On Wed, 2 Aug 1995, Peter Trei wrote:
The relevant verses are in Revelations 13, where some of the actions by which The Beast can be recognized are given. Among them are:
16 And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: 17 And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.
Millenialist Christians tend to regard this as a method by which the faithful will be shut out of the economy, since the pious will refuse such a 'mark'.
E-cash is a bit of a reach from this, but some of them (eg, Robertson), extend the verses to cover all forms of trackable transactions. I suspect that if someone could get him to realize the privacy aspects of true anonymous ecash, he'd like it.
I read in the New York Times that a lot of fundamentalist Christians fear the e-cash revolution because they believe that eventually everyone will be required to bear a tattooed bar code on their right hand which would contain all a person's information: name, d.o.b., birthplace, etc. Such a tattoo would also be used to deduct e-cash from a person's "account" when they made purchases. It's still a bit of a stretch; they're using the book of Revelations to back up this theory. kelli@zeus.towson.edu http://zeus.towson.edu/~kelli/ GAT d? H+ s+++:-- !g p? !au a- w++@ !v@ c++++ UL++ P+ L+ 3 E---- N+ K W--- M-- V-- po- Y++ t+ 5-- jx R G'''' tv- b+++ D-- B e+ u** h* f++ r--- n+ z** Diverse Sexual Orientation Coll.Towson State University DSOC@zeus.towson.edu BigBrotherSystemsBBS........BigBrotherIsWatchingYou.......(410)494-3253#11