Unique ID In India Causes 'Fear of the Beast'

bhagwad writes "India's attempts to tag everyone with an ID number has run into a roadblock is some Christian villages. Apparently the villagers fear they will be associated with the devil since according to the Bible, everyone having the 'mark of the beast' will go to hell. These people are not afraid of punishment. They relish this opportunity to prove their faith because the Bible also proclaims that they will be persecuted."

Comments

Blah

[religious freak]

Always good to see uneducated crazies are all over the world. I was worried that it was just the USA. Phew! /sarcasm

Re:Blah

[ragefan]

>>>Always good to see uneducated crazies are all over the world.

Always good to see people who are intolerant of Christians. If you can be tolerant of gays, and tolerant of people speaking ideas you disagree with, why can't you be tolerant of Muslims, Jews, and Christians too? They have as much right to "pursue happiness" as anybody else, even if you disagree with their religious philosophy.

Maybe it's because gays just want to enjoy the same rights that you enjoy; whereas Muslims, Jews and Christians want to remove the rights they feel disagree with their beliefs.

Their right to "pursue happiness" stops when they try to impinges on the rights to pursue happiness by others.

Re:Blah

[Creedo]

Why would I be tolerant of someone who does not repay the favor? The gays aren't knocking at my door, telling my children that they are going to burn in hell forever. They aren't shooting abortion doctors. They aren't launching suicide attacks on my neighborhood. They aren't polluting science with their fictional delusions. When the theists abandon their irrational bigotry, grow up and stop trying to control their neighbors, they'll be worthy of tolerance.

Re:Blah

[Draek]

You assume the GP has it. He doesn't, for instance, if the person he loves is a minor, an octopi or his own sister.

And before you reply "but that'd be disgusting!" be aware that the same can be (and has been) said of homosexuality as well.

Re:Blah

[Creedo]

You realize that your statements have put you far outside of both historical Christianity and the dominant Christian denominations in this country, right? Speaking of just my corner of the US, I do a lot of business with Christians and Christian churches(I am the only PC repair-person who makes house calls), and thus I am privy to a lot of private information, such as emails. They also have some irrational desire to open up and tell me about their beliefs while I'm removing yet another round of malware(I don't have a scarlet A tattooed on my forehead, so they assume I'm some brand of Christian, too). Aside from a couple of elderly pastors from California and a family of unobservant Lutherans(note that both examples are not native to this area), I haven't met a single practicing Christian or a single denomination that didn't preach Creationism, anti-homosexual bigotry, weird end of the world AntiChrist beliefs or forms of Christian Triumphalism(sometimes intermixed with militant militia beliefs). Or some bizarre mish-mash of all of the above. And these irrational beliefs are quite vocally the basis for their votes.

I encourage you to attend some midwest political meetings and canvas them for religious beliefs. It will open your eyes to what your fellow theists believe and are trying to push onto the rest of the population.

That's silly...

[painandgreed]

How could they possibly believe that is actually the mark of the beast? Everybody knows those grocery store "loyalty cards" are the real Mark of the Beast!

Re:That's silly...

[boristdog]

Everybody knows those grocery store "loyalty cards" are the real Mark of the Beast!

I've always wondered: If you have more than one "loyalty card", does that make you a traitor or just a whore?

Re:That's silly...

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

The parent isn't kidding. The official user number of Anonymous Coward is 666. Log in and click here for proof:

http://yro.slashdot.org/zoo.pl?op=check&type=friend&uid=666

Re:That's silly...

[EdIII]

That's why years ago I started using loyalty cards with other people. By my count now we have probably a hundred different people on one card alone.

Other than the supposed savings (they're are an illusion just like you pointed out) you maybe get some savings on Gas. However, there are usually 1 or 2 places in a 100 mile radius that you can get the gas from. So you waste all the time driving there, wear and tear on the vehicle, just to save a few cents on gas that usually does not offset what you lost getting there. Unless you live less than 5 miles away from the super special gas station you can cash in your rewards on, it is just stupid.

In some stores you don't even need your loyalty card either. Enough people complain that they won't purchase the items unless they get the "discount" price that cashiers will just give you a new card on the spot or swipe a card they have with them. I have seen that a lot.

Personally, I enjoy my method a heck of a lot more. The original information on the account is bogus and the demographic information they glean from it must be hilarious.

Good!

[Just Some Guy]

I really don't care what arbitrary reason they picked. I'm just glad to hear of someone - anyone - standing up and saying that they refuse to be tagged like cattle. Good for you, Indians!

Re:Good!

[quietwalker]

Wait, it's india. Wouldn't they relish the chance to be treated like cattle?

Re:Good!

[interkin3tic]

Agreed, but it is noteworthy that for once religious paranoia, and especially that LSD-induced last part of the bible, has a good effect on the world See "Jesus Camp" for plenty of examples of it being much more annoying and dangerous.

Re:Good!

[corbettw]

These are Christians in India, not Hindus. There's a difference: one believes a magical zombie died so they can live forever but that if they don't follow the zombie's teachings very closely, they'll burn in a lake of fire forever; the other one thinks the stupidest creature on four legs (and also one of the tastiest) is a magical creature that we should all aspire to become in a future life, but in the meantime we should give rats milk and bath in the most polluted river in the world so that when we die we can finally be happy...until we get reborn into a new body and have to be unhappy again.

Bah, bunch of nutters, the lot of them. Why anyone bothers with religion is a mystery to me.

Re:Good!

[wtbname]

We do it for the chicks.

Uneducated

[Anonymous Coward]

If you meant that it takes years of indoctrination before a normal human being is willing to let other human beings tag him like an animal, then yes, I suppose these people need more "educating".

They may be wrong about WHY consolidated power is dangerous, but they are absolutely correct that it IS dangerous.

Re:Uneducated

[JAZ]

And regardless of who wrote these religious texts (divine inspiration, folk story, philosophers or old fashioned kooks), it is really interesting that someone as acknowledged and feared the idea of someone taking authority over and tagging the population for literally thousands of years.

Re:Uneducated

[IICV]

Just FYI, the guy who wrote that was most likely on some Middle Ages equivalent of LSD. It's a single throwaway line in a book full of random shit; the fact that what he said just barely manages to be relevant right now is more coincidence than anything else.

If you throw enough shit at a wall, at least some of it will stick. That doesn't mean it's glue.

Re:Uneducated

[MostAwesomeDude]

Kind of. It was political allegory pointed at the Romans, and unsurprisingly, some of it has slight social relevance today.

Oh, and it was written far before the Middle Ages. References in then-contemporary writing place it at least before 200 AD, and it might be as old as the Gospels.

Re:Uneducated

[lgw]

It wasn't intented to be a fantasy trip, but an obvious metaphor for people and governments around in the time of the author, warning of things he expected to happen in his lifetime *and many of them did). Of course, if you make your prophesy obscure enough, it will keep matching random events, but the intended timeframe for the predictions is long past.

The only reason is seems mysterious is that almost no one understands the referents. If I made an allusion to "the Beast of Redmond" it would be obvious to many /. readers, but it would seem very odd 1000 years from now.

Re:Uneducated

[lgw]

It's equally reasonable that the Beast was an idea shared by 7 rulers (an idea like communism, or some other great evil). The "number" is almost certainly 616, not 666, and IIRC it's the "number of his name", the once-secret trick of assigning numbers to each letter of a name and adding them up in a certain way (kabbalism that used to be seen as real magic, but was commonly done in my highschool to see if lovers' names matched). Your key point, of course, was that everyone would wear the same mark, not a different mark for each, which makes this worry a bit silly.

But of course the book was about the political stage at the time it was written, and the events described came to pass (or not), shortly thereafter. Time turns prophecy into history.

Two things...

[Anonymous Coward]

As a long-time minister I can tell you two things that are commonly misinterpreted by the nominal Christian crowd.

1. Revelation is almost entirely using symbolic language (it says so in the first paragraph).

2. Nearly everyone goes to hell. Hell is just the state of being dead, nothing more. Even Jesus is spoken of as being in 'hell' when he died.

The 'mark of the beast; is not a literal, physical mark. Rather, it is some kind of behavior or trait associating one with the Devils machinations (i.e. participating (or tacitly approving of) in genocide)

Re:Two things...

[Itninja]

Some Bibles say 'signify' others more plainly say 'in signs'. Look up the word 'signify' and you will see what he meant:

Main Entry: signified
Function: noun
: a concept or meaning as distinguished from the sign through which it is communicated

So the mark represents what a person does (the hand) and what a person thinks (the forehead).

In the original Greek and Hebrew Hell=Sheol=Hades=Gehenna=Tartarus. They all mean 'grave' not 'place where God tortures people for eternity'.

Educated, not crazy and not afraid.

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe I am well educated with some extensive study in Eschatology.

The Mark of the Beast is interesting and whether you are Premillennial or Amillennial you can find issues with the Mark of the Beast.

I, personally, am mostly indifferent. Mostly.

Here's where the concern is and will continue to be: buying and selling goods. I must make a living. I must pay my taxes. I'm okay with this. What happens when I won't accept an ID chip in my hand or cell phone?

As a citizen I am no longer "free". I pay my taxes but I can't buy or sell without these shackles?

Once a government is able to completely restrict the buying and selling, the means in which I survive, they have become oppressive and abusive. They must be overthrown.

If you think it doesn't matter or this is an unimportant step then we can Godwin this discussion.

And no, I'm not afraid. I won't bow down to another god or man. If the next President says we must bow down to him or his god(s) I will refuse.

Personally I think Christians (practicing their faith in "loving others") are the best kind of citizen one can have. They follow the just laws, they pay taxes and help their fellow men.

Re:Educated, not crazy and not afraid.

[Creedo]

Funny. Where I live(the US Midwest, FYI), the Christians are at the forefront of attacking human rights, demanding that non-believers kowtow to their deranged fantasies and attacking science when they aren't flailing about in fear of the devil driven liberal conspiracy. That's not what I would call being a good citizen.

Re:Educated, not crazy and not afraid.

[pluther]

Personally I think Christians (practicing their faith in "loving others") are the best kind of citizen one can have. They follow the just laws, they pay taxes and help their fellow men.

Except that they don't. At least, no more than anybody else. Possibly less, actually.

In the US, Christians are about 80% of the population, but over 90% of convicted criminals.

And churches pay no taxes. Those who give money to churches get tax breaks for doing so. Assuming Christians also give to actual charities as much as everybody else does, that would mean they actually pay less taxes.

As for the "Mark of the Beast", we've had this in the US for a very long time now. Every citizen of the U.S. is given a unique ID number at birth. A number which you need in order to get a passport, or drivers license, or credit card. So we're already regulating the buying and selling of property without it. And have been since before most of us here were born.

Re:Educated, not crazy and not afraid.

[Creedo]

Tell it to the Christians. Or is this yet another stab at the "No True Scotsman" fallacy?

Re:Educated, not crazy and not afraid.

[Dalambertian]

I'm rather fond of Scotsmen, not to mention Ghandi when he said "I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ."

Re:Educated, not crazy and not afraid.

[hedwards]

It's inherently so. Ever notice how the Fundamentalists try to reshape the face of their religion so that they can conveniently decry those that disagree with them for not being true believers? The problem is that while a lot of these views are genuinely minority views, since the rest of the religious devotees let it pass without comment, since those other ones aren't true believers, you end up in a situation where it just stews and nobody knows what's up.

Re:Educated, not crazy and not afraid.

[clarkkent09]

If the Christians were more like Christ, there wouldn't be any Christians around anymore:

But I [Christ] tell you who hear me: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. If someone strikes you on one cheek, turn to him the other also. If someone takes your cloak, do not stop him from taking your tunic. Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back.

Re:Educated, not crazy and not afraid.

[JAZ]

more like a noisy and obnoxious minority of a community.

...All christians are assholes who try to make everyone conform to they're way of life.
...All muslims are terrorists.
...All jews are stingy.
...All mexicans are illegal immigrants.
...All blacks are in gangs.
...All canadians are nice.
...All slashdot users are nerds who can't find girlfriends.

anytime you try to associate a trait with a group you're probably oversimplifying the truth.

Re:Educated, not crazy and not afraid.

[bsDaemon]

Most Buddhists are like Christ, and there are a bunch of those around.

Re:Educated, not crazy and not afraid.

[Nethead]

In the US, Christians are about 80% of the population, but over 90% of convicted criminals.

That's because everyone seems to find Jesus in prison. (ergo, he must be in there too.)

Re:Educated, not crazy and not afraid.

[Creedo]

Perhaps you have reading comprehension problems. I never said that all Christians do that, even in my community. I said that Christians are at the forefront of those movements. And that's absolutely true. I can't think of a single non-Christian, in fact, who is even visible in the state or local political scenes. I can't think of a single non-Christian in my area fighting for Creationism. No non-Christians have been fighting gay rights here. No non-Christians running nonsensical attack ads. Hell, we even have threatening road signs on the highways! http://www.flyoverpeople.net/images/RegretItForever.jpg So, tell me again, who are these invisible "others" who are leading these irrational movements in the midwest?

Re:Educated, not crazy and not afraid.

[Entropius]

I lived in Alabama for a long time, and I can say that yes -- a majority of Christians there *do* metaphorically beat down the doors to science classrooms. The Baptist megachurch in my neighborhood showed up to my high school with pamphlets supporting young-earth creationism. I was thrown out of a Methodist Sunday School for inquiring about how Big Bang cosmology fit into Genesis (hey, I was six, and yes I was an odd little kid). I worked at a Presbyterian church for a long time that fired their pastor and changed Presbyterian sub-denominations because the Presbyterian Church (USA) wasn't homophobic enough.

The only major groups of Christians I encountered in Alabama that weren't the sorts of nutters you describe were the United Church of Christ (but not many of those) and the Episcopalians. I didn't have much contact with the Lutherans (there weren't many of them) so I can't speak for them.

At least in numbers, a plurality of Christians in the South are Southern Baptists, and they're nutters.

It's not the same elsewhere. But down in the crotch of the Bible Belt, it's scary.

Re:Educated, not crazy and not afraid.

[bsDaemon]

China rolled into Tibet, slapped the Dali Llama in the face, stole his country and kicked his ass out, and he hasn't gone all Che Guevara to get it back. Or those Vietnamese monks that burned themselves alive to protest the war. Although, if you were to walk up to a Rinzai master, he'd probably cold-clock you with a stick, laugh, and tell you when you understand only then will you be enlightened.

POSIX operating systems are sinful

[Bruce Perens]

I had a sysadmin who refused to chmod files to 666 because it was the number of the beast. We didn't have the permission-letter version of the command back then.

Re:POSIX operating systems are sinful

[mangu]

I had a sysadmin who refused to chmod files to 666 because it was the number of the beast

Anyhow, you have to agree that he was right, for the wrong reason. Giving read/write permissions to everybody is the number of the stupid, not the number of the beast.

enjoy the show

[roman_mir]

I am just sitting back, enjoying the show: religion versus state, no matter who loses, I win.

WOW

[copponex]

Personally I think Christians (practicing their faith in "loving others") are the best kind of citizen one can have. They follow the just laws, they pay taxes and help their fellow men.

History class: apparently you never showed up. Ever.

Yes, but uneducated in a way you not thinking of

[rickb928]

I caught this quote from the first post:

"Always good to see uneducated crazies are all over the world.

Yes, uneducated, but not in the way you are thinking of.

Christians are persecuted all over the world. In India, there are some fanatical groups of Hindus and Muslims that are especially violent towards Christians, with murders and burning whole villages not uncommon. Lesser persecution occurs all over the world, however, and is to be expected. In fact, this is probably not exclusive to Christians, though some religions tend to suffer less. I suspect because they fight back. Christians are not called to do so, but to love their persecutors and put their faith in God. Seeking persecution is not necessary - it will seek you as a Christian.

I'm currently studying Revelation, and have been getting very different insights into the imagery and visions depicted there. The 'mark of the Beast' need not be a literal mark, but it could be just as apparent. If, as a Christian, you spend your time watching celebrity news shows and, as Don Imus says, 'revelling in the agony of others', you are participating in the less-Christian aspects of our culture. This is more the domain of the Beast (Satan) than it is of God. You are marked by this. If you spend your time talking about things of the world, you are marked as one more interested in the world. Am I guilty of this? Yup. We can change, though.

The quote about 'buying or selling' is indeed, however, looking more literal than figurative. This is more interesting. But of course, if you wish to buy or sell that which is being offered by the prevailing culture, well, yes, avoiding the mark of the Beast will distance you from that culture. In TFA, it seems India is instituting the UID system to better identify individuals. I think, as a Christian, I could tolerate having a UID as a means to entirely acceptable ends, ie property ownership.

I think these Mizoramans are misguided, but they are also under constant threat. Who knows.

Hopefully some of the pastors I know of in India will reach out to them and give them some useful insights. You have to fight the real fight, not be distracted by the enemy.

ps- I do not advocate Christians isolating themselves from the world. We are called to be in the world, but not of it. If you don't understand this, try to evaluate your investment in current events. Are you tossed to and fro by the latest political debate, or do you take it as an event, and keep your focus on the issues and real progress?