible either and believe it is mostly a fabrication put forth by the exoteric church. In fact, we buy little of the New Testament and even less of the Old Testament and see the god of the Old Testament as the Demiurgos or 'half-maker, not the one true God. You won't find anything about 'Revelations' in Gnostic Scripture. If you would like to learn more about us, go to gnosis.org. I didn't make that a clickable link because we Gnostics don't proselytize or evangelize. We believe you have to do it all yourself.
Interpreting literally writings that were meant as allegory and metaphor.
Jesus Sez: "Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come. But understhand this: if the owner of the house had knwon at what time of night the thief was coming, he would have kept wach and would not have let his house be broken into. So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him. Jesus 1, Technophobes 0
--The universe will not be altered by forum threads, even those which are very wry. --Tycho Brahe (Penny Arcade)
if your a good christian, surely you should be actively working to bring on the end? though I do hope christian decide to oppose personal rfiding on religous grounds, then it wont mean your immediately suspect if you do refuse it. (under that silly 'only the guilty have anything to fear' idea refusal of personal rfiding constitues admission of guilt).
Marketing would be on Christian TV and radio stations, in the form of infomercials. "Quit your job now! Don't work again! Jesus is coming soon!", along with pictures of happy people with consumer goods. We considered finding some Christian figure to promote the product. Enough people were talking about the Rapture and the "Jubilee" back then that a modest market for the product clearly existed.
(For those of you interested in financial mechanics, the money for the mortgages would be obtained by creating a derivative security that could be resold in the secondary mortgage market. The "rapture" contingency would be taken care of by obtaining an insurance policy against the "rapture" for each mortgage (probably from Lloyds or Swiss Re), using exactly the same definition of "rapture" as in the loan. The combination of the insurance policy and the loan would constitute a resellable security without a "rapture" contingency that could be packaged up and sold in the mortgage-based security market. So we wouldn't have to finance the deal, just broker it.)
We didn't go through with it. It just seemed too evil.
Nevertheless, when there are people running around claiming that Jesus is coming back soon, it's quite feasible to make money taking the other side of that bet.
Your "almost all scholars" are terribly missinformed. The specific scriptures regarding "finding the beast" state clearly that it is neither "pointless" nor "irrelevant". It is actually "wise" to do determine who the beast is and scripture even tells you how to determine who the beast is (calculate the number of his name), which you contradict readily without any references to back up your statement other than a vague reference to "almost all scholars", here's the scriptures your scholars would have to use as the basis of your arguement.
---------
It is not a good thing to get the mark. So avoiding this is important...
Being decieved by the beast and false prophet is directly related to recieving the mark.
This says it's _wise_ to determine who the beast is.Unless you're one of the virgins, that is.
And remember... this is slashdot.
help me i've cloned myself and can't remember which one I am
Basically, this leaves very little room for me to be me. Why the hell can't we speak for our OWN actions? "oh.. some one else will do it" just doesn't sound like a good life phylosophy. It sounds like a very bad one.
Just because RFID tech. is imbedded in the skin and can store information does not mean that the 'end times' are any closer or that RFID will be used by the antiChrist.
The 'mark of the beast' as described in Revelations could be almost anything. Yes, I agree that RFID *could* be used in some far-flung end times scenario, but the fact is, it doesn't matter.
The end times are a certainty (for most Christians), but the actual sequence of events is anything but. We can say for certain, however, that the mark of the beast will not be a clandestine thing that people are tricked into taking. The opposite is true, scripture is very clear that people will choose to take the mark knowing full-well the significance. Plus, wether it's RFID, a tatoo, a scarification procedure, or something else we haven't thought of, the mark will have the same consequences, so really this whole article is moot.
My take on this article is that this woman is just another fear-monger, trying to make a buck by stirring up the multitudes of Christians who are ignorant of what the Bible really says about the end times.
Thank you Dave Raggett
AFAIK, that currently isn't the idea. Most newer tags can be reprogrammed and reused very easily. Reusing tags can save a lot of money and is a major goal in RFID technology. For example, in one application, high-temperature tags are embedded in a combustion engine during testing. The calibration/QA system reads the tags and performs tests accordingly. If everything checks out, the tag is removed and can be reused for the next unit.
Granted, when tags are cheap enough that reusing them is not worth it, reprogrammability may go out the window. But even then, it would take some serious effort to make tamper-proof RFID tags. Who knows--smart cards are already fairly secure; maybe future tags will include embedded processors with challenge/response authentication (difficult with the passive power requirements, but low-power chips and active tags are getting better). But for now, RFID tags are just a bag of bits.
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We only get one piece of information to judge this one on. "Can you participate in the economic system without this chip/implant/tag?" If the answer is no, then maybe you need to go and check out the New Testament. If the answer is yes then move along, Damien and his creepy friends aren't here. Problem being that Revelation has evidently not happened yet. Problem also being that a fair few "prophecies" from the Old Testament came true - to the letter. God, after all, is a rather clever Chap. It would be a bit spooky, to say the least, if a world economic system came into force that required everyone being marked with a tag of some sort, without which you were homeless, foodless and helpless and it be "just co-incidence" that it was written about 2000 years ago. (In a time BEFORE the means for such a system were even imaginable).
Can we cut this Nostradamus-wannabe-nonsense from /.? Please?
With a sufficiently old, vague and twice-translated generic phrase, you can interpret whatever you like.
There's a great book, I think the title was "my paranormal bycicle" where a scientist reveals the art of finding "mystical" numbers. This is no different. The keyword is "a mark", which can (and has been) interpreted as any one of about 50 different things.
At least Nostradamus used interesting language.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Amin in arabic, I believe. It is also related to "yemin" which basicly means oath. Both are widely used, when a wish is done, all wishes done against the will of god. You are not supposed to make oaths nillywilly.
Basically calls to the prayers are not prayers themselves therefore they don't have to end with anything special. Allahuekber means "God is great". Bah.
Isn't this essentially just a rehash of the old barcode-as mark of the devil debate? There's an excellent scene in Naked by Mike Leigh about this...
"What is the mark? Well the mark Brian, is the barcode. The ubitiqous barcode that you'll find on every bog roll, and every packet of johnny's and every poxie-pot pie. And every [expletive-removed] barcode is divided into two parts by three markers and those three markers are always represented by the number six. Six-six-six. Now what does it say? No one shall be able to buy or sell without that mark. And now what they're planning to do in order to eradicate all credit card fraud and in order to precipitate a totally cashless society. What they're planning to do; what they've already tested on the American troops; they're going to subcutaneously laser tattoo that mark onto your right hand or onto your forehead." (Naked, British movie, 1993, directed by Mike Leigh and starring David Thewlis)
http://www.av1611.org/666/barcode.html
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:
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.
Every time this conversation comes up it drives me nuts, because it's based on a misreading of the bible. For those wondering, here's the relevant text (King James):
Revelation 13
16: And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:
17: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.
18: Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.
The confusion always seems to come from the pronoun "his" in 17. People read it to mean each person will have a number associated with their name (hence SSN, RFID, etc). But the "him" referred to here is the beast, as evidenced by the next verse. Now, when congress passes the law that everyone has to have 666, or Satan, stamped on them, that's when you start worrying.
"The best trick the devil ever pulled was making humanity believe he didn't exist."
- Kevin Spacey as Kaiser Sose in The Usual Suspects
if I claimed I was emperor just because some watery tart lobbed a scimitar at me they'd put me away!
Let's just put it in everyone's left hand then. Problem solved!
That book sucked.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
One of the mall-churches near my house is referred to as "Six Flags Over Jesus" and is crammed in between a huge series of mega car dealerships and walmarts. It's clearly as much a commercial enterprise as any of the others, and there's none of the austerity or severity I normally associate with "church" surrounding it. It's all business. At one time I was told this Superdome of a church claimed a congregation of 30,000 -- that's in a city whose population is under half a million.
The gaping insincerity of this organization is just beyond comprehension.
One day I feel I'm ahead of the wheel / the next it's rolling over me / I can get back on / I can get back on
Of course, any event that vaguely resembles something in their book of children's stories is evidence to these fucking nutjobs.
rfid may not be "the" mark, but it definately is a step towards it.
have you ever wondered why the mark would be centered around trading and commerce? isn't that weird, weird that they would have guessed that a controlled, convienent, consolidated system of buying/selling was the mark?
does that mean the mark came about because there was something that was difficult about buying/selling? does the world come to a point where it was able to conterfeit/clone anything including legal tender?
the rfid technology of current day may not be "the" mark, but you can easily see how it can evolve a progression of technology such that something down the line will be it.
Austrian court jails British historian for Holocaust denial. Map.
Reduce, reuse, cycle
Destruction of that myth requires only this: Adam never existed. Even if he did, for a 'perfect' man to make a mistake is impossible. Another thing... if Adam didn't know good and evil, how could he possibly have know that he shouldn't have eaten the 'knowledge fruit'? That's right, he couldn't. It'd be like killing or beating a 2-month-old for making a mess of it's food after you've sternly warned it to not spill anything, while being well aware the baby cannot comprehend you. The 'first sin' is completely, utterly illogical and self-contradicts.
Yay, I discredited the entire basis of Christianity... original sin.. and it was so very easy, too.
Of course, you have to accept the physical world and logic and apply them to your religion to see these obvious truths.. sadly, very few religious people can get past their childhood indoctrination. Some Christians are even fond of the mantra 'faith like a child', encouraging adults not to think too deeply about their beliefs.
"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."
Actually, I'm not skeptical because of that very poor argument, I tend more to being skeptical because it's all a load of made up baloney.
~~~~~ BigLig2? You mean there's another one of me?
What if the government gave you the option of having the RFID chip implanted on your left hand? No problem?
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
Sorry, but an appeal to popularity is yet another logical fallacy. At one point (and perhaps still today), the majority of people in America thought Saddam Hussein was involved in 9-11. The popularity of that (deliberately implanted) falsehood does not make it true. Truth is independent of popularity. In fact, many of the greatest scientific revolutions (continental drift and heliocentrism come to mind) were initially met with contempt, disbelief, and even censorship and threats. The popularity of the Bible, and even the fact that some of the events in the Bible are historically verifiable, do not make the other events in the Bible, particularly the ones that are unprecedented, any more credible.
(%i1) factor(777353);
(%o1) 777353
Religious people == morons.
As the election of GW Bush has already demonstrated, emotional and/or religious grounds work way better to get the masses to do anything than logical arguments do. Just like environmentalists cultivate the "awww, don't hurt the cute fuzzy animals!" line to get support from the public, these loonies are much more likely to garner support for their cause than we are by saying that it erodes our privacy. Privacy is already eroded to the point that we have CCTV cameras on every street corner, and cell phones that report our position on every hip, and we like it that way.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
If this "flake" is able to convince a large enough number of other Christians to flake out over this, it will impact how RFID gets used. The RFID design or usage plans may get modified, using "avoid freaking out the evangelical nutjobs" as an added implementation criterion. The resulting design changes may make for something that the rest of us will be happier with... or make for something that we will be much unhappier with. This makes it "stuff that matters".
Society affects technology, and vice versa. Not all of society is rational, but the irrational parts still impact technology. Of course, the Slashdot discussion won't focus on this, because (a) figuring out exactly how this will impact RFID is pretty hard and (b) making fun of fundamentalist christian whackos is more enjoyable for a lot of Slashdotters.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
I don't know about you guys, but I'd like to see someone who's against RFID who isn't using the "it's a sign of the End Times!" as a reasoning for it. Maybe, you know, someone could be logical about it and bring up the privacy/"Big Brother" issues it could cause? I'd find it much more credible than religious texts, myself.
One flaw in your idea though.
Most good god fearing christians want to bring about revelation or the rapture.
Why?
Because they belive that they will be raptured away from earth to heaven and be with god and jesus before all the bad stuff goes down and the end comes. So they would be happy that the end times have arrived never mind the suffering on the human scale that is to follow.
One thing that gets me is how could good christians want to have such a thing happen any sooner than it has to given the suffering torture coruption of human souls and deaths that are to surely happen.
Just seems inhuman to me and they call themselves good christians? The mind boggles.
Coward? Coward! Thems fighten words!!
I haven't read the "Christian" version of Albrecht's book, but I'm reading "Spychips" now. I bought it after reading the story here on Slashdot about data center engineers having RFID chips implanted in their arms for security access. The plain fact is that whatever Albrecht's religious leanings, the book is really well reported, with a ton of information from patent filings filled with surprising revelations about the ways major corporations want to integrate RFID into everything. I think it's an important book that raises awareness of the potential privacy issues surrounding RFID. It sure raised mine.
RichM
Data Center Knowledge
...just as the book of Revelation says, there will still be stupid people out there who will make every excuse in the book as to why it's not the end days and another Bible prophesy fulfilled.
They see earthquakes in diverse places, they see wars and rumours of wars and plagues and the list goes on and on and they will still REFUSE TO BELIEVE GOD EXISTS.
It's baffling to me.
SEO Copywriter. Just Say ON
Except the Bible says the Beast will reighn for (X) years....you think they won't fight the beast and his mark before tha rapture...
I could look it up if you'd like.
Not a geek just looking for one.
I'm set up on Paypal and I take checks or money order. I have a full product line, but honestly, ideas are free. I think you may have mis-read my 'pitch'. But if you truly want to give me your money, I'd be happy to sell you a few items.
-FL
Revelation 13
14And deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by the means of those miracles which he had power to do in the sight of the beast; saying to them that dwell on the earth, that they should make an image to the beast, which had the wound by a sword, and did live.
15And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed.
16And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:
17And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.
18Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.
Revelation 14
9And the third angel followed them, saying with a loud voice, If any man worship the beast and his image, and receive his mark in his forehead, or in his hand,
10The same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb:
11And the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever: and they have no rest day nor night, who worship the beast and his image, and whosoever receiveth the mark of his name.
Revelation 16
2And the first went, and poured out his vial upon the earth; and there fell a noisome and grievous sore upon the men which had the mark of the beast, and upon them which worshipped his image.
11And blasphemed the God of heaven because of their pains and their sores, and repented not of their deeds.
Revelation 19
20And the beast was taken, and with him the false prophet that wrought miracles before him, with which he deceived them that had received the mark of the beast, and them that worshipped his image. These both were cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone.
Revelation 20
4And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them: and I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God, and which had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands; and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years.
Implanting a chip under your skin as a personal ID is a very naive idea. It sounds like a sales stunt from a freshman business student, adopted by a desperate-for-recognition start-up company. We have implanted a lot of technologies in our bodies.
Just for example; crown teeth and filling, artificial joints, heart valves, remains dispensers for colon-cancer removals, plastic Corneal Implants, steel plates for broken bones, titanium replacements for bones, bypass implants, artificial skin for burns victims, in addition to silicon implants for cosmetic surgeries.
Every time any of these new medical miracles come out, we hear most of the voices praising science and we hear the religious crowd performing ceremonial rituals for acceptance of these new medicines and surgical operations. RFID deployment inside the human body is simply an overdue addition to these medical miracles. However, the moment we begin to consider that a permanent implant in the body is a work related subject, and that it is part of the job, we instantly forget the real world.
The real world states that you have the possibility of losing your job by the end of the surgery, or even sometimes while you are on the surgery table. In todays world of corporate America, a layoff, department change, a transfer, a promotion, a merger, an acquisition, a bankruptcy, or simply closing the shop and going out of business due to closure of the business unit is just around the corner. add the changing world of software, hardware, networks and wiring, etc, and you have an extreme possibility of one-year time life expectancy for such an implant.
Maybe the clandestine and intelligence community, in addition to industrial espionage community would benefit from such implants, because simply they have a lot more in their life to worry about than just a chip implant under the skin.
This makes you ask a simple question; what happened to the ancient old way of verification; Where is the kings ring that he gave you? How come you are not wearing it?
The ironic answer might be; I do not like rings, but I love chip-implants under my skin.
That does not mean that this is the end of times. That means you just got an answer from a freakin wierdo.
"The funny thing is that the whole book of Revelations is far more likely to be about events in the first century, with either Jerusalem or Rome being the Whore of Babylon and the Beast being the Emperor or the Roman Army."
- There's one thing that people who posit this sort of thing always seem to miss, and that is that many of the prophecies in the Bible come true twice.
For instance, the coming of the Messiah was widely misunderstood by the Jews because His coming was prophesied as coming both in shame and oppression, and as a glorified conqueror. They assumed he would only come once, so the Jews 'solved' this dilemma by saying that the way He came would be determined by how faithful the Jews were to God. But, the Christian understanding is much more full. He came first as the suffering servant and will come again as the conquering King.
It is true that there are a lot of events in the first century that seem to fulfill revelation, but that time period also lacks a lot of events from revelation. The second apocalypse will be the real and final one fulfilling all the rest of the prophecies.
I agree that RFID and similar technologies are the Mark of the Beast, or they will be when the day comes that having it implanted it synonymous with allegiance to a one-world superpower. But, I disagree with the author being against these technologies! We as christians know they will come, must come, and we should be welcoming them, not fearing them. The Lord's coming is a blessing, certainly. Heck, buy stock in the verichip company, one day it will be supplying a few billion RFID chips.
"Christ is neither taught nor known in it" also doesn't mean this. Jesus did talk about the end-times himself, referring to the book of Daniel. He spoke of wars, and other catastrophies which are also signs of the end.
Lets not shut our eyes from the end-times just because we don't buy this thing about RFIDs and stuff - there is much more to it.
The End the world is getting like the Windows 95 release date.
The end of the world is now.... okay it'll be here soon... alright were pushing it back few years....
I beleave the end of the world is just a way of manipulating hearts and minds, after all who wants to be on the wrong side during the appocalypse?
BTW how does this person thing RFID tags will cause the end of the world??
"Bwahahaha I am satan behold my dark powers for I know for the RFID tag that you are low on jam, tremble as I remove all the jam from the Earth and cast it into the sun! There will be no more jam and you will have to use peanut butter for all eternity! Bwhahahahahah!"
In the not too distant future, next Sunday A.D.
When I saw the mod score reason I laughed out loud:
Someone give that modder a (free) beer - I was seriously considering the evils of \. until then!
[ insert meme here ]
This is not true. Religon in America today is still strong as ever. While a large portion of the role religion of is being replaced by education and science, the socially cohesive effects are as strong as ever. [...]Europe is more or less still atheistic, but the value system is certainly the same - which is why we see the objections to Turkey joining the EU, and Christian parties are still key members of government coalitions.
I think there is a significant difference between Europe and America in that respect, in most parts of Europe, religion plays a rather small role for social cohesion. The objection to Turkey has much more to do with nationalism and cultural differences and prejudices than Europeans being religious Christians - it is just one of many cases in which religion is important as an attribute of national/ethic groups, but not because of its religious content. For instance, people in Northern Ireland or countries in former Yugoslavia, where there are conflicts between groups belonging to different religions, are hardly particularly religious, religion just happens to be an attribute of groups between which there are conflicts because of reasons not related to religion.
In many European countries, parties with 'Christian' in their name are strong, but most of them are just moderate conservative-centrist parties, and although there are sometimes discussions about the role of the 'C' in the name, in practice religion is not one of the central political issues of these parties.
Some people talk about a revival of religion, but I don't think the evidence is convincing, as far as Europe is concerned. Of course, the Christian religion is not completely dead in Europe, only a small minority of people are really religions, and in most cases when religion comes up in public discussion (often in connection with Islam) it is not really about religion, but about questions of migration and cultural traditions.
As another member of the RFID research community I whole-heartedly agree with your analysis of the situation. I think the idea of someone reading tags located anywhere on your body is nearly laughable... the amount of water in the human body woud likely render most tags on worn clothing, shoes, etc. unreadable.
Every Generation believes they are the first to have discovered the apparent contradictions, but oddly enough, there are volumes discussing and explaining the misunderstandings that lead to the identification of these items as contradictory that are as much as 1000 years old.
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
The point is they want the rapture.
No beast no mark no rapture so they welcome it. Sure Jesus and his army will face the beast and his army but if you paid attention it's after he has reigned for a time and has corupted thoughs he could and killed the rest other than the ones already raptured away (they wont be their to fight they were raptured away to save them from the horror and bloodshed) except for the Jews in the holy land which he plans to wipe out last hence the gathering in the valley of megeido or armagedon. But it's after the mark has already been placed on everybody else so your point is mute.
And no you don't need to look it up for me i have already read it several times but you might want to re-read it for yourself though.
Coward? Coward! Thems fighten words!!
This sounds like not such a bad idea. Has anybody patented it yet?
I take it your Christian or were at one time. Perhaps my Bible study is very rusty....I never did understand it all, but I think the evangelicals will fight this....I do. If not then they are recieving the mark of "the beast". When it comes down to it.
At any rate thanks for the explanation....I'm not Christian...I looked it up your right. I live in a very Christian area, it's easy to get them "started" so to speak. I do listen though, because my own "world view" is tied to theirs so to speak. I pay attention to what the locals say is "evil" etc....Did you know Walmart is evil and against god according to some preachers.....
I'm rambling. Ugh!
Not a geek just looking for one.
Well i guess you could say i was wance a catholic christian but now i consider myself a religious indepentednt but still christian if that makes any sense.
I have long since abandonded my firm ties to the mainstream of chrstianity but believe in the main views or points theirin about god and jesus but believe (without turning to islam mind you) that catholismum hasn't quite got it all right.
I now consider myself a religious independent within christianity but still christian and am willing to entertain other viewpoints to gain what i hope is a deeper understanding of god and his plans for us.
Given all that i still look into the only bible i have (one given to me in my teen years by my mother) for guidance from time to time and to try and understand things and see if they might help or give new meaning to modern life. Though i don't look at it and try to make parts of it fit events happening around me i more look at it and try to see if things may or may not co-incied and connect or fall along the same lines, But enough about my religious slant.
I have looked at that part of the bible more than once and something about it has always seemed kind of different to me from what others have claimed or held to and after spending much soul searching and atempts at justification i came to the only conculsion that i could given my own viewpoint (which i readily admit others may or may not see or believe) was that catholisium was promoting or reflecting however inocently or blantently (i make no judgments) the end times. That christians who were to be saved wouldn't be around to witness at least not first hand or personally what was to happen according to revelation the events of mans end on earth or at least what we have come to know as mans life on earth.
This is what has come to disturb me most not because it is to happen but because of how many mainstream christians look apone it as something to welcome or look forrward to when given at least my outlook it is a time to morn or dread though maybe nessicary it will be for me at least a time of great personal suffering knowing what others will go through who (maybe even myself as i cannot fortell my feight (how do you spell that) let alone others) are left behind as mainstream christians put it or see it. To see it as something to look forward to as many christians seem to see it leaves me feeling ill or dirty because these are afterall humnan souls that have the same feelings and emotions though different viewpoints and events driving them as you and me and to just well you get the idea.
I just cant personally divorce myself from this or them no matter how i have tried and how much i have thought about it ( think to much about things almost nobody wants to hear thats my trouble) and so i have come to the conclusion that this isn't something to welcome as many tend to look apone it as or play it off as but more a time to dread even though it has to happen it's a time to look on with great sorrow and outpouring of our own grief and emotions. But as ultimaly inivitable to progress to the next level or stage of being but that doesn't mean that the path is to be welcomed or pardoned or however many of the christians tend to see it as it does come at a terrible cost in life and human suffering.
Ok ive gone just about to far with my own preaching and personal views on this. It is as i said up to you and others to truely decide for yourselves what you feel is right christianity, Islam, Jewidium, Hinduisum, Douisum, Yourisum, Myisum or someotherisum. At any event if you belive or consider an end time it is important to consider all aspects of it something which many have not or at least have not paid as much attention to as they should given it's importance or what should be it's importance to humans.
Of course i could always just be some nut with to many screws loose so whos to say. But i can only say and
Coward? Coward! Thems fighten words!!
Sorry about the mistakes in my post i was a bit intoxicated ( i make no excusses for it) at the time but my oppinion still stands.
Coward? Coward! Thems fighten words!!
Even if you ignore the parts that are clearly nonsense, you end up with widely varying stories.
Jesus says 'turn the other cheek' and 'pick up YOUR cross, and follow me'.
Jesus also says 'I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. '
Of course, this is just the author of the book attributed to Matthew misquoting Micah and attributing it to Jesus.
Then there are all the mis-prophesies of Jesus.
"Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled."
"Verily I say unto you, that this generation shall not pass, till all these things be done."
"Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass away, till all be fulfilled."
Matthew, Mark, and Luke respectively. Now, Jesus is talking about his return, and the Judgement, etc. Clearly that entire generation, and the next 100 or so generations have now died. Jesus has not returned.
Christians try to say that is because that generation ISN'T really dead. They are in heaven or some such. Yet Jesus is saying in no uncertain terms that he will return before that generation has died as in heart stops beating. Jesus never refers to a soul or any other immaterial representation of the 'self', and neither do the Jews before him. To them the body was all there was, and to be buried in the common grave with criminals was the worst thing they could do to you after you died. There is no discussion of a soul or spirit (except the holy spirit, which is something entirely different, and the simmilarity in terms is just a fluke of translation) anywhere in the bible, whatsoever. And even to punish the supporters of the antichrist in a lake of fire it is necessary that they are alive.
In fact, there are not. These so called discussions intentionally confuse the issue, quote more passages from the bible as evidence, and often claim that the bible does not mean what it clearly says. They do mental gymnastics to avoid ever admitting that the bible has contradictions, or what would be even worse, that translations of the bible do not convey the origional meaning. The purpose of these 'discussions' is to satisfy believers that there isn't a problem, and prevent the seed of doubt from being sown.
Here's a tiny doubt for you. If god made man in his image, why did god give man a penis, or more to the point, testicles? Does god have a penis, and testicles? Did Adam need testicles, even before Eve was created? Why would god give him the urge to procreate (via testicles and testosterone) an not give him a mate? Why would god do this, and then have to actually witness Adam being lonely before he (god) realized that he should create Eve? Why does the bible claim that god created woman from the rib of Adam, when men and women have equal numbers of ribs (it was widely believed in antiquity that men had one more rib than women)?
Here is a much bigger doubt for you. The bible makes no mention of dinosaurs, or of massive meteor impacts with the earth. Yet we know all of these things existed. We know, for example, that there were periods of several millions of years in which animals, which do not exist any longer, were the primary life on this planet. Yet the bible mentions none of these. Specifically, the bible can be rather easily shown to claim that the world is around 4000 years old. This is curious, since we now have evidence of civilizations which predate this age, and large numbers of human made tools which predate this by many years. Worse, we have fossils thousands of feet below the ground, in areas where people have continuously
Well, my own end times tie in is this....after the rapture and all the horrid things to come some will stay. (Might be in the Bible) Any way, after the time of the sun (son) comes the daughter....the burning times will come again (end times) we must be like water to live through it, in order to see the time of the daughter. Here is an interesting note, my own world view says the end times will come because of the Christians hastening it. Through their wish for it......We are advised to start going to church and priasing God until it blows over.....hmmm. Maybe I'm too late.....
Not a geek just looking for one.
here you can find one explanation
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
Sorry, I don't buy it.
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a n_Sacrament
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"ten cubits from the one brim to the other"
"a line of thirty cubits did compass it round"
They could have said 'a line of thirty cubits, and a little more, did compass it round'. Unless the brim had negative thickness, there is no way you can end up with a number lower than 3.14.. times the width.
They didn't.
The webpage you link to is pure speculation. All it proves is that it is possible to build a vat such that if you measure it in a way somewhat different than how it is claimed to be measured in the bible, you end up with measurements as quoted without saying that pi = 3.
If I told you that I lived 5 miles from Walmart, and then you looked at the map showing my house to be 200 yards from walmart, I would be wrong. If I said that 'the way *I* go it's five miles, becuase I like to get on the highway and drive around randomly for a while' I would be full of horse shit. That is exactly what the webpage you link to does. It produces fictions from pure thin air to substantiate a claim, and to boot they have to modify the claim to even make their speculation fit.
Now, it is possible that this is exactly what the bible is saying.
What about all the rest of the inconsistancies? Why does the bible refer to multiple gods throughout the old testimate? Ahh, you say, the trinity. The entire trinity theory smacks of exactly the nonsense that I am talking about. Christians have simply changed the meaning of the text to make it consistant.
If the bible said that 'his cloak was red' and 10 seconds later said 'his cloak was never red', christians would come up with some incredible theory about the meaning of this passage. People would read it over and over becuase, since the bible is perfectly true, any apparent contradiction must be a mistake in the reader, not the book.
I'm content not to believe in Zarathustra, even if Zoroastrian texts have no contradictions. However, what is your reason to not worship Mohammed or Zarathustra, and instead worship Jesus? Why not Buhdda? Christianity has no more historical evidence than many other religions, and in fact has much less than many.
Add that to the fact that the Christ story is far from original (and no, not in the prophesy sense). There are probably a dozen other 'gods' who were buried and rose on the third day, had 12 disciples, and were born on December 25th, etc, etc. The cross was a symbol of Mithraism long before Christ is even claimed to have been born.
Like Mithraism, which predates Christ by 100 years, and is contemporary with early christinanity.
see:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mithraism#Simila
How about the osirin sacrament? Predating Christ by 2000 years, followers of Osiris believed that taking his sacrament was literally to eat his flesh and drink his blood. Sound familiar?
see:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osiris#The_Osiri
Dionysus turned water into wine before Jesus. Dionysus was fathered by a god but his mother was a mortal woman.
see:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dionysus#Paralle
In fact, the Jesus story contains no original elements, other than geography and ethnicity. Thus it very easily could just be a myth which developed over time.
There are no historical records outside of the Gospels of the bible of Jesus's existence as a person. There is no record of his actions outside of the Gospels.