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

 

[lazarus0000]

Being a Christian (preferably a follower of Christ as "Christian" was originally and often still is, meant as a pejorative), I take a great deal of interest in these articles. It shames me in no small way to see that my "brethren" are often ill informed, uneducated, ignorant fools not far above savages.

I do wish they would take a deep breath, read their Bibles a little more often and get an education as to what it actually means. Here in the South, education is frowned upon by your more evangelical Christians because it'll "educate the faith right out of you..." In practice, what that more often means is that you have a bunch of really devout morons who haven't a clue as to what they believe - they've been told by their preachers what to believe and they must be right, having heard "the call." Interestingly, that is one of the things these people hate about Catholics - the Pope leads them and is to be taken seriously and that "just ain't right - you should read for yourself and have faith, not listen to some Eyetalian about right and wrong."

I ask the readers of this article to have a little patience and understanding. These simple minded fools are a nuisance but should not be taken seriously and their rantings should not discourage you from seeking truth, whatever it may be for you. Being a follower of Christ has done nothing but positive things for me and my life and the peace of mind and happiness I feel daily are priceless.

 

[Jon Ghast]

Page after page filled with hate over a topic you liberal naysayers don't even believe in. Amazingly, you'll hate the typical Christian, but fight tooth and nail to keep the serial killer out of the electric chair, then you chant words like 'progress' and 'forward'.

You people are venomous an vile in the very ways you time and again denounce in others.

Typical Christian tolerance.

/s

 

[Demazzi]

I don't know why I need to roll my eyes at someone who doesn't share in my belief that I have the answers to everything.

Fixed that for ya!
Turd.

I'm a Canadian who's getting a bit tired of apologizing for the behaviour of other Canadians lately. Turd? Sheesh. You really added to the conversation with that one.

Then don't apologize for other Canadians.
Turd.

I'm an American whose happy to criticize crass Canadians. Get your acts together, turds.

Interesting article, btw.

 

[Mujokan]

Here in the South, education is frowned upon by your more evangelical Christians because it'll "educate the faith right out of you..." In practice, what that more often means is that you have a bunch of really devout morons who haven't a clue as to what they believe - they've been told by their preachers what to believe and they must be right, having heard "the call."

I think part of it is that actually understanding where Jesus was coming from is quite dangerous to the social status quo. There is a massive industry built on misrepresenting Jesus.

 

[Jakelshark]

Page after page filled with hate over a topic you liberal naysayers don't even believe in. Amazingly, you'll hate the typical Christian, but fight tooth and nail to keep the serial killer out of the electric chair, then you chant words like 'progress' and 'forward'.

You people are venomous an vile in the very ways you time and again denounce in others.

I should ignore this, buuuut. I'm liberal and renounced my Christianity, I'm not an atheist though (I'm deist). As far as the death penalty goes, if you don't believe in hell (or an afterlife at all for the matter) then a life sentence in prison is the one of the worst ways you can punish someone. I understand the logic of "let's send him to hell" but I think I have a perfectly valid point since I don't believe such a place exists. So why not keep him alive and locked up? Don't say we can't afford it (it's a fraction of the cost to execute). If hell is real, the person still gets to go. We both win. The person suffered for their misdeeds, and we can be positive of that.

 

[Jakelshark]

Here in the South, education is frowned upon by your more evangelical Christians because it'll "educate the faith right out of you..." In practice, what that more often means is that you have a bunch of really devout morons who haven't a clue as to what they believe - they've been told by their preachers what to believe and they must be right, having heard "the call."

I think part of it is that actually understanding where Jesus was coming from is quite dangerous to the social status quo. There is a massive industry built on misrepresenting Jesus.

You mean Josh?

 

[Jakelshark]

I have nothing to add except to say religious thinking is an oxymoron...

No offense, but you really shouldn't say anything then. All you're doing is polarizing the sides instead of bridging them back together. You can't persuade someone with a religious faith if you're brushing them away like that. This is why their communities can be so incredibly insular and comments like that can reinforce their closed-community ways.

Love your enemies and all that.

 

[Q1DM6]

Page after page filled with hate over a topic you liberal naysayers don't even believe in. Amazingly, you'll hate the typical Christian, but fight tooth and nail to keep the serial killer out of the electric chair, then you chant words like 'progress' and 'forward'.

You people are venomous an vile in the very ways you time and again denounce in others.

Typical Christian tolerance.

/s

I'm not Christian. I'm not anything, actually. The constant stream of religion bashing from the left is horribly annoying, however. And let me add in, incredibly egotistical. The 'I'm better than you' vibe I get from many of those posts is too strong to ignore.

 

[Random_stranger]

Just a couple of thoughts to throw out there:
-slippery slope argument does have some validity here, IMHO. Of course, I wear a badge at work. However, if I want to take it off, I can..

-those of you saying things like "definitely these people shouldn't be allowed to breed" - just where do you think their paranoia about being persecuted and being shut out of the economy, etc is coming from? From here and the typical /r/atheism rant, there's a TON of fodder for the "christians are being persecuted in the US" mindset. I'm sure I could easily find a hundred "let's shoot 'em all" or "stop them from breeding!" quotes, etc..

-if you want to show you're superior, show that you're superior in tolerance and patience, not bigotry and hatred!

 

[Q1DM6]

Page after page filled with hate over a topic you liberal naysayers don't even believe in. Amazingly, you'll hate the typical Christian, but fight tooth and nail to keep the serial killer out of the electric chair, then you chant words like 'progress' and 'forward'.

You people are venomous an vile in the very ways you time and again denounce in others.

I should ignore this, buuuut. I'm liberal and renounced my Christianity, I'm not an atheist though (I'm deist). As far as the death penalty goes, if you don't believe in hell (or an afterlife at all for the matter) then a life sentence in prison is the one of the worst ways you can punish someone. I understand the logic of "let's send him to hell" but I think I have a perfectly valid point since I don't believe such a place exists. So why not keep him alive and locked up? Don't say we can't afford it (it's a fraction of the cost to execute). If hell is real, the person still gets to go. We both win. The person suffered for their misdeeds, and we can be positive of that.

There was never a mention of Hell in my post. That idea originated with you. As for executions, I'm quite sure a bullet and a hole would be pretty cheap if we really got serious about removing the trash from society.

 

[Jakelshark]

Page after page filled with hate over a topic you liberal naysayers don't even believe in. Amazingly, you'll hate the typical Christian, but fight tooth and nail to keep the serial killer out of the electric chair, then you chant words like 'progress' and 'forward'.

You people are venomous an vile in the very ways you time and again denounce in others.

Typical Christian tolerance.

/s

I'm not Christian. I'm not anything, actually. The constant stream of religion bashing from the left is horribly annoying, however. And let me add in, incredibly egotistical. The 'I'm better than you' vibe I get from many of those posts is too strong to ignore.

So the right constantly says the left is going to hell. Hell is a really horrible place to be saying that's where people belong. It just doesn't bother the left because they realize hell and afterlife were things later incorporated into the faith basically to recruit (and have no proof of existence)

 

[SaaSaFRaaS]

Being a Christian (preferably a follower of Christ as "Christian" was originally and often still is, meant as a pejorative), I take a great deal of interest in these articles. It shames me in no small way to see that my "brethren" are often ill informed, uneducated, ignorant fools not far above savages.

As someone who likes peanut butter on toast, it shames me in no small way to see that my brethren toast-lovers who prefer jelly are ill-informed, uneducated, ignorant fools not far above savages.

 

[Jakelshark]

Page after page filled with hate over a topic you liberal naysayers don't even believe in. Amazingly, you'll hate the typical Christian, but fight tooth and nail to keep the serial killer out of the electric chair, then you chant words like 'progress' and 'forward'.

You people are venomous an vile in the very ways you time and again denounce in others.

I should ignore this, buuuut. I'm liberal and renounced my Christianity, I'm not an atheist though (I'm deist). As far as the death penalty goes, if you don't believe in hell (or an afterlife at all for the matter) then a life sentence in prison is the one of the worst ways you can punish someone. I understand the logic of "let's send him to hell" but I think I have a perfectly valid point since I don't believe such a place exists. So why not keep him alive and locked up? Don't say we can't afford it (it's a fraction of the cost to execute). If hell is real, the person still gets to go. We both win. The person suffered for their misdeeds, and we can be positive of that.

There was never a mention of Hell in my post. That idea originated with you. As for executions, I'm quite sure a bullet and a hole would be pretty cheap if we really got serious about removing the trash from society.

You can remove "trash" from society by putting them in prison. Killing a person solves nothing and is a woefully inadequate punishment.

 

[Ed Vim]

I wouldn't hold to the 'short range' of RFID concept too strongly. Most states have adopted this practice -- I have a little device mounted on my windshield that automatically registers/pays tollway usage. I'm typically going 55-65 mph past the tollbooth sensors mounted several yards away.

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.

Agreed, but religious freedom was probably used partly because there is no civil liberties case here. RFID is short range and only readable by close contact with a reader to energize the chip. It basically just lets the school make an attendance count automatically and do basic tracking of where on the premises a student is. If its isolated to the school premises, they have the right to do what they want. Don't like it, tough nuts. The religous angle is nothing more than a tool to scare the school into abandoning RFID or allowing opt outs. These paranoid idiots who oppose RFID generally don't understand the technology and think Big Brother can pinpoint you anywhere on the globe. RFID is NOT GPS. Guess what folks, NOBODY cares about you or what you do. If they do, its either to make money by selling you crap, or you're probably on the run from the law. Its not like there's thousands of government agents sitting at computers and on a whim wanting to see what Sally is up to. Hell, you can pretty much already do that yourself. It's called Twitter and Facebook.

 

[Q1DM6]

You can remove "trash" from society by putting them in prison. Killing a person solves nothing and is a woefully inadequate punishment.

Then you end up punishing society by paying for them forever. Better to remove them and be done with it. You lack the courage to simply choose the more logical course of action.

 

[Aelrik]

Throughout the ages, different candidates for the identity of the Antichrist, or the first beast, have been offered up. They have ranged from various Popes (and the Papacy itself) to historical figures like Peter the Great, Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin—even John F. Kennedy.

I prefer a more recent 666 numerology candidate:

Ronald Wilson Reagan

Except that he's been dead awhile, and if the 80's was the start of the 'end times', it's really not living up to the hype. We aren't even near WWI or WWII levels of FUBAR.

 

[Jakelshark]

You can remove "trash" from society by putting them in prison. Killing a person solves nothing and is a woefully inadequate punishment.

Then you end up punishing society by paying for them forever. Better to remove them and be done with it. You lack the courage to simply choose the more logical course of action.

You lack humanity and simple solutions. You don't like that you have to pay a few pennies a year to keep someone alive and suffering from their crime? Fine. Make them work in the prison so that their resource use is equal to profit made off their labor. What's your excuse now? Unabashed contempt and/or a false sense of superiority?

It doesn't take courage to pull a trigger. It takes courage to do the right thing.

If we were stuck on some sort of desert island with a murderer, then I'd say sure kill him because he is a threat to us all. But we live in a civilized world were we can safely isolate those who want to harm others.

 

[Bondi Surfer]

When anyone talks religion to me, I mentally replace their fictional characters with my own. So God becomes Santa, Jesus becomes the Tooth-Fairy, etc

It makes tedium fun. You should try it for Santa's sake

 

[bleeper]

You can remove "trash" from society by putting them in prison. Killing a person solves nothing and is a woefully inadequate punishment.

Then you end up punishing society by paying for them forever. Better to remove them and be done with it. You lack the courage to simply choose the more logical course of action.

Doesn't your religion say thou shall not kill

 

[gerbintosh]

If the chip was going to be more reliable than a teacher looking around and taking role, perhaps there would be a reason to support it in this use, however when I can give you my chip and still be 'at school', we're just wasting money on technology that is offering no advantage.

But it does offer an advantage. In the current system if a child skips a majority of his classes at school and is on campus he is treated as absent. The school would then lose money because they get money proportionate to the number of kids attending class. Now with the RFID, if a kid skips class but the RFID shows him on campus then he could be counted as present and the school does not lose money. Even if the kid leaves the badge in his locker and is not on campus the school could still count him as present and get paid. Why should the whole school have to suffer because kids don't want to go.

On a side note, I don't think it should have to come to RFID. Maybe we should be harder on kids who don't want to go to school. Kick them out and start them on their way to low education jobs.

 

[SaaSaFRaaS]

But it does offer an advantage. In the current system if a child skips a majority of his classes at school and is on campus he is treated as absent. The school would then lose money because they get money proportionate to the number of kids attending class. Now with the RFID, if a kid skips class but the RFID shows him on campus then he could be counted as present and the school does not lose money. Even if the kid leaves the badge in his locker and is not on campus the school could still count him as present and get paid. Why should the whole school have to suffer because kids don't want to go.

On a side note, I don't think it should have to come to RFID. Maybe we should be harder on kids who don't want to go to school. Kick them out and start them on their way to low education jobs.

Your post reminded me of a scene in the show "The Wire" in which the assistant principal at a middle school sends out two contract workers to round up truant kids and bring them to the school, not every day but just twice a year, so the school can continue to count them as students and receive funding for them.

I wonder if stuff like that really happens. If so, it is obviously of great importance to schools to have their attendance numbers look as high as they possibly can.

 

[Gisboth]

... if we really got serious about removing the trash from society.

We're pretty serious, now, seems to me.

Which country do you think leads the world in imprisoning people?

 

[SaaSaFRaaS]

When anyone talks religion to me, I mentally replace their fictional characters with my own. So God becomes Santa, Jesus becomes the Tooth-Fairy, etc

It makes tedium fun. You should try it for Santa's sake

It's just as fun to swap them the other way!

"Mom always took us to see the shopping-mall Satan."

 

[pieguy3141]

It's from that godawful Left Behind series. In it, the authors mentioned using chip implants as being a sign of the Mark. Eschatology is a huge thing for Christians, so any possibility that a world event links up with a Biblical prediction is greatly exaggerated.

 

[Marc Aurel]

Good article. There's another interpretation that besides Nero and the Roman Empire, Revelation also is discussing the split in early Christianity over accepting gentiles and not requiring them to fully follow Mosaic law. Though the New Testament in general is on the pro side of that argument, Revelation is on the anti side.

There is actually a hypothesis -- or theory, there's not much difference in this field -- that the second part of the Revelation (the first part is the epistles to various churches in Asia Minor) is a pre-christian Jewish apocalypse, which was later adopted to a Christian context in anticipation of the persecutions of Emperor Domitian. According to a well known folk legend from first century C.E. Domitian was the resurrected Emperor Nero, i.e. "Neron Kaisar" (666 by number subsitution from original Greek) as translittered from Greek.

Ironically, it appears that despite threatening mood in the Empire, Domitian never actually persecuted Christians or at least there is no good evidence of such persecution, so the Revelation was actually a dud prophecy. Of course that does not stop Evangelicals to try and apply it to various current events and that has been going on for centuries...

 

[Quiet Desperation]

As someone who likes peanut butter on toast, it shames me in no small way to see that my brethren toast-lovers who prefer jelly are ill-informed, uneducated, ignorant fools not far above savages.

I put peanut butter AND jelly on toast.

*Rye* toast.

Yeah. Yeah. Blew your mind there, I did.

 

[A.Felix]

Being a Christian (preferably a follower of Christ as "Christian" was originally and often still is, meant as a pejorative), I take a great deal of interest in these articles. It shames me in no small way to see that my "brethren" are often ill informed, uneducated, ignorant fools not far above savages.

I do wish they would take a deep breath, read their Bibles a little more often and get an education as to what it actually means.

I would actually prefer if people got an education by reading a book that wasn't written by ill informed, uneducated, ignorant fools not far above savages who lived close to 2000 years ago in the middle of the desert. Read about modern, reasoned, ethics. Read about the technology, how it works, what it does, the pros and cons of having it in our society. You need much more books than one to get a good grasp of our world, among other things. Advocating for people to read the same old book more often as a way to encourage education is just not right. To top it off, you can't say that what you interpret is what it actually means, as another person can come up with a different, maybe even opposite, point of view supported by the same exact arguments that you would use to support yours, and the sad part is neither would care that there's no actual evidence to support either perspective. In fact, the evidence tends to point that both of you would be wrong.

 

[jeromeyers2]

"So if you’re convinced that Revelation foretells the rise of a demonic ruler who will force all of his subjects to bear his mark in order to buy groceries or pay the electric bill, RFID chips might fill you with a particular type of worry."

Versus recognizing a projection about your fears of where the forces you are enabling (political,corporate) are leading you.

 

[sidran32]

Page after page filled with hate over a topic you liberal naysayers don't even believe in. Amazingly, you'll hate the typical Christian, but fight tooth and nail to keep the serial killer out of the electric chair, then you chant words like 'progress' and 'forward'.

You people are venomous an vile in the very ways you time and again denounce in others.

I should ignore this, buuuut. I'm liberal and renounced my Christianity, I'm not an atheist though (I'm deist). As far as the death penalty goes, if you don't believe in hell (or an afterlife at all for the matter) then a life sentence in prison is the one of the worst ways you can punish someone. I understand the logic of "let's send him to hell" but I think I have a perfectly valid point since I don't believe such a place exists. So why not keep him alive and locked up? Don't say we can't afford it (it's a fraction of the cost to execute). If hell is real, the person still gets to go. We both win. The person suffered for their misdeeds, and we can be positive of that.

There was never a mention of Hell in my post. That idea originated with you. As for executions, I'm quite sure a bullet and a hole would be pretty cheap if we really got serious about removing the trash from society.

You can remove "trash" from society by putting them in prison. Killing a person solves nothing and is a woefully inadequate punishment.

It also does not respect the dignity of the human person and ignores the possibility of redemption.

As a Christian, I'm saying that the death penalty refuses God the ability to interject in the heart of the criminal to repent from his sins and receive forgiveness and redemption. And so the death penalty absolutely should be abolished.

 

[fruitonthebottom]

"My religion prohibits me from paying taxes"

Can I use this one?

But your god still has to answer to a higher power.. the IRS.

Anybody else notice the number of posts for SpecTP?

Uncanny.

There should be a prize ... or something.

 

[SaaSaFRaaS]

As someone who likes peanut butter on toast, it shames me in no small way to see that my brethren toast-lovers who prefer jelly are ill-informed, uneducated, ignorant fools not far above savages.

I put peanut butter AND jelly on toast.

*Rye* toast.

Yeah. Yeah. Blew your mind there, I did.

Damned polytheist.

 

[johnseeking]

As a fundamentalist-leaning Christian, I found this article to be unexpectedly fair, non-inflammatory, and informative. Kudos to you both, Nate and Eric.

 

[bsharp]

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.

But they have financial incentive not to. So why would they do it? They might do it internally to help students, then not bother to change their totals reported to the state.

It isn't a strong enough financial incentive. I'm sure the state has already asked the school about how they plan to handle this and they have both agreed on a plan to minimize this. The state has auditors that periodically audit schools' attendance. I wouldn't even be surprised to find out that the district in questions gets an attendance audit once this has been live for a year or two.

Imagine this, a parent asks the teacher why the student is doing poorly, the teacher says its because he is never in class, the parent asks why he has perfect attendance, the teacher says he doesn't...

Teachers don't want to deal with that and complain loudly and relentlessly when they do. They don't care about the money. The district administration really doesn't like the complaints from teachers and they don't like teachers having to deal with it (they were once teachers too).

Throw in some bad PR from a local new investigative reporter and ars and you've got your incentive to do the right thing. That's not to say there are not some districts that will make mistakes (you've always got people who think bad things won't happen to them), but I believe most of them will try to do the right thing.

 

[Deleted member 1]

Having spent a good portion of my youth in a fundamentalist church, I've always thought the Beast's IT dept. kinda sucked.

How do you set up a database of people where everyone has the same index "666"?

It seems like you might have some collision problems...

 

[CPX]

As someone who likes peanut butter on toast, it shames me in no small way to see that my brethren toast-lovers who prefer jelly are ill-informed, uneducated, ignorant fools not far above savages.

I put peanut butter AND jelly on toast.

*Rye* toast.

Yeah. Yeah. Blew your mind there, I did.

Damned polytheist.

A peanut butter and jelly on rye is more like polygamy... sinfully delicious polygamy...

 

[jcool]

Troll article is a troll. Based on the comments section, mission accomplished.

 

[twburger]

As others have stated: This is the same argument used with the social security/insurance, credit, and medical cards. And, as others have also pointed out, smart phones track your every move and action. The IT department where I worked ran a diagnostic on an iPhone and even with the GPS tracking supposedly turned off showed exactly where the user had been and travel speeds.

However, I really doubt many teens will give up a personal phone even knowing this and no matter how religious.

This really seems that she simply wants to continue cutting classes.

 

[variable455]

Woe to you, oh earth and sea
For the Devil sends the beast with wrath
Because he knows the time is short
Let him who hath understanding
Reckon the number of the beast
For it is a human number
Its number is six hundred and sixty six

 

[xdevnull]

Boy, talk about religion, global warming, or ID and these forums just explode.

Ars has brushed up against religion in the past and not done so well, but this article was exceptional. I wish other news agencies were able to write about these kind of issues with the insight, concision, research, and accuracy on display here. Good job all around.

 

[simplyluke]

It's stuff like this whole event that makes me ashamed where I live has to be considered part of Texas.