666 chip? Why a Texas student thinks her school ID is the "Mark of the Beast"

The theology behind a battle over RFID tags.

Read the whole story

 

[NickN]

When you are standing in line at your favorite store this holiday season, waiting for the cashier to optically scan every item, and wondering, "gee, there must be a better way..."

There is. Paranoid chumps like these will keep RFID at retail from ever happening, and hamstring progress.

Apart from using similar technology, how are these things in any way alike? Inventory control of goods isn't the same as inventory control of students.

 

[Greho]

Oh, can I also point out that organizations like the Rutherford Institute:

(a) pick soft targets like school systems, which often lack the capability to fight back effectively, either on the legal front or in the subsequent public relations war. I'd like to see them sue the FBI or the Armed Forces or any large private employer for similar security policies.

(b) grind these axes to stir up a small, vocal minority of people who will the donate money to said Rutherford Institute, because they are doing "God's Work."

Edited to fix a small typo.

 

[nixonismyhero]

I appreciate the interpretation and all, but what about concerns over privacy and RFID tracking? It would have been nice to hear a bit about how the privacy concerns of the Hernandez family are overly inflated or how public school students have few rights to privacy under the law, while in school or school sponsored activities. Also, the technical limitations of RFID should be explained. I might know them, but it'd be nice to see it in writing again.

 

[Eric]

Mujokan, I can't think of many biblical scholars who agree with her take on it.

 

[OsirisDean]

a while back, a bible-literalist YEC coworker of mine posted on his facebook page a link to a video regarding this topic, warning his friends to stay away from RFID chips because they were the mark of the beast. not at all trying to troll him (honest, this was genuine curiosity on my part), i asked him how a bible literalist was able to make such an extrapolation; that is, if the bible is meant to be read literally, how does one surmise that RFID chips = mark of the beast, since the bible obviously does not state that explicitly. for about two months he promised to answer my question, but never did.

note that i am not trying to make fun of religious folks or their beliefs, i just dont understand how certain stances (such as my coworker's on this topic) dont result in a bit of cognitive dissonance.

 

[Greho]

When you are standing in line at your favorite store this holiday season, waiting for the cashier to optically scan every item, and wondering, "gee, there must be a better way..."

There is. Paranoid chumps like these will keep RFID at retail from ever happening, and hamstring progress.

Apart from using similar technology, how are these things in any way alike? Inventory control of goods isn't the same as inventory control of students.

The same underlying technology. For years, the argument against RFID in retail ranged from "they will know what I'm buying," (even though big data means they already do), to "they will scan my house and see my mayonnaise" (which, given current technological limits, is improbable.)

The RFID standards body went so far as to propose an expiring, destructible chip, which would be killed by an EM field as the customer walked out of the store. That's how paranoid it got. It's no surprise, then, that RFID is used successfully in every other part of the supply chain, but is specifically and purposefully NOT used at the point of sale. It was a PR disaster for forward-thinking retailers.

Target don't need no stinking RFID to know what you buy.

 

[Mujokan]

Mujokan, I can't think of many biblical scholars who agree with her take on it.

She is Professor of Religion at Princeton, she is not some kind of crank.

 

[Hagen]

While in many ways I'm in favor of schools keeping better track of their students (sorry, but if I'm sending my kid to a public school I do want them to know where she is... they're still children, and given that many parents don't have other schooling options within reach and are therefor legally required to send their children to public school, there is in my opinion a definite mandate for the school to provide adequate monitoring for the parents, short of emancipation), an RFID badge seems questionable if they have their students' welfare primarily in mind. It's too easy to just pass one to a friend to take in to cover for truancy.

This seems like an excellent argument for the implantation of a RFID device for tracking the kids. Can't just hand that to your friend to take around school w/them. Would the right hand or forehead be better?

 

[EBone]

So how does her dad earn a living without a social security number? Does he walk everywhere, since he can't possibly have a driver's license number. Oh shit - does she have a cellphone? She'll burn in hell for that number associated with her identity.

 

[HeyWaitASecond]

If the religious liberty argument were to work, couldn't it also be used to combat voter ID laws, as photo IDs are coded?

Voter ID laws have been pretty well wiped out. The courts looked to freedom rather than wacky fairy tales for guidance.

Okay yeah I need to pay more attention to the resolution of some of these issues. Anyway as an idea it was more of a 'wouldn't that be amusing.'

... Also I don't really consider freedom an inherently legitimate reason to strike down voter ID laws, more a question of what they were supposed to solve, how effective they would have been, and what the motivations were for enacting them... Answers to those questions made them bad laws even without the question of civil liberty... but yeah, neither here nor there.

 

[Greho]

Why a Texas student thinks her school ID is the "Mark of the Beast"

Read one book many times, instead of many books once?

In my experience, it is the smallest of minorities of Christians who have actually read the bible in its entirety.

Yeah, but that Song of Solomon is some pretty hot stuff!

 

[salade]

She should just wrap it in tin foil .That's what I do with my college ID.

 

[pyster]

Ars knowing about 616 and writing about it is an example of why I fucken love ars. They are well informed and the writing is good. I may not always agree, but one can never claim they dont do their home work.

 

[Greho]

Ars knowing about 616 and writing about it is an example of why I fucken love ars. They are well informed and the writing is good. I may not always agree, but one can never claim they dont do their home work.

Would it be tasteless to say "Amen" to that?

 

[iconmaster]

Thanks, Ars, for digging into the history of interpreting Revelation rather than going for the easy "end times LOL" approach.

I do see a lot of "here's what's going on now" in Revelation, though from mid-chapter 20 on it has to be interpreted prophetically, because it covers the end of death and sorrow -- which AFAICT have yet to happen.

"He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away."

 

[JungArs]

"My religion prohibits me from paying taxes"

Can I use this one?

As long as you don't get the benefits (stealing).

 

[secretmanofagent]

Someone should warn apocalyptic whackjobs about the 555 chip. It's EVERYWHERE! There's probably one in a device near you right now. SCARY!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/555_timer_IC

Drat, beat me to it.

 

[Slipgatex]

Skipping the obligatory "shit's cray cray" comments. I'd just like to add that this:

This calls for wisdom: let anyone with understanding calculate the number of the beast.

Should be the key line in those scriptures. For a Christian or similar denomination, the fact that a child thinks she has the wisdom to "calculate the number of the beast", should just throw this little argument to tatters. Even John couldn't fathom all he saw without an angel to guide him.

Just sayin'

(Now... /flips through albums, here we go! Iron Maiden ftw!)

WOE TO YOU! XD

 

[MoonShark]

As a United Methodist pastor... I believe and work on a daily basis within the framework that the Bible was written in a specific time and place with a cultural context that requires some work on our part to understand and fully appreciate in our modern day and age. Yes, I believe the Bible to be true, with many stories we can learn from both good and bad, but I don't believe it to be literal. A literal reading causes lawsuits like this, which in the end is not the point of Revelation or other apocalyptic literature.

Reasonable enough, I too appreciate a good historical analysis and condemn literal readings of so-called holy books. But...

It frustrates me a great deal that so many fundamentalist and premillenialists have distorted a text that is suppose to be a message of hope and instead induced that fear and anxiety.

It's pretty disingenuous to accuse others of distorting an evidence-free fairy tale while promoting your own factless interpretation. Right up there with accusing a licensed Star Wars novelist of distorting that universe, because you consider the movies to be canon.

How is anyone supposed to agree that the Bible has a "message of hope" when its core tenants are ethical atrocities like original sin, proxy forgiveness, and living in fear of an afterlife? Those ideas are demonstrably wrong (and monstrous) but somehow they still make a pastor out to be a "good guy" when he disagrees with the "real" (and far less common) loonies who think RFID chips are straight from Satan's workshop.

 

[Hagen]

In my experience, it is the smallest of minorities of Christians who have actually read the bible in its entirety. The vast, vast majority receive their scripture in short segments, hand-in-hand with their pastor's interpretation every Sunday. Most Christians have read a few chapters on their own (The Pentateuch, 4 Canonical Gospels, rarely much else, often less). By and large the problem is that people like this *aren't* reading their own holy book; they're having someone with an agenda tell them what their holy book says. If more Christians read the bible on their own, I'd like to believe that we'd have more Christians living Christ-like. Conversely, some think it'd make more Atheists:

It's kind of funny. In middle school and high school, most of my best friends and I attended First Christian church in my hometown (Disciples of Christ, but our minister never fit the weird stories I hear about this sect). His son was one of my best friends, we were all on teh academic team, I think we were all in our school's choir, we all played Dungeons & Dragons as often as we could, etc. We even did things like go to Church Camp w/our youth group in the summer.

What I find very interesting is that whole Wayne (my friend's dad) told us plenty of things about the Bible and encouraged faith, he also wanted us to look at things and make our own decisions. The folks we used to go to church camp with? Several of those kids are now ministers, one of my friends from church camp is in charge of the Week of Compassion these days. My group of friends? Every single one of us is agnostic or atheist these days. We all listened to what Wayne said and did our own research and asked our own questions and found religion wanting. We've all talked this over several times over the years trying to figure this one out. What made our group so different?

I know I took classes in college on things like Eastern Religions and read the Gita and Tao te Ching. I had a couple of friends in college who were mediums. I had friends who would give long explanations of what exactly LaVey Satanism taught (basically it's be selfish). I was exposed to a lot of things and now I take shit from some family members and random strangers b/c I don't take my kids to church. My kids go w/my mom sometimes when they are visiting her and I'm fine with that, but overall we plan to wait until they are older and then we will teach them about many different religions and let them make an informed decision. If they want to start going to church, that's fine. If they decide another religion (or no religion) is the answer, that's cool too. My wife (as well as many of our friends) is pagan, I'm sure she will have lots of things to say about that too.

 

[eXceLon]

Many Ars readers, encountering the story for the first time, might well have shared some of the privacy concerns expressed by Hernandez, but come up short in understanding the reason for her objection.

I just kind of assumed that they came up with this legal strategy, in the hopes of finding something that would stick. I guess it's possible that they do genuinely believe it.

 

[NERDZAR]

The author of Revelations messed up by being too specific. Even if people loosen the interpretation of the Greek word so that a mark can be a card or a chip, the prophecy says it will be on the right hand or the forehead. So all we have to do is make a law that says any identifying mark that is stamped on (or attached to) a person's body should be installed somewhere other than the right hand or forehead. Let's see, left hand or legs are bad choices because of all the amputees we're going to have after WWIII. Nose or neck would be resisted because people would think that the former would be aesthetically unpleasing and the latter might be painful. So . . . let's go with the left buttcheek. Everybody's got one and we'd only need to make minor clothing modifications (openable flap) if it's a mark and no clothing modification at all if it's RFID. And once we get a large enough installed base of left buttcheek-marked citizens it becomes economically infeasible to change the location and retrain the mark installers. And if anybody ever suggests changing the location, he's the Antichrist and you shoot him on the spot. Prophecy defeated. Christianity obsolete. Next?

 

[calson33]

I think some are missing the larger point that programs like this make our citizenry more comfortable with a surveillance society. Start 'em young.

This. If kids are used to being tracked at school, how much will they complain as adults when their movements are tracked and stored via license plate readers and cell phone location?

Conservative evangelicals and privacy advocates may make strange bedfellows but I'm okay with that.

umm.. Hasn't Facebook already proved that the vast majority of people don't care about privacy?

 

[Mydrrin]

The rise of apocalypse in the religion like the isolation and strict Jewish Essenes.

In my opinion, Jesus definitely comes from an Essene background in some way. Of course, thinking yourself the Messiah was not a normal thing for Essenes though. Nor was accepting everyone into the fold.

Read through this and see if it reminds you of anything! http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/5867-essenes

Like everything in the world it changes through times and tribulations. With Roman rule and Jewish leaders being brought to the table. It weakened the Jewish faith splitting it into many, not that it was whole to start with but fractured the tensions that were already there. Jesus being Essene is like a possibility among many that I'm just are not sure of. In scripture he sure thinks what the current Jewish leaders did was wrong, and there is a sense of purity and righteousness that are hallmarks of Essene ideology, but not really conclusive. The reconcile with the multi generational rule of Romans, turned the Essene inwards and towards the Apocalyptic view to make sense of the world and their god. I find this fascinating, it occurs quite often in history so it soothes something in our psyche, something more to understand, I think I have pieces but it's not all there yet.

I'm kind of coming to the conclusion of Jesus not being an individual, not that there is much evidence either way but just how the evolution occurred in Jewish views and ideas. It just fits the image I have of the evolution of the Jewish faith and the evidence that is there when the gospels were written. The style of the gospels and their timings.

 

[calson33]

The author of Revelations messed up by being too specific. Even if people loosen the interpretation of the Greek word so that a mark can be a card or a chip, the prophecy says it will be on the right hand or the forehead. So all we have to do is make a law that says any identifying mark that is stamped on (or attached to) a person's body should be installed somewhere other than the right hand or forehead. Let's see, left hand or legs are bad choices because of all the amputees we're going to have after WWIII. Nose or neck would be resisted because people would think that the former would be aesthetically unpleasing and the latter might be painful. So . . . let's go with the left buttcheek. Everybody's got one and we'd only need to make minor clothing modifications (openable flap) if it's a mark and no clothing modification at all if it's RFID. And once we get a large enough installed base of left buttcheek-marked citizens it becomes economically infeasible to change the location and retrain the mark installers. And if anybody ever suggests changing the location, he's the Antichrist and you shoot him on the spot. Prophecy defeated. Christianity obsolete. Next?

As soon as you start, someone somewhere will "interpret" scripture so that right hand was actually code for left buttcheek.

 

[OsirisDean]

So . . . let's go with the left buttcheek. Everybody's got one and we'd only need to make minor clothing modifications (openable flap) if it's a mark and no clothing modification at all if it's RFID. And once we get a large enough installed base of left buttcheek-marked citizens it becomes economically infeasible to change the location and retrain the mark installers. And if anybody ever suggests changing the location, he's the Antichrist and you shoot him on the spot. Prophecy defeated. Christianity obsolete. Next?

seems like a half-assed solution to me, but it may be worth a shot.


edit:
i dont need to insert a "puts on sunglasses" tag in there, do i?

 

[tkioz]

Look, I'm a christian, I believe in God, and I think this bint needs to be hit with a clue stick.

Revelations is a bunch of fevered dream crap dreamed up by a dude high on "medicinal plants" that was included to keep the masses in line. True Christians follow the will of Christ, not mucking around with the details.

You think this "End of the World" stuff is new? It's been going on for centuries... hell if even half the anti-christs that people have thought were real, were real, the world would have ended a hundred times over.

 

[GhostRed]

I think this article takes a stance right from the start, at the headline, that this is a joke and the student does't have a legitimate concern.

For the record, getting out of participation in something you don't feel you should be obligated to do by claiming "against my religion" is the oldest excuse in the world. Probably because arguing political and/or philosophical differences is a lot more difficult to pull off without a lawyer.

I think it's wrong to overlook the very valid argument that this could violate rights, could have a nefarious use that could easily be exploited and hasn't gone through the necessary legal review to assess whether or not it actually does violate constitutional rights.

This article, and many of the comments as well, seem to mock this idea as though this person is over-reacting and/or suggest that this family is a bunch of demon-fearing bible thumpers with no reasonable stance on rights.

Religion aside, forcing someone to carry a card that will allow them to be tracked by a school, who's systems we've seen time and again challenged and ultimately found to be at fault, systems we've seen fail at upholding student rights, laws and protection and who've used computer systems to violate rights in the past, and/or not correctly protect the private information they contain, is certainly a questionable act at the very least.

I commend these people for having the balls to stand up for their rights.

 

[bsharp]

What irritates me about this story is that the school district is spending $260,000 to prove more students show up then regular roll call shows so they can get $1,700,000 in extra funds.

It's absurd that a public institution is "spending money to make money." All districts should play by the same, preferably cheap, roll call rules and the money should then be split based on attendance (if that's how people want it). Don't let them all define what attendance means and spend large chunks of the money you're giving them to prove they need the money you're giving them!

What a waste.

Attendance accounting in Texas works like this:

1. each school picks a single time of the day to take attendance. (usually between 10:00 and 10:30)
2. if the student is not in an instructional setting (on campus, field trip, sports, etc.), they are to be marked absent.

Target revenue per student is tied to Average Daily Attendance (ADA). When ADA goes down, you get less money. Money is absolutely vital for providing a great education for the diverse set of students across many school districts. If you have kids in Texas public schools find out their accounting period and try not to pull your kids out then.

It can happen that a teacher marks a student absent because the student is not in their classroom, but the student is legitimately somewhere else in an instructional setting. Occasionally these mistakes do not get fixed correctly. Across a large district mistakes like these can add up to a lot of money. This district isn't trying to game the system. They are trying to report accurately.

This also isn't just about saving costs in dollars. Teachers want to be teaching. If they have to spend time to track down where a student was to fix an attendance mistake, that is time they are not spending educating kids. A system like this removes the administrative burden of reporting and tracking student attendance from teachers. They already spend a lot of their time on administrative tasks and we should be looking to remove them in anyway we can. The more they can focus on instruction, the better our kids will learn.

I'm sure there are probably ways to track students that just leave their badge at school so that they are always "present". Schools could have the system take attendance at midnight when no one should be there. Take attendance several times throughout the day and see which badges always get read by the same reader. With a system like this in place, it makes it easier for a truancy officer/attendance clerk to follow up on the list of suspects.

Will a system like this work for all school districts? Probably not. But this is exactly the kind of thing school districts should be doing to provide their students with the best education possible.

 

[Seraph8762]

Guess what, honey. The number of the beast is nine digits long, and you were marked with it at birth. QED

 

[calson33]

....
I think it's wrong to overlook the very valid argument that this could violate rights, could have a nefarious use that could easily be exploited and hasn't gone through the necessary legal review to assess whether or not it actually does violate constitutional rights.

This article, and many of the comments as well, seem to mock this idea as though this person is over-reacting and/or suggest that this family is a bunch of demon-fearing bible thumpers with no reasonable stance on rights.
.....

Perhaps reading the article might have helped you:

.....
The hundreds of news stories on the controversy have focused largely on the privacy element, though some have repeated the Mark of the Beast claims without much in the way of explanation.
.......

 

[Skirge01]

@Nate & Eric: Thanks for the great article! I was definitely in the boat of knowing about this lawsuit and the religious slant it had taken on, but I had no idea about the basis of their religious stance. Being from a very open-minded part of the US, where religion isn't at the forefront of every person's daily life, I had been thinking about this similarly to how many of the other commenters still are (she's a wack job, this is a privacy issue, forget about the religious part, etc.). However, this article did a fantastic job of explaining the crux of the issue. It also made me want to watch both of those crazy movies. (I just wish you hadn't given away the spoiler.)

 

[C Boy]

Before RFIDs there was a much simpler method...

 

[fantasticrice]

I don't know why they had to bring religious freedom into something which seems to me to be a civil liberties issue.

When I first heard of the story, I cheered, but when I heard the whole "mark of the beast" garbage, I rolled my eyes a bit.

While I don't believe the Bible contains encoded narratives that reveal the future, elements of the dystopian society they fear have some universal elements of truth. I'm of the opinion that if they are going to help be watchdogs for civil liberties, it's a net win for everyone.

 

[Koshchei]

This girl's privacy concerns are legitimate, and as tax-payers, her parents might want to ask the local school-board why they chose to spend a fortune on the electronic equivalent of punch clocks rather than textbooks or other supplies that might have had a direct benefit on the quality of the education that their child is receiving.

Or so my thinking went, until I reached the antichrist/bat-shit crazy fundamentalist part of the article. I have since reconsidered, and come to the following conclusion: I hope that Texas secedes. This way, both problems are solved.

 

[OldManBrodie]

I don't know why they had to bring religious freedom into something which seems to me to be a civil liberties issue.

When I first heard of the story, I cheered, but when I heard the whole "mark of the beast" garbage, I rolled my eyes a bit.

While I don't believe the Bible contains encoded narratives that reveal the future, elements of the dystopian society they fear have some universal elements of truth. I'm of the opinion that if they are going to help be watchdogs for civil liberties, it's a net win for everyone.

I agree, to an extent... it just seems like there are valid non-religious gripes with this practice that we don't need to invoke "the number of the beast" to fight it.

 

[Seraphiel]

There are few things as amusing as a biblical "literalist" who hasn't read the fucking book.

This RFID badge is, from the available information, not being affixed to anyone's hand or forehead, and has nothing to do with buying and selling.

Aside from the stupidity of trying to influence public policy in the basis of psychedelic mythology, the school's position is equally absurd. The contention that they have no other way to keep track of attendance is deficient on its face. How have schools managed to keep track of class attendance in the many decades preceding the availability of RFID? I'm fairly sure this is a solved problem that does not need any technological assistance.

 

[nbs2]

Quick question for the minister that posted earlier, the author, or anybody else with a theological background -

I thought that Revelations was written in an oriental rather than occidental style - that is eastern symbology rather than western literalism. If that is the case, then wouldn't it be much more reasonable for the relevant verses to be concerned with a persons thoughts/motivations (forehead) and deeds (right hand) than the actual placement of the demonstrated embrace of the antichrist-figure?

As far as the girl in the story, I'm sticking by my comment in the original story - that she may or may not believe this, but it's her strongest argument when dealing with schools which can curtail freedoms of speech and assembly and implied right to privacy. I'd think her attorney would throw the others at the wall in court, but this is the angle that will garner the most attention.

 

[sidran32]

I'm a Catholic.

I find end of the world talk like this to be mostly useless. You can get wrapped up in all of this prediction stuff, but it those parts of the Bible are very much filled with imagery and weren't intended on giving us a vivid glimpse into the future. It states in the Bible, even, that no one will know the time that it would occur. The purposes of these passages are for teaching us on how to live our lives. Basically, don't procrastinate your holiness just because you feel like you have time. Live every day like it was your last. That sort of thing.

But of course there are other things it teaches too, like discernment and keeping a watchful eye, so you recognize false prophets and to not live in fear, but hope and anticipation.

These kinds of things could be generally argued to be good advice for living your life worry and stress-free, as well as being morally upstanding.

As a Catholic, I don't get wrapped up in trying to predict the end of the world. The Catholic Church isn't really interested in doing that, anyway.

Speculation can be entertaining, though. Sure, I can see the "mark on the forehead" and the like being allegorical to things we see occurring today. I could read into the descriptions in Revelation and see references to things like wireless video broadcasts, electronic payment systems, GPS, RFID, and other things that, while they may have sounded supernatural many centuries ago, would be quite possible today with current technology. It makes the events seem all the more plausible, as time goes on and our capabilities due to increased technology and scientific understanding increases.

And the turmoil in the Middle East still is going on, and has no sign of subsiding. They still are fighting over the location where the Temple in the Holy Land is.

So, you could believe that there might be something there, if you're a Christian.

However, if you're a Christian like me, you won't bother yourself with trying to decode things that we can't know anyway, and try to instead focus on the here and now, on living your life with faith and love of God and fellow man.