Bitcoin… To Be Or Not to Be a Religion?

Growing up in a Christian-based family and being a Bitcoin Maxi, I am amazed by the many ideological parallels that Bitcoin has with religion. In this article I compare Bitcoin to my personal upbringing and ideologies as a Christian. If you study World Religions long enough, you will come to find out how similar your religious beliefs are to that of Buddhists, Hindus, Jews..etc. In my humble opinion, all world religions can be distilled to three commonalities: faith, love and hope.

This article will also answer the question, “Is Bitcoin a Religion?”

I would like to thank @bitcoinorthobro for the awesome memes he created for my article. Be sure to follow him on Twitter and read his amazing Bitcoin articles.

Here we go…

First, let’s list the many parallels between Religion and Bitcoin:

1. All world religions believe in a creation story and I am amazed by the many beautiful creation stories, whether they are from the Navajo Americans, Hindus, Greeks, Romans, or Jews.  Bitcoin also has a beautiful creation story!

2. Christian’s believe in the immaculate birth of Jesus Christ through the Virgin Mary.  Bitcoin also has an immaculate conception story.  Satoshi, an unknown entity, discovered Bitcoin and immaculately “birthed” it into the world using the perfect, virgin mix of privacy, scalability and security.

3. Jesus was considered the Savior of the World and his blood was shed to save the world from sin.  Bitcoin will also be the Savior of the world and will save it from the insidious evils of fiat.  

4. God gave up his only begotten Son to the World to be sacrificed for the sins of men.  Bitcoin was left on this earth by Satoshi Nakamoto, who sacrificed his pride, so that the sins of fiat could be atoned for.

5. Jesus is considered to be a Gift to the World and he disappeared to heaven after he sacrificed himself.  Bitcoin is perhaps the greatest Gift to the World. Satoshi sacrificed ego and pride by disappearing  after sharing the Gift of Bitcoin with the world.

6. Christians believe in the Holy Trinity: The Father, Spirit, and Son.  These three entities are considered to be one and the same.  Satoshi Nakamoto may also be part of a Holy Trinity.  No one knows if Satoshi was a person or group of people, and we may never know.  Could it be possible that a spiritual being(s), personified as Satoshi, was writing to Hal Finney?

7. Jesus is The Word, The Truth, The Way, The Savior, The King, The Prince of Peace and the Light.  Are these terms not used with great zeal by the Bitcoin Maxi’s, albeit in a slightly different way?  Heck yes they do!  I have “lived” in Twitter Spaces since the advent of Twitter Spaces and have heard Maxi’s say or insinuate:

• “Bitcoin is math and code,” which sounds to me like “Jesus is the Word.” 
• “Bitcoin is the Truth and the Only Way.”  Christians are taught that Jesus is the Truth and He is The Only Way.

• “Bitcoin is the only way to salvation.”  Christians believe that by accepting Jesus in your Life you will achieve salvation and a place in heaven.  Bitcoiners believe that by accepting Bitcoin in your life, you are achieving salvation and freedom from the bondages of fiat.  
• “Bitcoin is the Savior of the World” because it is saving the world from the shackles of fiat.

• “Bitcoin is the King of all Cryptocurrencies.”  Bitcoin Maxi’s adamantly, vehemently and correctly say, “Bitcoin, NOT CRYPTO.”  Although Bitcoin, by definition, is a cryptocurrency, it is the only innovation and everything else is just noise.  There are 20000+ other cryptocurrencies that claim to be superior to Bitcoin but they are all imposters and scams.  Just like there were many that claimed to be Jesus, there was Only One Jesus, and everyone else was just noise and a scammer.
• “Bitcoin is the Prince of Peace” because it brings peace on earth by solving the problems of fiat currencies.  Fiat results in funding unnecessary wars and many other bad things because a central authority can create fiat out of thin air to fund those bad things.  Bitcoin solves this problem by solving the “Double Spend Problem,” and by being a trustless, monetary protocol that no central authority can control.

• “Bitcoin is a bright Light of Hope” in this dark world of fiat where central powers steal your time by printing currency.  

Bitcoin’s Religious Rituals

Christians have certain rituals such as:

• Singing hymns
• Partaking of the bread and wine in church to remember the Sacrifice that Jesus made for their sins.
• Giving their testimonies about how they found Jesus
• Praying for the Lost Sheep
• Preaching to people about the Good Word of Jesus so that they can be saved.

Do Bitcoin Maxi’s Not do the same things?!? Amazingly the similarities are shocking! 😯 

Bitcoin Maxi’s have rituals that have developed over time on such platforms as Twitter, Clubhouse, email and internet forums:

• On Twitter, Maxi’s play, sing and pump their twitter fists to the “Pump It Up song” when they want to get pumped up.  A very funny and awesome Bitcoiner named, Yellow, known on Twitter as @ICOffenderll, hosts a daily Twitter Space in which he plays the song “Don’t Stop Believe’n.” If you haven’t gone to his space, you have to.  It is an amazingly fun space that provides a place where Bitcoiners can jam out.  Christians also like to jam out to such hopeful and uplifting hymns such as, “Amazing Grace.”

• Maxi’s “partake of the wine and bread,” so to speak, by studying Bitcoin everyday to understand and remember its amazing properties and the sacrifice of Satoshi Nakamoto.  
• Maxi’s are constantly giving their Bitcoin testimonies when they are asked ,”How did you find Bitcoin?” Christians always ask other Christians, “How did you find Jesus.” Maxi’s happily share their “Finding Jesus” moment when they tell their Bitcoin story and tell others how Bitcoin has changed their lives for the better.  They tell Shitcoiners how Bitcoin opened their eyes to the evils of fiat and about the freedom, hope, joy and promise it has brought to them and their families. 
• Maxi’s pray for others, unbeknownst to themselves, when they say such things in Twitter Spaces as “I hope my parents or family members will someday understand the Truth of Bitcoin.  You don’t have to bow your head and close your eyes to pray, as is normally depicted by religious illustrations.  People go to Twitter Spaces all the time and exclaim how they hope people are saved and this is a form of prayer.  
• Maxi’s always preach to “sinners,” aka “Shitcoiners” about the good word of Satoshi.  We say such things as Bitcoin is the Truth and everything else is a scam. Bitcoiners are good hearted people and they don’t want anybody to go down the “broad and wide gates of shitcoinery,” which lead to monetary peril and destruction.  Instead they try and lead people down the narrow and less traveled way that leads to monetary freedom and salvation from fiat.

It may surprise you that after going through all of the parallels between Bitcoin and Religion, I believe that “Bitcoin IS NOT a Religion.”

As an engineer, I believe Bitcoin is Math, Engineering, Science and Technology…amongst many other things!  Just like gravity is a physical and mathematically provable force, no one believes that gravity is a religion.  Bitcoin is a mathematically provable, digital asset that is backed by physical proof of work.  

Although Bitcoin is not a religion I will leave you with some questions that are contradictory to what I have just stated, and I hope these questions will provide you with some self reflection on your beliefs of science and religion.

Who are we to say that Bitcoin is or is not a religion?  Ideas are constructs of man and therein lies a problem or a solution, depending on your viewpoint.  Bitcoin is an idea, just as religions are ideas.  Arguably, math, science and engineering could also be deemed to be ideas.  Before Newton, what math did cavemen use? Newton had the great idea of orchestrating existing mathematical ideas into provable, mathematical ideas.  Is math not a universal idea?  Math is EVERYTHING but we are still trying to solve mathematical ideas.  

Do Mathematicians, Engineers and Scientists religiously and faithfully follow their respective, provable, verifiable ideas and unproven theories?  Just because religious happenings in Christianity like, “The Parting of the Red Sea for the Israelites,” is not provable or verifiable, doesn’t mean it did not happen.  Instead, religious people put their faith in such miraculous events that supposedly happened.  Faith, by the definition that I grew up with, means “Believing in the unseen without any question.” Fortunately, I am a very curious creature and I will always seek out the answers to the unseen happenings of science and religion. 

Unbeknownst to most humans, WE ARE ALL, scientists and engineers.  Children are the greatest scientists and engineers because their models of the world have not been tainted by the millions of theories and ideologies of adults.  Unfortunately, many adults restrict themselves to thinking outside the box and are fearful of being wrong.  This is why it is important to maintain a childlike spirit and question everything without fear.  Bitcoiners question, verify and prove every idea that comes their way for themselves.

Some of us have faith in things we have never seen, like the Big Bang, dark matter etc. These are considered theories until they are absolutely and verifiably proven…or are they just ideas?!

I believe, as an agnostic theist, that The Creator(s) purposefully didn’t give man all of the answers and left many mysteries on earth for man to solve.  If the Creator(s) did not bless man with these mysteries, what the heck would man do on Earth or in Space?  We would not have anything to discover if we knew all of the answers of the Universe.  

The Universe is the most amazing Creation and the Creator(s) purposefully designed it imperfectly.  Study the creation long enough and you will see that its imperfections are what make it perfect.  Bitcoin was imperfectly perfected by Satoshi, based on the theories and math of many cryptographers, engineers and scientists to solve the imperfections of money.

Bitcoin just IS, just like gravity just IS.  The Universe just IS and we will never know all the ANSWERS to the who, why, what, when or how of the Universe. 

In the Beginning, The Creator(s) created Bitcoin and he/she/they saw that it was Good.  Satoshi discovered the Creator’s creation.  Satoshi intelligently orchestrated existing math, science and engineering from the Universe to Discover the greatest Force on Earth…Bitcoin

Nothing is New under the Sun… Few!

This is a guest post by Jeremy Garcia. Follow him on Twitter @jerimican5445. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Satoshi’s Journal or Satoshi’s Entertainment Company.