RFID, Sign of the (End) Times? 843
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."
Barcodes (Score:2, Interesting)
Crazy Cult Believes End of Times Coming (Score:1, Interesting)
Eh... Apocalyptic Stuff (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Thank Allah for the distraction (Score:4, Interesting)
My Grandma thought punchcards were the mark... (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [amazon.com]. 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....
Re:Fallacy (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Crazy Cult Believes End of Times Coming (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Fallacy (Score:5, Interesting)
Hell, when England made the Domesday Book [wikipedia.org] in 1086 Christians probably went ape-shit over it for the same reason.
I've learned something about Christians, when something like this comes, many don't say "this is the mark of the beast" instead they say something along the line of "the end is near"... So, they're learning.
I think that the stance against RFIDs needs all the help it can get... So, let the Christians rant and rave next to the EFF... Just as long as the reasonable people raise that point that tracking technologies COULD be used for bad reasons, and encourage people to weigh the good against the bad... Or does that involve thinking?
SSN as master primary key is still scary (Score:3, Interesting)
Stop letting the fact that religious people are leary trick you into dismissing the threat as a fantasy.
Re:Fallacy (Score:2, Interesting)
So yeah, call in when you get the chance and get them fired up about this. Write them letters, get them to get Pat Robertson and all his idiots involved and you'll see some changes made. You'll be surprised how easily it'll work, and how quickly all these people will be forgotten once the message makes it to the right person much in the same way each church will be forgotten once the message makes it to someone like Pat.
Religion is being replaced, not just displaced (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Fallacy (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually I was talking about being able to identify a unique person via DNA when I wrote that business about 'mark of the beast' in Revelations.
Once 'they' get that ability in near-real-time (ie, on the spot) - you guys are screwed.
It is always funny to watch how you young people misinterpret what I wrote in that book.
Re:Fallacy (Score:3, Interesting)
Environmental Armageddon [beliefnet.com]
Re:Yes, it's very unfortunate... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:oh cmon (Score:2, Interesting)
You don't even have to work it out by hand, or trust utilitiies. The final digit is a 1, that means its an odd number.
A mildly interesting aside, ALL normal binary palindromes are odd. (Because all binary numbers start with "one", and therefore must end with one.)
(Sure you could be annoying and make arguments about zero padded fixed width binary fields, or argue that its not against the law to write an arbitrary number of leading zeroes... but those aren't really "normal"
-cheers
June 6th, 2006 (Score:2, Interesting)
The Mullahs might agree (Score:2, Interesting)
Good! (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Re:Crazy Cult Believes End of Times Coming (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Last post (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Fallacy (Score:3, Interesting)
It may not be Christian, but it's catholic (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Christianity == Crazy Cult [Read all first] (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Question to a believer from a skeptic... (Score:2, Interesting)
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. [theregister.co.uk] 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.
Re:My Grandma thought punchcards were the mark... (Score:3, Interesting)
Poster refers to the biblically reported dimensions of the ceremonial basin which sat in front of the first Temple (I'm way too lazy to look up the chapter and verse right now, it's in Beckmann [amazon.com]).
Anyways, the bible says that the basin was 10 hands across, and thirty hands around. This is a contradiction, unless you consider that the rim would have to be a certain thickness, thus, rabinnical scholars conclude that thirty hands is the circumference of the inside of the basin, while 10 hands is the width measuring from the outside rim of the basin.
Such heroic scholarship is sometimes required to truly appreciate the bible.
Piece of paper on my door (Score:3, Interesting)
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/ [biblegateway.com] .
losing the religious baggage but getting the idea (Score:1, Interesting)
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.
You mean Germany? (Score:3, Interesting)
You're talking about the Holocaust Deniers, right?
Re:Fallacy (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Fallacy (Score:3, Interesting)
Orthodox Church & Protestantism on Revelations (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [12net.gr] 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 [theotokou.org] 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.
Re:I love Slashdot, but.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Technology isn't the devil. Technology is a pitchfork. People who try to use technology to oppress others are the devil, or at least work for him.
Re:Fallacy (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Fallacy (Score:5, Interesting)
Religion is one of those topics - like abortion or evolution or homosexuality - that causes slashdot readership breaks into a frenzy whenever we have an article that allows us to vent (again) our particular poition on this issue. The tiresome part of this is not only that almost everyone is just talking to hear themselves talkk, but also that most people are also quite content to argue with phantom straw men rather than respond to real-world positions.
In this case the straw-man for the anti-religion crowd is a very specific definition of religion; more particularly its theological definition of faith as "blind belief". This type of faith is nothing more than willful assertion of some rote dogma or other. As such it necessitates an anti-science position as it is anti-thought. Rational thought involves questioning and doubting. These activities threaten the very nature of (blind beleif) faith itself. In short - I can see why people who value science, knowledge, fairness, and information highly would find this form of religion utterly repugnant. I share that sentiment.
There are two problems, however. The first problem is that not all religion is anti-intellectual. Not all religion has this "blind belief" view of faith. Some, like the existentialist thinker Kierkegaard, have blind belief but situated within a compelling rational framework. Others, like C.S. Lewis, focus on the aspects of their faith systems that are logically and rationally appealing to thinking, questioning and questing individuals and marginalize the blind-belief aspects as inconsequential. To throw out all religion as the base "blind faith" variety is just to show one's utter and complete ignorance for the vast spectrum of religious thought that does exist. Most people who are so convinced that religion is anti-intellectual have never bothered to read the writings of a single religious intellectual (note: this means someone other than Falwell or Robertson). When you dismiss all of religious heritage with witty one-liners you may think you look cool. +5 mod points for "informative" or "funny" may give you the credibility you apparently desire. But the fact is that you are no more informed than some Bible fundamentalist who's never taken a real sciene class in his or her life would be in assuming that evolution was just some crocked up scheme by satanist communists to lead the world from the path of God. Not only are they wrong (everyone is wrong from time to time) but they are publicly demonstrating their own prejudice and arrogance. The saddest part is that they, like you, would never even comprehend their own humiliation.
The second problem is quite simple: it's impossible to get away from some definitions of faith. What if faith isn't believing in gnomes, faeries, Gods or Goddeses just because it's the dogma - what if faith is actually the rational extrapolation from insufficient evidence to guide necesary action? In other words - faith is what guides our actions when we don't have knowledge but need to make a choice. Well, if you realize that certainty about the real world is impossible you quickly realize that all of the things we know or do are - in a sense - dependent on faith. Even science is, in some sense, dependent on faith. Faith in the law of causality logically (if not temporally) preceeds all experimentation. It may be subsequently reinforced by experience but it can neither be directly proved by experimentation or any other known means and yet is the pre-requisite for rational experimentation.
In the end it's a simple case of hatred for one thing spilling irrationally over into hatred for related or similar things. You guys really hate dogmatic and anti-i
Re:Fallacy (Score:3, Interesting)
Take for example prophecy in the Old Testament - most of the OT prophets were quite clearly speaking to the people of their day, warning them of events that were about to happen (and, well, actually did happen - that's because they were prophets
Even if all the events of the Book of Revelation were realized in the 1st century, it doesn't mean they don't have another meaning to us today. Especially if you believe that the Bible is divinely inspired.
Have you read the book? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Fallacy (Score:2, Interesting)
But, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and we'll say there are parts in the bible that are verified and valid. That does nothing to validate the rest of it, despite that it may suggest more credibility. In which case, you can't just pick and choose which truths you want to argue based on some historical accuracies in separate parts. Only the things which are verified can be treated as truths. Do any proponents of the bible follow this philosophy?
A problem arises when people start by assuming it is entirely true. Then they'll have license to deny the most likely truth for an extremely improbable possibility just because it conforms with their ideal.
Really though, the bible is a work of genius, throw in some historical truths that were kept alive by oral tradition, make up a background and moral to the story, and make vague predictions of the future while making demands of the behavior and beliefs of all those who follow its teachings. Just because all of the predictions haven't come true yet doesn't mean they won't all. And it contains some truth, so it must all be true, note the sarcasm. Surely those who could see into the future would have known that it would not be necessary to rely on oral tradition and that the printing press would allow for widespread reproducability without copying errors and biases (which plague the bible). In that case, the use of allegory would serve only an aesthetic function while detracting from the true purpose. If the language were explicit, the ability to abuse the messages in the bible would be all but nullified (and many of the rituals demanded explicitly by the bible are ignored by practitioners these days). Ironically, that's what made it such a useful tool and so powerful, for those who wished to abuse it (and please do not try to tell me that nobody could or did benefit by being the authority on the bible).
But, what about other statements in the bible that we have demonstrated as false. That the earth has four corners, or edges. The apologetic defense I've read refuting the four corners argument was that the word translated into 'corners' was similar to the word 'quarters' as in a sphere with 4 hemispheres, although from a more certain geometric point of view it would make more sense to divide a sphere into 8 equal sections, which provides the symmetry which the passage suggests. In any case, even if there are refutations that relate to the way in which the passage was translated, it would make one wonder what other truths have been obfuscated by human error in a supposedly infallible book.
To me, it's quite ridiculous that we learn lessons of easter bunnies and santa as children, and how the church believed the sun orbited the earth and oppressed science until the truth was undeniable (truth only reached by the scientific method), but in adulthood, many still believe in some figure whose qualities nobody can agree upon, but many assume, whose existence cannot be proven one way or another, but its existence is assumed, whose motives and authority cannot be verified, but goodness and supreme morality is assumed. All the while, in our pride, in our natural desires to be unique, an
Re:Prophecy Times Two (Score:1, Interesting)
- 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.