That is a reasonable and mainstream interpretation, but one has to wonder how someone living in the first century AD would conceptualise a system of biometric surveillance and control, so that they could write about it using the language of the day.
If someone uses their thumbprint to register their identity with their phone, and uses that biometric to unlock a digital copy of a government-issued ID, for example, then it seems almost pedantic to quibble about whether the "mark" is placed or stored on their body, or on their device, or in "the cloud".
Also, the book of Revelation equates "the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name", suggesting that taking a "name" can be equivalently bad to taking a "mark", and that there is a system of assigning numeric (perhaps digital) values to human-readable names.
It is hard to say precisely what constitutes taking a number separately from taking a mark, but I think that a reasonable analogy (even if not a correct interpretation) is a system where people's digital identities are stored under the control of a single global database. The "number" could refer to the digital value of the entire database, or there could be a hierarchical system with a central key exercising authority over regional keys, which exercise authority over per-person keys, like the web PKI only more centralised at the top.
There are lots of good arguments against the surveillance state or the idea of privacy as a fundamental right, reverse-engineering 2000 year old religious visions to mean something opposite of their plainly stated text (notwithstanding translation) is neither necessary nor helpful.
Need I remind you that the events of the New Testament start around the time of a Roman census, so the idea of individuals' own names being catalogued by the state was not an unfamiliar concept even back then.
However, I'm not sure if the "plainly stated text" of Revelation really has such a clear and unambiguous interpretation. Compare Revelation 19:16 which also talks about someone having a name written on them, which I don't think anyone would take literally, and they certainly wouldn't the previous verse where a sharp sword comes out of someone's mouth to strike down nations.
You may not find these interpretations helpful, but others do, and it's fine to see things differently. Also, you're right that Roman censuses would be well known to individuals living in the first century AD, as was the practice of branding slaves, so these would be natural analogies for the writer to use to convey spiritual truths, and perhaps more complicated as-yet-uninvented systems.
I submit that one does not, in fact, have to wonder that.
If one believes that the events described in Revelation are events which are destined to occur in our future, and they were written about from the perspective of a man who lived in the first century AD, then it is worth considering the possibility that the events described would involve systems that would be difficult for him to understand and describe in the way that we see them.
Under such a set of assumptions, someone who is interested in interpreting the prophecy should wonder whether biometric surveillance is the sort of system that would be expressed by such a first century writer in the way that the beast system is expressed in Revelation.
On the other hand, if such abuse becomes more prominent and causes more interference with how business gets done, then you could imagine a scenario where one-off beliefs are much less favored, and the state has to get involved in figuring out whether the belief is actually religious, or if it's just some random thing you believe that you attach religious significance to. (Distinguishing minority religious views from this will be extremely difficult.)
Hence the standard that the belief just needs to be deeply held. I know that the knee jerk reaction is to give government more power. But you know, in America the power is with the people still.
If the State and corporations gets to decide what you put in your body, and what God you get to believe in, then the foundational promise of America is dead.
Sure, that’s a great answer for people who aren’t religious or whose religious practices happen to line up well with secular “contracts and associations”. Not good for devout people though.
You can't just let every single human claim whatever they want is a religious belief. To claim that having your likeness captured (whether it's a photo of your face, your foot, your fingers, or whatever) is against your religious beliefs is laughable. Does the person not have no drivers license (their face captured by a camera)?
If we can claim whatever we want, well it's against my religious belief to be fired.
Perpetual employment is not a reasonable accomodation; but if you work in HR at a large company, you could probably get out of handling the firing of other employees.
In practice what this means is that if an employee says they have a strong personal conviction about something, the employer must offer reasonable accomodations if any are available, or be prepared to show that the claim was made in bad faith.
Apparently it was a widely-held Native American religious belief: https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/8380/did-some-c...
> the key thing is that another employee did get an alternate background check
It doesn't matter if it's a religious belief that you approve of or not. The point is it was possible but was not offered as an option for this person.
Seems like a pretty straightforward argument from there to saying the employee is being discriminated against for a sincerely held religious belief. The belief itself being fringe hogwash is irrelevant.
Plus the employee offering to accept an alternative form of verification seems to point to the belief (however dumb) being sincere.