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Comment by LeifCarrotson | Hacker News Reader

No, the US has far more religious fundamentalists than the EU. They believe that such a system is tantamount to taking the Mark of the Beast, quoting Revelation 13:16-17:

> And he causes all, the small and the great, and the rich and the poor, and the free men and the slaves, to be given a mark on their right hand or on their forehead, and he provides that no one will be able to buy or to sell, except the one who has the mark, either the name of the beast or the number of his name.

Additionally, politicians who pay lip service to these beliefs have an extremely strong and malleable voting bloc. It's a little crazy that a modern society is held hostage by such superstitions, but that's the way it's been. Fortunately, we just this year crossed beneath the 50% church membership threshold and the numbers continue to drop.

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Please keep religious flamewar off HN.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28224033.

Geez, such a weird segway. You've completely missed talking about how the EU private key has no concept of getting updated in a secure fashion and is basically unusable.

The Baltic states have a private key that is actually usable to an end user. Open source, document signing format that works.

Plus a process that allows updating these keys in a safe fashion. None of that exists with the EU infrastructure.

Huh? I come from a religious upbringing and this just seems like an outlandish argument. Maybe some religious people would say that, but I hardly believe that would be the primary reason public/private ID system in the US would fail to gain traction.

It's reductive though I also grew up very religious and heard such arguments often.

Fun fact, the "beast" mentioned in this part of the Bible was code for Emperor Nero. The mark of the beast used for commerce in this verse refers to Nero's face on Roman coins at the time.

Much of Revelation was the early Christian community talking shit about Emperor Nero using code so they don't get killed. It's not meant to be a prophecy of a future dystopia.

I'm against it. Not for religious reasons but because of the potential to concentrate power.

How is this worse than a SSN?

SSN should not be used for ID.

And yet it is used as such, in banking, healthcare and everywhere that matters. An alternative ought to be made.

A better alternative would be user accounts with the credit companies but then people would realize how sloppy they are.

And how does one authenticate themselves with a credit company without an id?

Specifically SSNs have none of the security features of an ID. No biometric info or photo, numbers used to be assigned in sequence, only a few of the digits are unique, no parity/checksum check bits.

The EU system is decentralized.

But Canada, Australia, and uk doesn't have them either, and they can't really be described as fundamentalist like the US is. Maybe it's just an anglo thing?

you might be right - there's certainly a cultural thread that the 666-worriers are just being triggered by.

it's really a belief that the state is malign - and the further away (ie, federal), the worse. which is ironic because feds get vastly more scrutiny than some podunk local government.

This is just nonsense. Where are you coming up with this theory?

Everyone has an ssn already wouldn’t that qualify for the mark?

They fear that the ID, rather than being an easily stolen card, may one day become a chip that is implanted in the body... in the right hand or forehead. And that wouldn't be a sin in and of itself, but the Bible implies that Christians will need to commit apostasy and worship the Antichrist to receive this mark which will be necessary to function in society.

So imagine a dictator, or a tyrannical government (say China) who said you need to worship Xi Jinping to receive the chip implanted in your body for identification purposes. Something like that they speculate. And that if you don't worship Xi, you don't get the chip, and you can't buy or sell anything.

When has religion ever been consistent?

There are people who believe the Earth is flat and that Donald Trump won the 2020 election. Of course there are people who believe social security numbers are the mark of the beast. You can find dozens of conspiracy theorists making that claim with a simple Internet search. It's not even a rare conspiracy theory.

This is absolutely a concern I have heard my entire life from many people in rural Colorado, and they are all dead serious about it.

There were objections to SSNs when they were introduced. A few religious groups have legal exclusions from Social Security.

As someone from the Midwest, I can absolutely say that resistance to the RealID Act was entirely based in this sort of flawed religious logic. I heard it from some of my own family members who are politically influential in their community.

Part of it too was that the original RealID Act actually did call for a national database of all citizens in the US, but this was later removed. Now it's basically just a list of security requirements before granting the ID that is applicable everywhere.

Perhaps in the Midwest, but here on the west coast immigration policy and resistance to Bush-era security theater also played a part.

The book of revelations has frequently had a strong influence on American public policy.

Biblical prophecy finds way to legislators in battle over ID plan http://archive.boston.com/news/local/maine/articles/2007/03/...

> Fears about the federal government and the mark of the beast stretch back 100 years. ... The fears are anchored in St. John's warnings about the Roman government -- which conducted census surveys in Jesus' time -- that are recorded in Revelation, he said.

> "Whenever you have an active government that seems like it's trying to gather data on its citizens or take away certain freedoms, pretty often this particular prophesy is cited," he said.

This is repeated consistently by the religious right and even is used as a reason that masking should not be put in place, because it is a "mark."

When bar codes were introduced there was religious fervor and resistance about the mark of the beast on every product - its a real and persistent meme among the christian crazy.

> Everyone has an ssn already wouldn’t that qualify for the mark?

Yes, the SSN is already used as a very weak form of identification, something it was never intended to.

Are you approaching this from a logical standpoint?

Are SSN's assigned at birth?

They were not originally, but now they are. There is an interesting case of a Texas woman who was born "off-radar" to libertarian parents and had no government documentation of her existence. This caused major problems with access to services and employment in her adult life until a senator intervened and introduced legislation for the situation.

SSNs are not universal, either. There are some unions and religious groups that have legal exemptions.

>SSNs are not universal, either. There are some unions and religious groups that have legal exemptions.

Exempt from participating in social security (the program), not exempt from having a social security number. In fact, getting a social security number is the first step in applying for an exception from social security. Basically, SSA needs to track you as being exempt from social security, which requires a unique identifier.

Not exclusively, but Enumeration at Birth is pushed hard and I saw a stat that I believe said 99% of infants were enumerated at birth (it may have said that 99% of enumerated infants were enumerated at birth, however). This process began in 1987.

Since you need a SSN for a child to get the tax benefits of a child (as of 1986), and most parents will want those, it's an easy sell to get a SSN while processing the rest of the birth paperwork, rather than doing it later. I was born before 1986 and I believe my parents applied for SSNs for me and my siblings around then because it was needed for tax purposes.

My mother is one of these people. They exist. Their logic is flimsy at best, but there are enough of them embedded in churches that it's a thing.

I literally overheard someone (at a science museum no less) claim the mRNA vaccines were the beginnings of the mark of the beast basically because they messed with your genetics. People do take it seriously.

I thought it was a joke at first but maybe not. Of course many of these people I'm sure are in favor of requiring ID at the ballot box...

And other people think you should have to present proof of vaccination to go outside but no ID vote. Neither group is thinking past the propaganda their side presents.

Are there really people that want to require proof of vaccination to go outside? I haven’t heard that one.

Or, we just have a natural/historical aversion to centralized power. Much of the nation initially started out believing that power should be local. Or you can simply make up nonsense about 'mark of the beast'.

It's crazy how a nation of "religious fundamentalists" created the modern world. Crazy how "religious fundamentalists" created the wealthiest nation.

There has always been a backlash against centralized/federalized anything. From taxes to gun registration to you name it. As it should be. But you'll be happy to know that the trend is towards more centralized control and power.

> It's crazy how a nation of "religious fundamentalists" created the modern world. Crazy how "religious fundamentalists" created the wealthiest nation.

Not sure that responding to an overly reductive conclusion with an even more reductive conclusion is helping.

FWIW I wouldn't say that fundamentalism itself did much to advance the world or make any nation rich. Except perhaps to motivate some people to seek unexploited resources elsewhere.

> Or, we just have a natural/historical aversion to centralized power.

And yet support a sprawling state government machinery almost as powerful as the central/federal government so much so that states can dictate terms and laws they want and "local" cities and counties have to abide by it.

and the best (worst) part is that those more-local governments are uniformly less accountable.

America isn't a nation of religious fundamentalists - they're a minority but just incredibly loud.

You're significantly overestimating the amount of pull that type of person has in the US anymore, while simultaneously dramatically (I can only assume willfully) misquoting that bible verse.

"That type of person" accounts for some substantial fraction of the vaccine-hesitant population that accounts for freely available covid-19 vaccines for everyone age 12+ in the US but only 51% of the population being fully vaccinated[1].

So, even if you consider it absurd, this particular belief IS widely-enough held to influence behavior and public policy in the US.

[1] https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#vaccinations_vacc-...

The vaccine-hesitant people I know are waiting for the live attenuated virus and/or FDA approval...

Please show me where it lists the reasons for not vaccinating on the page you linked, as I only see numbers on whether or not people are vaccinated. As it stands, your claim has zero statistical evidence to back it up. In fact, your link has zero relevance to your claim in any way.

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