Chris

The overwhelming majority of people on Earth follow one religion or another. That's why religious considerations are perfectly valid in any kind of decision or debate you could care to name. Fashionable atheism or agnosticism is very much a product of certain parts of Western Europe and one or two other places, Australia for example. In world terms, you are in a very small minority.

The Bible was completed a little under 2000 years ago but was begun much earlier than that. And it isn't merely an a-b-c instruction manual for life. If it were, I would agree with you that it would be silly to base modern decisions on the perspective of people who had no concept of technology, industrialisation etc etc. However the Bible is about God, our relationship to him and each other, and, yes, patterns for living a 'godly' life. It sets out basic principles which are as valid now as they ever were. You can't, for example, tell me that "Love your neighbour" is no longer good advice simply because it was written down two millennia ago.

To try to keep this on topic, Russ' particular point was with regard to a Biblical book - The Revelation - which claims to be prophesy; i.e. a prediction/warning/promise of things to come in the future. That means it is necessarily of interest to those people living in the times to which it relates. Many Christians believe these are those times.

Personally, I do look for a time when an ID scheme forces Christians to decide who they are loyal to. However I don't think a UK ID card scheme is it. As Ramrod has pointed out, Revelation talks about a mark on the forehead or the back of the hand. I think we're looking at something a little further into the future, tied up with some kind of international authority or even a single world government.

My own objections to a UK ID card scheme are more based on civil liberties concerns, but I've gone on enough for now and other people have already made that point very well.