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IF YOU HAD €1,000 to invest at the start of the year, you may have been tempted to leave it in a savings account for a few months, or perhaps – if you were feeling speculative – invested it in shares on the stock market.
Putting €1,000 in a savings account would probably not have made you any money by now – the interest would probably be paid only on an annual basis, so you’d be waiting until Christmas for your pile of cash to grow – and even then, only by around €20 when DIRT is subtracted.
You could, perhaps, have put your money into shares in AIB, in which case you could be quite happy: this week its shares traded for 9c each, up from 6c each on New Year’s Day. That’s a gain of 50 per cent.
If you’d gone with Paddy Power, you would be looking at a return of 7.3 per cent. If you’d invested in Ryanair, your investment would have risen by nearly 21 per cent.
However, there is one investment which would have vastly outperformed any of those – turning your €1,000 into over €5,000. But that’s only if you invested at the right time – if you invested last week, you could already be broke.
Welcome to the barmy and volatile world of Bitcoin: the electronic-only ‘crypto-currency’ that might just change international finance for good.
To explain it in basic terms, Bitcoin is a currency designed for purely electronic use. There are no physical coins or banknotes with Bitcoins: they exist only as a series of ones and zeroes zipping through the ether of cyberspace.
Just like traditional currencies, Bitcoins can be traded and exchanged for other currencies, with its value – relative to other currencies – rising and falling in line with the laws of supply and demand.
The main difference between Bitcoin and others, aside from its existence in purely electronic format, is that Bitcoin is almost totally ungoverned and almost totally ungovernable. It is not issued by a nation or its central bank: it lives an existence outside of the boundaries and control of a nation-state.
This has its pros and cons: a currency issued by a major country with a stable economy will have a very stable value over time. If the currency hits a crisis, the central bank can step in and do whatever is needed to save the currency and keep its value steady – usually by printing more money.
This sometimes has its downsides. Central banks can use their power to print cash in an aggressive fashion: this week Japan announced that it would be massively increasing the supply of yen, hoping to kickstart an economy that has been static for 20 years.
That’s good if you’re a business owner, but bad news if you’re a saver: the more yen that exist in the world, the less valuable each one is. If a central bank turns on the tap and allows new money to flow into the system, you get inflation – and the value of your savings begins to fall.
Bitcoin turns this entire idea on its head. With no central bank, it lives on a network created and operated by users around the world, whose Bitcoin software communicates continually with other programs to keep a ‘log’ of all Bitcoins spent in the world.
This gets around the problem of ‘double spending’, which plagued earlier online currencies. Other systems, if attacked, could be manipulated so that a single coin could be spent twice – and, as we’ve seen, any system that allows money to be manufactured in huge scales is destined for failure.
Bitcoin breaks this model by using a nifty system which requires every transaction to be logged by every other user. If Adam wants to send 1 Bitcoin to Eve, the details of the transaction are immediately sent to the entire world.
The world is not told that the users are Adam and Eve, however. Every Bitcoin user has an ‘address’ – a unique 34-character combination of letters and numbers – which works as an account number.
So when Adam wants to send money to Eve, he asks Eve for her address and sends the money to that address. The rest of the world is simply told that 1 Bitcoin has been sent to Eve’s address – for example, ’1EDRfpadJ8cYpCZEnmq3UQ4NinxQo6JQcp’.
The Bitcoins appear in Eve’s account almost immediately; an hour later, when the transaction has been included in six updates to the log (which is formally every ten minutes), the transaction is finalised permanently, and the entire world knows where that coin has gone.
That’s not to say that the currency is impenetrable: if your Bitcoins are stored in a web-based wallet, the website could itself be compromised; if they’re stored in a desktop client, the integrity of the machine itself is all that stands in the way of a theft.
Here, the anonymity becomes a downside: any thief can create a new address, send your money to their account, and use the web of anonymity to send the cash around the world before you might even notice it’s missing.
(Flickr: 11950mike)
There are other architectural flaws. Last month, a new edition of the Bitcoin software was released – but a coding error meant that the log of payments ‘forked’, depending on whether a user had the old or new software.
This meant that some users had slightly different records of who held what – completely undermining the whole point of the system, as it became theoretically possible for the same coin to be spent twice, depending on who “owned” it in the first place.
“This appeared to be because of an incompatibility between different versions of the software that bitcoin ‘miners’ use,” explains Dr Fergal Reid, who co-wrote an analysis of Bitcoin anonymity (or lack thereof) while studying for a PhD in UCD two years ago.
“If there is a problem, where software disagrees about the format in which the history is stored, then this can cause the single shared consensus to be broken. That’s what happened in that case,” he says.
The architectural flaw, however, was countered by honesty and positivity among Bitcoin’s users. Within hours, users on message boards and exchanges had diagnosed the problem, and collectively decided to reset the ‘log’ of transactions – reversing all the payments that took place after the fork emerged.
“They all agreed that the best thing to do was for everyone to just switch back to [version] 0.7″, abandoning the botched version 0.8, Reid explains.
“As the miners really have all the computing power, they really can control things like this, if they all agree, and so they all switched back. Transaction processing got held up for a while, but they got everything sorted out in the end.”
An amended version of the software – version 0.81 – was quickly produced, and the currency continued – with only a few hours of downtime in between.
Another difficulty that has been faced by other currencies in the past is the problem of where new currency comes from. There’s no point having an online currency if it has the same sort of governance as a real one – where someone can fire up the printing presses and make every coin less valuable.
But likewise, no currency can ever work if a person has a monopoly on it. A new country will find it tough to get others to accept its currency, if they suspect that the new central bank will print so much new money that every unit becomes worthless.
Bitcoin’s architectural strong point is the way in which new coins are created. Everybody who runs a Bitcoin program on their computer or phone, while logging and validating the transactions of other users, can simultaneously ‘mine’ new coins.
This is done in a complicated, mathematical way, but essentially different users try to solve complex mathematical problems using their computers. Every 10 minutes, users compare their answers, and the best answer ‘mines a block of 25 new Bitcoins’.
The Bitcoin architecture is designed so that this rate will halve in the year 2017, to 12.5 coins every ten minutes, and then halve again every four years until a limit of 21 million coins is reached in the year 2140.
Richard Nixon. It’s his fault. (Bob Schutz/AP)
This leads to a philosophical question: where the actual value is in Bitcoins. If they exist only in the digital world, as elaborate and complex strings of 0 and 1, where is the hard currency behind it?
The response of Bitcoin enthusiasts is simple: all money, whether governed by a central bank or living independently within defined limits like Bitcoins, is fictional anyway.
Central banks used to hold stocks of gold, and issue banknotes and coins as a representation of that gold. When they were first used, banknotes were basically a voucher for this gold – instead of carrying out lumps of gold, people gave each other vouchers instead.
But in 1971 Richard Nixon changed all this, deciding that the US dollar could no longer be directly converted to gold. Other countries, whose currencies were pegged to the dollar, had no option but to start allowing the value of their currencies to float around.
Since then, the value of a currency has been set only by simple laws of supply and demand – so ultimately, the value of a currency is a question of trust. If people don’t think your money can be trusted, they lower the price.
When originally outlining the architecture of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto – its (probably) pseudonymous inventor – put it like this:
The root problem with conventional currency is all the trust that’s required to make it work. The central bank must be trusted not to debase the currency, but the history of fiat currencies is full of breaches of that trust.
Banks must be trusted to hold our money and transfer it electronically, but they lend it out in waves of credit bubbles with barely a fraction in reserve. We have to trust them with our privacy, trust them not to let identity thieves drain our accounts.
His idea is shared by many. Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, the twins who claimed Mark Zuckerberg had stolen their idea for Facebook, have invested a lot of their out-of-court settlement in Bitcoins.
“We have elected to put our money and faith in a mathematical framework that is free of politics and human error,” Tyler told the New York Times this week. (The twins’ investments in Bitcoin have been taken ‘offline’, backed up on USB keys and stored in safety deposit boxes at various banks.)
Not everybody shares their faith, however. Reuters blogger Felix Salmon reckons the currency is more like a commodity, because of the finite number of coins (there are only 11 million coins out there right now) – and a poor one at that, because you don’t get a block of gold to hold afterwards.
What’s more, there aren’t many exchanges which will buy your euro, or dollar, and give you a Bitcoin in exchange – meaning that when the market gets jittery (as it did this week – but more on that later), you can find yourself locked in with nobody who’ll exchange your Bitcoins for actual coins.
Nonetheless, the value has continued to creep up: the more people have heard about Bitcoin, and the more people who use it, the value has kept creeping up.
“Whatever you think about it as an economic system – and it has taken some flack from economists, due to its ‘deflationary’ nature – its a very impressive technological structure,” Fergal Reid says.
“Many technologists, have been talking about an on-line currency for a long time. Bitcoin is possibly the first online currency that looks like it has a shot at adoption, and it seems to have captured the imagination of a lot of early adopters – this definitely makes it worth paying attention to.”
He says the security concerns are legitimate, because a determined hacker will be able to bury their way into most systems – and only the most security-savvy users can make themselves effectively secure from an attacker looking to turn a profit.
That aside, as long as someone takes the necessary precautions, he says, the vulnerability of poor security cannot be a permanent one.
“Techies have been talking about online cryptocurrencies for years, and Bitcoin is the first system that looks like it has a potential shot at adoption, so that makes it pretty exciting,” he says.
An artist’s impression of Bitcoin prices in the last fortnight. (Flickr/Stellajo1976)
Which brings us to the question of price bubbles, and what’s been happening in Bitcoin in the last week.
The massive spike of Bitcoin prices in the last few weeks is nothing new. In 2011, Gawker posted a feature about a website called ‘Silk Road’ – which can only be accessed after first installing special software on your computer – which accepted Bitcoin as payment for hard drugs.
The system seemed pretty elegant: users could add some LSD to their shopping cart, send some Bitcoins to the address of the dealer – instantly, with no transaction fees, and with almost total anonymity – and receive their products, discreetly packaged, in the mail a few days later.
Before the Gawker piece, you could buy one Bitcoin for about $4. The exposure from Gawker attracted massive numbers of other users, who pushed the price up to $33 – partially as a result of people who wanted to buy mail-order drugs, but mostly from people who saw the price rising and wanted to make a quick buck.
The boom didn’t last – but the price never sank back to its previous level, and stayed at around $17 for a while afterwards. There have been some slumps since then, but by January the price was back to about $13.50 and fairly stable.
And then… Cyprus happened.
The attraction behind leaving your savings in a bank – in theory at least – is that your money is safe there. If you leave your money in a mattress, and your house burns down, you’re out of luck – but even if a bank is robbed, or collapses altogether, the bank and government will work together so you won’t be left out of pocket.
The Cyprus bailout changed all of that, with the groundbreaking – and widely reviled – proposal to take a slice out of people’s bank accounts. Those with balances under €100,000 – the amount ‘guaranteed’ under EU law – would lose 6.75 per cent of their savings. Naturally, people ran to the ATMs, trying to get their money out before the levy kicked in.
That got people wondering: is there anywhere where we can leave our money, where it isn’t vulnerable to some sort of tax or levy – somewhere where money is untouchable?
People started talking about Bitcoin again, and the price started to balloon – but on a way bigger scale than in 2011. This time the media coverage was mainstream – and the more people who learned about Bitcoin, the more people decided to use it as a safe haven, and the more people tried to make a quick buck.
Those trying to take a quick profit did. A week before Cyprus, you could buy 1 Bitcoin for about €35. A week after Cyprus, it cost €75. Last weekend, it was €120. Last Wednesday afternoon, it was over €200.
The huge surge in price meant that anyone who invested three weeks ago made a tidy profit – but anyone who had bought Bitcoins years ago, when you could pay under €1 for a single coin, became millionaires overnight.
One such user, who became instantly rich, registered the name ‘Bitcoinbillionaire‘ on Reddit – and started ‘tipping’ other users, sending them Bitcoins which had been seemingly bought (or mined) a long time ago, and which had gone from worthless to priceless.
One user was gifted 20 Bitcoins, the equivalent of €3,600 at that moment. In all, by one calculation, the ‘billionaire’ gave away over €10,000.
Shane O’Brien, an IT manager from Blackrock in Dublin, never invested hard cash in Bitcoins – but in 2011, when he was building a powerful new PC and after Gawker brought the currency to prominence, he installed the Bitcoin software and tried to exploit his machine’s power through mining.
By last year, between optional transaction fees and mining, he had accrued a decent wallet. “I got 44 of them about this time last year, which I sold for whatever reason, at about US$4 each,” he says, pocketing what appeared to be a tidy profit of about €170.
He told me he wishes he’d waited a little longer. His 44 Bitcoins, at their peak price on Wednesday, would have been worth €11,400.
Jamie Farrelly, a 19-year-old student living in Meath, can see the practical and ideological advantages of Bitcoin – but admits to being compelled by the idea of an easy profit.
“To be honest, the huge price increases were one of the main things that attracted me to Bitcoin, just like most other people who have started to get in on the action,” he told me this week.
I only bought some coins four days ago. You mightn’t think that it’d be possible to make money within just four days, but at the current prices I’m up around 50 per cent already.
“It’s kind of weird in a way, because I honestly thought that I was probably too late to the party to make any decent money, but it seems like the price is still on the increase,” he wrote.
That was on Tuesday.
People queue at an ATM outside a closed branch of Laiki Bank in Cyprus, trying to get their money out before a deposit levy kicked in. (Petros Giannakouris/AP)
But then the bubble burst. Last Wednesday, a critical mass of buyers decided they wanted to guarantee their profits, and turn their Bitcoins back into cash. The problem was that, as soon as people started selling, nobody wanted to buy any more.
After briefly touching €260 on Wednesday afternoon, the price fell to to €230 by 6pm – and then to €210 by 7pm, and down to €140 by 9pm. And it kept falling.
The storm seemed to have passed by that night – the price recovered to around €130 and seemed to be holding steady – but on Thursday afternoon, another wave of attempted sales brought another collapse in the price.
The flood was so fierce that MtGox, the most popular exchange website, decided to shut down for 12 hours in an effort to restore calm. When it reopened, at 3am on Friday morning, the price was €130. By 3pm yesterday, it had fallen back even further, to €52.50.
If you’d invested in Bitcoin on Wednesday afternoon, by Friday your investment would have lost more than 80 per cent.
For people like Richard Falkvinge, it can be a difficult rollercoaster to ride. Falkvinge is the founder of Sweden’s Pirate Party, and a passionate believer in the ability of Bitcoin to transform payments between ordinary people around the world.
He admits that he has a “significant position” in Bitcoin, which he hopes will provide his retirement some day (“until then I’m trying not to touch it too much”, he says).
“It’s completely wild. You start out with a [Bitcoin account] which has grown to nothing I’ve ever owned before, and then you have a very large amount of money just erased over dinner,” he told me.
So how do you live with your life savings on the line, lurching from priceless to worthless so quickly? “You just have to emotionally block it out, to be honest,” he believes.
It helps to think of it as toy money – although it isn’t, obviously – because if you start to wrap your head around losing six or seven digit amounts over dinner, then you’re just going to go insane.
On the other hand, you just gained as much in the previous week…
(AP)
Where Bitcoin goes in the future is anybody’s guess – though most supporters agree that this week’s price instability isn’t good for its perception, if it means people consider Bitcoin an investment and not a currency in itself.
“What we’ve seen over these last days is there’s a lot of kinks to work out in the fabric of the system,” Falkvinge says.
“But long-term, I see a lot of new upstarts; I see a lot of new entrepreneurs, I see a lot of ideologically driven people wanting to build an infrastructure for Bitcoin. And that infrastructure is not there yet. But as it grows, I think the ecosystem gets better at handling these kinds of wild swings in the exchange rate.”
Ultimately, he believes, Bitcoin’s future is not in everyday use. He says you’ll never pay for a pint in Bitcoins (though there’s a bar in New York which is now accepting it) – but if you’re sending money abroad, it will become obvious that the best day is by using Bitcoin or some other cyber-currency that emerges in the future.
“I think Bitcoin has the potential to become the de facto international trade currency, replacing the dollar in that area,” he says – like a financial version of Esperanto, a language created specifically to be easy to learn so that everyone would use it as a second language.
Another user, Irish-based Pawel Makulski, is setting up a consultancy company to help Irish businesses accept Bitcoin payments online. He sees a future where “everything is possible” for the currency.
“I am nearly certain that Bitcoin will become largely accepted currency, especially now when it’s clear – at least in the United States – that it is perfectly legal to accept Bitcoin as payment,” he told me in an email.
“I am also certain that very soon we will see many businesses based on Bitcoin – like banks, stock markets, insurance, pension schemes.”
Even 19-year-old Farrelly – who would be looking at a pretty big loss if he sold his Bitcoins now – is hopeful of a bright future.
“People are starting to lose faith in the currency that they’ve been using for as far as they can remember, and it’s no wonder after seeing the Cypriot government taking 60 per cent of some people’s money,” he reckons.
I’m not saying that Bitcoin is definitely going to be the future, but there’s a chance that it could be.
For now, for Jean-Pierre Rupp, the rise and fall of the price is not much a concern. Rupp moved his savings to Bitcoin in 2011, and the rise in price since then – even subtracting the various bubbles – mean he could live off the gains for life.
He now spends his days building intensely powerful machines to mine for Bitcoin professionally – something which wasn’t viable when Bitcoins were cheap (the cost of electricity was more than the value of the coins), but which could now be very lucrative.
Rupp was amused by the Chicken Licken users who feared the sky was falling in on Wednesday night. For him, Bitcoin has all the qualities needed to become proper money – more so than anything else.
“It is algorithmically guaranteed to be scarce (scarcity), it can redundantly backed up making it a very durable and resilient asset (durability), it is divisible up to a hundred million units (divisibility), it is extremely easy to transfer internationally (fungibility), and it can be readily verified for authenticity (recognisability),” he told me in an email.
Rupp says traditional currencies like the euro or dollar – or even silver and gold – have these properties to a lesser extent, meaning they’re less fit to act as money.
“I expect Bitcoin to take a large chunk of the currency market, and maybe even to overtake all other forms of money in the market,” he says.
Shane O’Brien, however, warns that there are still architectural flaws in the currency. Professional miners have begun to pool their resources and share the proceeds of their industrial mining efforts – and one such ring is coming dangerously close to being too big.
Because mining ability is directly related to computing power, the group is almost close to accounting for over 50 per cent of all new coins, and 50 per cent of processing power – which gives them the possibility of creating another deliberate fork in the system.
“If somebody else verifies transactions, and the people who are controlling the chain [...] just choose to ignore those transactions and roll back to a previous state,” the very fabric of the currency could be torn apart, he says. “People might not always be nice enough to fix it.”
But this requires ill-intent on the part of the miners – who are unlikely to kill off a currency that could make them millionaires. The user-enforced solution to last month’s fork is proof that users will not allow Bitcoin to disappear easily.
Perhaps as long as there are users like Rupp, who now depend on the currency for their livelihood, the government-free currency could be around for a long time to come. He says so himself: “I promise you this will be big.”
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Even god struggles to pay a Dublin rent ;)
@Basildon Joe: That explains a lot …
@Jack Hayes: Obnoxious git!
@Basildon Joe: Illiterate yob.
@Brendan O’Brien: are you in your little underpants, grinding and gnashing your teeth, hands shaking? lol
@Dave G Doe: yes I especially like the part where he tells slaves to be happy with their lot
@Dermot Blaine: God is the greatest
@Dave G Doe: Estimates suggest that there are at least 100,000 different gods worshiped on earth today, so which one? Surely they can’t all be good?
@Meatball Martin: yes, all hail the mighty Odin. Now there’s a god who gets things done.
@Basildon Joe: You like your fiction then?
But to be fond of stories that glorify crimes against humanity is disturbing.
@Dermot Blaine: chuckling at your multiple accounts lol
@Brendan O’Brien: Heat wave.
@Meatball Martin: chuckle away, but I have one, and only one, account.
@Brendan O’Brien: another post ruined by you and Basildon Joe, I honestly pity you both, got nothing going on in your pathetic lives than to type absolute sh!te on here every waking hour
@Dermot Blaine: yeah nothing like sacrificing people. I suppose we are still doing it with the unborn.
@daragh harmon: Jesus was sacrificed, wasn’t he? And he’s sacrificed again at every mass, and he body eaten and blood drank. Also, your god aborts more ‘unborns’ than humanity does.
@daragh harmon: no one kills babies like God does tho
@Basildon Joe: you’ve just proved my above comment….brain dead
Maybe Enoch and his god botherers should have saved this business rather than clogging up the court services
@Meatball Martin: Does your mammy wait for you there or does she drop you off and come back for you afterwards?
@Dave G Doe: imagine being a gas-lighter so openly for all to see!
@Dave G Doe: That isn’t what happened.
Unfortunately he is still being paid, despite being unemployable. (There is no way any Irish school will employ him.)
@Meatball Martin: you couldn’t box your way outta a wet paper bag ,away you go with your talking shi##
@Basildon Joe: right eno
@Basildon Joe: it’s more than his hand you would shake
@Jason Memail: ah, babby is upset
@Dave G Doe: That’s not why he was jailed.
@sean weir: chuckling at your angry and frustrated comments lol
@Meatball Martin: I am neither angry or frustrated,just a pity that you have taken over the comment section with your half dozen bs accounts.
Oh well I suppose that is what happens when you don’t work and sit at home in your bedroom all day ,must be a blessing for you after getting kicked of X .
You can maybe try for that job stacking shelves in your Dunn’s
@sean weir: ah, you are lol
@FoxyBoiiYT: maybe Allah and da lads will buy the lease
@Pork Hunt: Winner of the saddest comment of the day but you did have a lot of competition, from yourself I’d imagine.
@FoxyBoiiYT: what does this comment even mean???????
@Dave G Doe: no it wont
@Brian D’Arcy: surprised U could pull Ur head out of Ur jam roll it’s so swollen
@Dave G Doe: what’s that got to do with Veritas?
@Meatball Martin: TROLL ALERT
@A D: Enoch Burke showed up outside the school again today.
When asked by the media, he said “It’s not the first day I have been out in the cold. I am not protesting, I am reporting for work.”
I suppose his father is driving him several hours to get there, and collect him. It’s obvious the fines need to be increased.
@A D: isn’t his father in prison because he refused to accept a suspended sentence and chose to do the time instead?
@FoxyBoiiYT: Not his type of Christianity, he is an evangelist, much more Old Testament Fire and Brimstone type pf guy!
@A D: Nope, Daddy is in Mountjoy at the moment for assaulting a Garda in the court! He got two months!
Another little bit of what Was a Great City centre, gone
@RIP: a Catholic book store that no one wanted or needed. I’m sure we’ll recover.
@eoin fitzpatrick: You can just order your “religion of peace” brainwashing scripture online instead. Sorted.
@eoin fitzpatrick: you speak for everyone? How cute
@Meatball Martin: well, it would hardly have gone out of business if it was wanted, would it?
@Marvin Dollery: you lot are just completely obsessed with Muslims
@Soundy Sound: technology
@eoin fitzpatrick: No, you lot are. So much so you want Ireland filled with them. Then it’s game over. Women should worry about weak men like you ever getting power or say.
@eoin fitzpatrick:
I hope you won’t find yourself in the same situation
@Colm Molloy: i wont be opening a catholic book store any time soon don’t worry, that would be a braindead business move
@Meatball Martin: no, he just speaks for the majority
@eoin fitzpatrick: speak for yourself. I loved to visit that shop and did so regularly.
@eoin fitzpatrick: . the last good book I read was ‘Black Flies’ by Shannon Burke
Another opening for a dodgy vape shop/barber/ nail saloon. Maybe even a coffee shop
@Thomas Sheridan: what’s dodgy about vape shops?
@Thomas Sheridan: or another nice cafe like Tang a few doors down? must be hard being so miserable all the time
@eoin fitzpatrick: Somewhere for bellends to take coffee cup pics for their insta page. How exciting.
@Marvin Dollery: horrible people
@Marvin Dollery: no its a place you eat nice food and drink things. What is wrong with you lot? So much frustration and anger in you.
@eoin fitzpatrick: which are already 10 a penny in most towns. paying 4 or 5 euro to someone to mix beans with hot water. of which the farmer is earning a fraction of 1 cent for providing said beans.
@Niall English: cafes are popular. who’d have thunk it?
Any remaining book stores’ fiction departments will be more than plenty.
@Jack Hayes: bitter man.
@Injustice Cop: Which part of what Jack wrote is wrong?
And which part is bitter?
Would it not be far more true that it is you who is bitter that your religion of lies, misery and evil is being discarded by society, and that you will no longer be able to control people and commit evil with impunity?
@Injustice Cop: So you don’t understand the meaning of the word ‘bitter’. Get better soon.
@Jack Hayes: funny
@ItWasLikeThatWhenIGotHere: No, it would not be far more true that I am bitter for pointing out a disrespect comment that can easily be interpreted as being from a bitter person. You think religion has the monopoly on evil? Risible and quite puerile commentary from, what appears to be an ingénue. Good luck to you!
@Jack Hayes: have you ever heard the expression “be better not bitter”? I wish you well Jack.
Lol this will rile up a few angry atheists
@Meatball Martin: I’m not angry, in fact I’m a bit said. Religious faith gives piece and support to many, that that is fine for them. Even as an Atheist I believe Jesus existed and wrote important pacifist teachings, that accepted the marginalised and downtrodden, which is all the more remarkable given the context of the time, a brutal Roman occupation. People are welcome to their beliefs once they don’t force it on others, or indeed use to to conquer land and minds.
@Meatball Martin: Why would someone that is Atheist get riled up? It’s not as if they use the store.
@Meatball Martin: The usual flawed logic from Meathead Martin.
@Enoch Kochwomble: heh heh
@Jack Hayes: yup
@Enoch Kochwomble: lol
@FFS This: they are angry because other people aren’t
@David Jordan: Actually,not only is there no evidence that Jesus existed, there is growing that there was never any such character.
But that would only continue the tradition of lying in the Bible and the Church’s teachings in general.
@ItWasLikeThatWhenIGotHere: chuckling at your anger and frustration lol
@Meatball Martin: What is there for me to be frustrated about?
The continuing rejection of evil is a cause for celebration, if anything, and certainly not a source of anger.
Perhaps some relief too.
For as time goes on there will be less and less evil, less and less abuse sourced in this religion that worships evil, in our world.
@David Jordan: jesus wrote nothing, he would most have been illiterate had he existed, for which there is no proof. There is also nothing in his teachings startingly original either.
@ItWasLikeThatWhenIGotHere: There’s independent evidence that a person, called Jesus by his early followers after his execution, did indeed exist. We find Jesus (not named as Jesus, but identified as a charismatic Jewish religious leader) mentioned by several Roman writers. Josephus, Tacitus, Pliny the Younger and Suetonius.
While some accounts were certainly embellished by early christians (Josephus), most secular scholars agree these contemporary and near contemporary accounts give credence to the existence of an important jewish religious leader who was executed by the Romans around 30 – 35 AD, that christians would call Jesus. He was not the only Messiha.
One of the most prominent other Messiahs, not long after Jesus, was Simon bar Kokhba, who led the Bar Kokhba revolt (135 AD). His death led to the ultimate schism between Jewish Christians and Jews (up to about 100 AD, Jewish Christian were permitted to pay in synagogues, as they were considered to be a sect within Judaism, but their decision to accru members who were not Jewish by doing away with Jewish Mosaic law, led to friction and opposition).
It is fascinating to see that in the first couple of decades after Jesus’ death, his followers mostly stuck to recruiting other Jews, but after that did not work out a few disciples broke ranks and started recruiting non-Jews. This led to arguments within the early Jewish Christian sect, and in 48-50 AD, in Council of Jerusalem, they decided to end the requirement for Mosaic law, circumcision, and officially open their sect to non-Jews.
But it wasn’t until c. 135 AD (around the time of the death of Simon bar Kokhba) that Christians were fully seperate from Judaism, an official document was published and read in Synagogues excommunicating them. This separation also consolidated Jewish identity, since identity is often only defined by self-identity, but knowing who you are not.
It is actually fascinating to read about how the decisions they made were practical and logical, not directed by religious revelation or direction, but they just changed the rules to suit themselves as they needed more members. And that’s why they got kicked out of synagogues, too much prostalysing and opening up to non-Jews. So we have Christianity, not a sect that remained within judaism, once popular but withered and died.
By the way, a lot of numerology (number 3, 7, 14, 40 etc.) and symbology in the the New Testament was written for Jews who would have understood the meaning of specific symbols. These symbols were incorporated into the NT when Jewish Christians were trying hard to convert other Jews from within Judaism. The meaning of this numerology were lost by the time Christianity got to Rome, early 2nd century, but they compensated with the Book of Revelations, that added a lot of symbology and hidden meaning about Emperor Nero (died 68 AD) that kept Roman citizens interested.
@David Jordan: none of your “evidence” stands up to scrutiny. In a court of law, all the evidence for jesus would be disallowed as heresay. There were several Jewish teachers, indeed non Jewish too, but one of the criticisms by non Christian scholars of Christians was that these stories were allegorical and never meant to be taken literally. Even Josephus in his mention of Christians, described their beliefs as superstitious nonsense, albeit his mentions of the cult don’t stand up to scrutiny. Deification was common at the time, many Roman emperors were declared to be divine, including one contempory of Jesus whose name escapes me at the minute. This Emperor had an auspicious birth, raised the dead and there are contemporary references to his Gospel. I believe it’s all mythology.
@Meatball Martin: I don’t see that, where are you getting your misinformation from?
@Dermot Blaine: I am not claiming that Jesus was divine or supernatural, I’m merely pointing out there is reason to believe that there was a historical person who fits the description of a physical person no more supernatural than you or me, who likely founded an Jewish Christian (Nazarenes) sect in the early 1st century, when Judaism was was in turmoil due to Roman occupational and Greek Hellenisation. It’s just interesting to read how the geopolitics of the time and a few clever decisions made by the sect ensured Christianity ended up a dominant world religion.
Even through some slime burps from the usual chatroom armpits, this has been a better read than the article. The problem with atheism tho is that it does owe part of its development to Christian theology
@Meatball Martin: Atheists don’t give a flying fk about religious nonsense. The closure is a progressive sign that society is moving on from the church.
@Thesaltyurchin: Remember folks, go out and sin, or Jesus died for nothing…
Thankfully, we have Fianna Fail back in government, it is wise to keep the strong bond with the Church, as a staunchly Catholic nation, it is imperative that we hold on to wholesome family values
@Meatball Martin: what like shagging small boys and kidnapping women then selling their babies
@sean weir: enough about Sinn Fein, please
@Meatball Martin: Your ‘values’ (fear, hatred, mindless violence) are not Christian ones. You need to give up the oul’ multi-ID trolling.
@Meatball Martin: lol or the FG senator , Dr perv
@Meatball Martin: TROLL ALERT
Let me get this straight, who wrote these “Religious” books? Certainly wasn’t a typing pool of Angels or Gods, it was busybody humans. And they certainly didn’t “channel the word of God”, maybe the other voices in their heads, not “God”. Good Riddance to fake industries like these, preying on the poor and gullible.
@Meh Meh: In the beginning man created gods.
Brenny has his usual multiple accounts out for this one lol
@Dave G Doe: I see he has the Dermot Blaine one out now lol
Good news
@Alex: well for stained people like yourself..yeah it is
@Clare Power: poor little Clare. Did Alex hurt your feelings? Lmao
Good riddance.
About time! Hopefully the stop producing backward religion books for primary schools Alive-oh no
@FoxyBoiiYT: what Enoch proved is that if you are male and break a court order you will be jailed.
@AnthonyK: no, if you accept that it is biologically impossible for a boy to become a girl, then you will be jailed
@Meatball Martin: he got jailed because he wouldn’t call a him a her. Absolutely bananas. If a non Christian did it no problem. Norma Foley washed her hands totally if it.
@Pork Hunt: yes, but the anti Catholic bigots on here can’t accept that it’s not about religion, but everything to do with science, it’s a biological fact
@Dave G Doe: simps
@Pork Hunt: I am not religious but I despise the woke trash.
@Pork Hunt: he got jailed for disobeying a court order, which was put in place because of his behaviour. Which order he disobey again yesterday. Norma Foley couldn’t do anything as the hearing into his dismissal hasn’t yet taken place, why? because Burke keeps blocking it. She did keep paying his salary though, I wouldn’t have. He needs psychiatric help, he’s got a martyr complex.
@Dermot Blaine: he didn’t call the trans by the new name got kangaroo courted by school BOM and didn’t agree with procedure. Norma coulda stepped in and said cop on the lot of ya but was fine to stay mute and woke off
@Dermot Blaine: he got jailed because he ain’t woke, Brenny
@Meatball Martin: But it’s not biologically impossible for a physical male to become a physical female, and vice versa, is it?
Whoever educated you failed you.
Perhaps, on this evidence alone, you could take a case?
On the other hand, your educators might cite your intelligence as a defense.
@Pork Hunt: there was a hearing pending into his intolerant and uncaring refusal to agree to the request of a troubled teen, but before the hearing could happen, he verbally attacked the school principal at a social event, for which he was rightly fired. There are ongoing attempts to have a hearing into his sacking, but he keeps blocking it. And he keeps blocking it because he knows he will lose and his salary will stop. Even the evangelical groups in the US who originally supported him have run a mile. I blame the mother, poor lad needs mental help. This is 100% on him and his dysfunctional family.
@ItWasLikeThatWhenIGotHere: so a male can become pregnant, have periods, and breast feed? I must have been asleep in class when they covered that chapter, ya clown lol
@Dermot Blaine: 100% lunatics
@Pork Hunt: Nothing to do with the child involved, he was told not to go to the school by the judge aka by court order and broke it.
Nothing else. They are the facts. Clear and simply put.
@Meatball Martin: No, loads of people believe that and there is no court order saying you cannot believe that.
There is one saying that Enoch cannot go to the school!
Facts, they really upset people at times.
@Dermot Blaine: The entire family have one!
@Pork Hunt: There are procedures to follow and they were. The Ministers staff would have checked them to see everything was done correctly. If they were there is nothing that she can do. She too has to follow the rules and regulations and the procedures and protocols in the department.
@Meatball Martin: Repeating the same issue which has nothing to do with the court order changes nothing!
@Meatball Martin: As usual, you’re wrong and a liar but you just can’t help yourself.
@Pork Hunt: You’re fkin wrong. He got jailed for breaking a court order.
@Pork Hunt: nothing to do with that. He got jailed because he was asked to stay away from the school and refused to do so. Disobeying a court order is a crime. He didn’t lose his job because he didn’t adhere to a child’s pronouns. He lost his job because he assaulted his principal.
@Pork Hunt: Imagine calling religion a subject
@Jason Memail: It is. Subject to ridicule.
Lol. A good news story.
Can’t comment on the 20 cold asylum lads in Kildare , they are cold boohoo don’t have power like 40k others boohoo
@Pork Hunt: pretty low hanging fruit, even for you.
Fantastic news all around
DOWN WITH THIS SORT OF THING!
“Priests socks” that’s a shade of black so dark that it doesn’t allow light to escape.
Nude Nuns With Big Guns
That will make a lot of people cross.
Another vape shop! Holy smoke!
Noooo! No more opium for the people. Not to worry, plenty of other options in that particular location.
have your say