$20 to Mint Your Prayers on “The Blockchain”
39 points by crocodiletears 3 years ago | 86 comments- hprotagonist 3 years agoAnd when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full.
But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.
And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.
- CSSer 3 years agoIt's been awhile since I've seen this passage. I forgot how much of the bible is a diss track on the pagans.
> Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.
I find this bit in particular pretty humorous because it makes it sound like god's voicemail inbox is overflowing and he doesn't have time for your shit.
- TimTheTinker 3 years agoThe point is that God is a Father - like a dad one has a great relationship with. No one with a good relationship with their dad spins a request wheel at him, or says the same thing 100 times in a row to him. If you ever did so, there's something wrong in your relationship with your dad -- same with God.
So in that respect, a Christian's relationship with God ought to me markedly different from how many other religions relate to the gods they worship.
- gumby 3 years ago> No one with a good relationship with their dad spins a request wheel at him...
This comment makes me think you've never had a toddler, much less a teen.
- falcolas 3 years ago> The point is that God is a Father - like a dad one has a great relationship with.
Tell that to Job. Whose "Father" tortured him to win a bet.
- gumby 3 years ago
- swat535 3 years agoAs a Catholic, your hour of prayer is supposed to be reserved for glorying God, giving thanks and showing respect. It's not an hour spent with a list of "requests" , this is not what religious people do.
There can be moments of personal intentions (both during vigils and prayers) but most of the time people offer them for health and well being of others. We are not supposed to really care much about earthly possessions as our hearts should belong to God first and our neighbors second (Matthew 22:36-40).
- gumby 3 years ago> It's been awhile since I've seen this passage. I forgot how much of the bible is a diss track on the pagans.
Ideal marketing is both puffing your product and dissing the competition. The old testament is really full of the latter...the new testament has less.
> > Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.
So why pray at all?
- jordanmoconnor 3 years agoI've thought about this specific question a lot and I think it comes down to humility. Being in a place of needing something (and acknowledging that fact) is the opposite of pride. Pride is something the Bible mentions many times as something detrimental: “Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.” Proverbs 16:18
- hprotagonist 3 years ago>So why pray at all?
so that you learn what you need, too.
and, ultimately, to say "thanks".
(same question asked differently: "why meditate?" "why mindfulness?")
- falcolas 3 years agoYeah, things get a bit weird when you make your God omniscient. Even though I know exactly what you need and whether or not you'll pray for it, you still need to pray for what you need, but you might or might not get it based on my whim (even though I know my answer before you ever identify your need), whether or not you pray.
- tekknik 3 years agoWhy are you here? You’re spreading hate because you don’t believe. It’s fine if you don’t believe, but you have to spread your hate to the rest of us? Could you not have simply moved passed this post?
- jordanmoconnor 3 years ago
- TimTheTinker 3 years ago
- undecisive 3 years agoI believe you're reading Bible2.0 - it's ripe for decentralisation. The new one has improvements, such as "Our father, who art in blockchain, hallowed be thine nonfungible token. Thy singularity come, thy Ðapp contract executed on earth as it is in blockchain." See? Much nicer.
Seriously though, you do have to wonder who it is they think they're praying to. Also, if the love of money is the root of all evil, is the love of blockchain the root of all foolishness?
- pcthrowaway 3 years agoEvery good deed and every sin shall be committed eternally into an immutable ledger, unless someone performs the greatest sin of all... a 51% attack.
- pcthrowaway 3 years ago
- amznbyebyebye 3 years agoMatthew 6 - what a great work
https://web.mit.edu/jywang/www/cef/Bible/NIV/NIV_Bible/MATT+....
- markdown 3 years agoMove along, heretic! We follow Al Franken's Supply Side Jesus around these parts. Supply Side Jesus approves of Megachurches and Bitcoin.
- hprotagonist 3 years agoPersuant to the canon of my HN username, I am obligated to inform you that it is in fact you who are the heretic, and a representative from Reverend Bob's Pearly Gates will be along shortly with a small vial of suspicious red liquid we seriously urge you to consider snorting up your left nostri ah me le le ne le le ne me ne ne eh me me me
- hprotagonist 3 years ago
- SAI_Peregrinus 3 years ago> And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others.
It's interesting to me that Christians never seem to consider praying standing in churches where they can be seen by others as a violation. They invented a new word (at least in English) for their places of worship, to allow public prayer on a technicality.
- hprotagonist 3 years agothe advice here, i think, has more to do with intent and focus, not a checklist of things to do and not do.
eugene peterson’s translation of Matthew 6:6 is
“ Here’s what I want you to do: Find a quiet, secluded place so you won’t be tempted to role-play before God. Just be there as simply and honestly as you can manage. The focus will shift from you to God, and you will begin to sense his grace.”
and that’s at least within the realm of possible for the patterns of communal worship that have come after. I’m inclined to say most of “a church service” isn’t exactly prayer, either.
- SAI_Peregrinus 3 years agoWith many churches, being seen as pious is clearly part of the point. Someone missing Sunday service will be gossiped about. Not wearing your "Sunday Best" clothing will be gossiped about. Many churches I've encountered are very much social signalling between the members, and I've never seen one that restricts itself to a sermon and doesn't include any prayer. They also all have some sort of ritualized action to show that you're praying. Everyone bows their head, or (for Catholics) kneels, or puts their hands together, or some similar "see how I pray" signal.
- SAI_Peregrinus 3 years ago
- hprotagonist 3 years ago
- xwdv 3 years agoAmen
- CSSer 3 years ago
- _aavaa_ 3 years agoI think we've reached that point (which I know has a name) where I honestly can't tell if this is a satirical gag or genuine.
- colecut 3 years agoIt seems to be a "just kidding... unless you want to" situation
- 0xcde4c3db 3 years agoEspecially considering that there's a surprisingly on-the-nose analog in The Handmaid's Tale. I can't find the actual passage, so I might be mangling the details, but from what I recall there were printing companies that pivoted to printing prayers... only for the paper to be immediately recycled and used for the next order. The point of paying for it was basically to signal that one was pious and/or wealthy enough to not care about the waste.
- JNRowe 3 years agoYour recall looks to be pretty good ;)
"At the corner is the store known as Soul Scrolls. It’s a franchise: there are Soul Scrolls in every city centre, in every suburb, or so they say. [...] Ordering prayers from Soul Scrolls is supposed to be a sign of piety and faithfulness to the regime, so of course the Commanders’ Wives do it a lot. It helps their husbands’ careers. [...] The machines talk as they print out the prayers; if you like, you can go inside and listen to them, the toneless metallic voices repeating the same thing over and over. Once the prayers have been printed out and said, the paper rolls back through another slot and is recycled into fresh paper again."
Side note: I found the quote by searching my comment history¹ and then picking up the book, because that is faster than finding the text in the book without any hints. I really can't decide if that is good thing or not. Like some super weak version of Chiang's Remem²
¹ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25672286
² https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Truth_of_Fact,_the_Truth...
- aspenmayer 3 years agoTed Chiang is a great writer, while not being showy. I like his writing for how easy he makes it seem to write compelling ideas into narratives. I found his short story collection Stories of Your Life and Others quite a good intro to his oeuvre. I quite liked the film Arrival, which is based on the title work of the collection.
I should read more of his work.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stories_of_Your_Life_and_Other...
- aspenmayer 3 years ago
- 3 years ago
- Thorentis 3 years agoThat book was surprisingly accurate in many details, but grossly inaccurate in who the perpetrators were. For instance, I think that analog better parodies the modern day virtue signalling than it does people praying.
- JNRowe 3 years ago
- crocodiletears 3 years agoI'm really hoping someone here jumps up and takes credit for it as a prank.
- choward 3 years agoSeriously. I thought it was satire for sure but I started the checkout process just to be sure and it seemed real.
- iLoveOncall 3 years agoMoneygrab, as is all that uses blockchain.
- unmole 3 years agoMeh. That happened a long time ago.
- hprotagonist 3 years agoPoe’s law
- tormock 3 years ago
- colecut 3 years ago
- zozbot234 3 years agoThis is quite redundant, because NFT's are already a pure religious belief. They should all be 100% tax exempt for this reason.
- qot 3 years agoAnd you can't even pay with crypto??
- woodruffw 3 years agoThe man who actually buys indulgences is as rare as he who is really penitent; indeed, he is exceedingly rare.
- seattle_spring 3 years agoThe support for pay-over-time is a nice touch. Praise be Him.
- ro_bit 3 years agoBut if the blockchain is truly append-only, what stops me from paying the first payment and then disappearing? Even if I pay it all upfront, what if I charge back?
- smitop 3 years agoIt seems you can't pay with cryptocurrencies; in order to use the pay later thing you need to be paying with a credit card. The pay later service is provided by a 3rd party, and usually they just give the full amount (minus whatever % they charge for the service) to the merchant right after the purchase.
If their attempts to charge your credit card fail then the pay later company can use the usual tactics to get you to pay loans, since they require some of your personal information when setting up the payment: sending threatening messages, adding a bad mark to your credit report, etc.
- alasdair_ 3 years agoMaybe it's like most other NFTs and is just a pointer to the server where the actual data is stored? If you don't pay, they can just change the prayer to "Jesus, please ignore this prayer" or something.
- tekknik 3 years agoYou think that’s how it works? One person can tell Jesus/God to ignore another’s prayers?
- tekknik 3 years ago
- jliptzin 3 years agoThou shalt not submit chargebacks
- smitop 3 years ago
- smoldesu 3 years agoMissed opportunity for a "pray as you go" or "monthly prayment plan" joke, but I agree.
- undecisive 3 years agoBeautiful, bravo.
Also, looking at the way their payment and submission system works, it is quite literally "buy now, pray later"
- undecisive 3 years ago
- ro_bit 3 years ago
- unnamed76ri 3 years agoAs a Christian, I’m both annoyed at someone creating this and the people who will inevitably fall for it.
- smoldesu 3 years agoWhy would they "inevitably fail"? I doubt this has any significant operating costs: as long as one person pays for this joke of a product, they've succeeded about as much as they possibly can. The only remaining question is how long they'll keep the site online.
- unnamed76ri 3 years agoIf the number of people who call themselves Christians yet fall for charlatan televangelists is any indication, there will be people who fall for something like this too.
- bckr 3 years agofall, not fail
- unnamed76ri 3 years agoThank you. I didn’t quite understand what they were driving at with their comment and now I see that they misread what I wrote.
- unnamed76ri 3 years ago
- unnamed76ri 3 years ago
- keithalewis 3 years agoOddly specific.
- smoldesu 3 years ago
- MaxikCZ 3 years agoSeems like the most direct way to send money to god (God? please don't eat me) so far.
- jamesgreenleaf 3 years agoJust send ether to the genesis address 0x0. God only knows the private key.
- jamesgreenleaf 3 years ago
- emerged 3 years agoCan we just flag those scams and move on now? Why does HN allow so much clear spam if it happens to have the word blockchain involved?
- waynecochran 3 years agoThe angel from Revelation 8:3 can grab these and add them to his censor which will probably be on the blockchain by then.
- perfopt 3 years agoPhfft...I can get my name on a rice grain for far less. Plus they will even make a pendant out of it.
- senectus1 3 years agoha! this reminds me of the M25 in Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman's "Good Omens" novel... where he altered the design of the highway so that it forms the shape of a sigil in some black language to say "Hail the Great Beast, Devourer of worlds".
- werber 3 years agoThis is such an amazing art piece. Shopify as a medium, what a world.
- refurb 3 years agoI’m currently raising a seed round for blockchain indulgences.
- WisNorCan 3 years agoYes! We finally found a good use for the blockchain.
- sonicggg 3 years agoUnbelievable, someone managed to connect two of the most useless things on the planet: religion and NFTs. That seems straight out of an Onion article.
- bradgranath 3 years agoWtf
