Quote from: CryptosapienZA on August 18, 2017, 11:12:07 AM

Any chance of the church accepting other coins for donations? I know the main objective of the church is to push the bitcoin agenda but these bitcoin transaction fees are too high for some of us. Please do consider my suggestion Roll Eyes

At this time, we do not intend to accept altcoin donations, but we leave that possibility open as a future development.

Quote from: GreenBits on August 19, 2017, 09:28:50 PM

[1]So, what community outreach/ charity do you plan on providing, given that you are a church? Thus would be the good faith reason that you would be rewarded a tax exempted status by the government. [2]What benefits do you provide to members besides a t shirt? [3]And what is the allocation/budget for the donated funds you receive? How much salary does OP collect from said donations?

[4]I will go out on a limb and say that your potential for abuse is markedly greater than your potential for amelioration.

[5]And I'll bite, I am in genuine need of funds (I could argue this point with rhetoric all day). How do I receive alms/ a donation from your charitable organization?

Be careful...

[1]We plan on educating the community about bitcoin and public-key cryptography, and spreading the word about our belief system.

[2]Member benefits are currently very limited, but we hope to provide more benefits to our members in the future, as we grow in size.

[3]Allocation of funds/budget will be carefully managed. Currently, the only bitcoin that has left our donation address was a $20 deposit to a namecheap account to secure our domain name for the next several years. Our web developers and our website host have so far donated their time to the project, but if donations reach substantial levels, they may be compensated retroactively for the time that they have contributed. I, Henry Romp, have not received any salary from the Church, and do not plan to do so at this time, though if appropriate at some future date, I may choose to do so. The donation address was "seeded" by me, with an initial contribution of $100, intended to cover the cost of launch; however, registering as a nonprofit in the state of Vermont will cost $125, so I will either need to contribute more myself, or raise more donations to do so; that is the next planned expense.

[4]While I can see the potential for abuse that you are speaking of, we are sincere in our beliefs and this project is in good faith.

[5]At this time we are not making donations to individuals or other organizations, because the donations we have received are not yet covering our basic expenses as an organization. As the donations we receive grow, we may do so in the future, but at this time our donations have not yet paid even for the registration fee to register our church with the state, so that future may be some time coming.

Quote from: AgentofCoin on August 20, 2017, 11:42:00 PM

I would advise writing your own scriptures based on what Satoshi wrote in different areas.
Using the Whitepaper as a form of scripture will lead to major issues later, for your Church.

For example, the Whitepaper does not outline most of the aspects that exist within Bitcoin.
Though the paper was written as a possible answer to the puzzle of online currency, it was
actually programmed to be a form of E-Gold in reality, which is the basis for a possible
E-cash in time. Most people ignore that and cite the Whitepaper as proof that Bitcoin is
supposed to be an E-Cash by a few phrases within it, but ignore that Satoshi contradicted
those terms and phrases with his choices of rules and programming with the first software
client.

If you hold the Whitepaper to a form of "scripture", or the "first scripture", you will be held
to types of teachings that were never valid, even from day one of the real world
implementation. Though he said E-Cash, he programmed E-Gold. He assumed that by basing
a currency on Gold in conjunction with technological advances and the internet, it could be
possible to make a more advanced form of "Cash". That was it. Bitcoin is E-Gold with properties
that are like Cash, but it was not specifically programmed to be E-Cash. The blockchain system
actually prevents E-Cash from manifesting naturally without non-network systems intervention.
The blockchain system is an E-Gold facilitation mechanism first.

So, I would advise citing the Whitepaper as an important historical document for your Church,
but it should not be relied upon as the "supreme truth". The reality was that the Whitepaper
was Satoshi's attempt to get other people to seriously perform peer review of his solution.
So Bitcoin is like and could be an E-Cash, but only because it was programmed to be E-Gold.
His hope was that a currency or "cash" could come about from its programmed "gold" like
properties over time with technological advances still following the prior trajectories.

The truth is that Satoshi himself did not follow his own "Whitepaper's blueprints". So, when
the different groups within Bitcoin today fight and blame each other about different aspects
of the system and the direction it is or may be going into, they ignore that Satoshi didn't
even strictly follow the Whitepaper himself. So again, I advise you to base your Church
on Satoshi's higher end goals and beliefs and not the superficialities of terms and phrases.

Satoshi actually started something much greater than a working E-Cash or E-Gold.
The Whitepaper does not outline nor specify the more interesting aspects of this
system type that we participate in. Your Church should not worship Mammon.

It looks like you may disagree with some of our core vision. While you raise some interesting points, the whitepaper is our core document, and Satoshi Nakamoto is our prophet. His words and code may not have always been 100% consistent (as you'll find in the scripture of many other religions) but we stand by our original statements about them.

In cases where the whitepaper conflicts with later statements or code written by Satoshi Nakamoto, we would try our best to reconcile these differences by understanding that Satoshi is the prophet and was clarifying or rectifying His original statements, and would in most cases consider more recent statements to supersede the original statements in the whitepaper. Our core document is the whitepaper, as stated, however, our Bible is still being developed, and will likely include most of Satoshi's recorded statements, as well as other testaments and other gospel. The research and development of the Bible of the Church of Bitcoin is already underway and when complete, we intend to print copies of our holy book.

If you look at other religions, you will find that most do not claim that their bible is literally the words of their god; most bibles are collections of writings by prophets and testaments by individuals telling their stories, that relay information handed down from god, or show through events how their god showed himself. We feel that this situation is similar. Satoshi Nakamoto is our prophet, but our bible may not be limited to his words alone.

If you would like to be involved in the editing and selection of the documents in our scripture, please join the church and verify your membership first, and come speak with us in our IRC channel on freenode at #churchofbitcoin , and we may consider your suggestions and inputs.

Quote from: theochino on August 21, 2017, 03:44:42 PM

Dear HenryRomp,

What state are you in ? Can you give me a call ?
The website doesn't work right now.

We have been working in New York about incorporating a Church.
https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2015-August/010350.html

We have been looking at this but the requirement are different. The incorporation of a religious entity is done in the court.
http://eric.ndpny.org/incorporating-as-a-non-profit-religious-organization-in-new-york

Regards,
Theo CHINO
http://AbolishTheBitlicense.org
https://twitter.com/AbolishBtLicnse

Theo CHINO,

Thanks for your interest and for stopping by the IRC channel,
We can continue this conversation by email at henry@churchofbitcoin.org , but here publicly I would like to mention that your questions reminded me that we do hope to establish a presence in other states in the future, and have only begun in Vermont because I as the founder am located here.

Quote from: kyatir on August 21, 2017, 05:44:20 PM

Hi Henry,
I'm an atheist but I would totally join the Church of Bitcoin. lol what an enlightenment. Grin

H kyatir,

If you believe that Satoshi Nakamoto brought us word of the blockchain, and you believe that the blockchain itself is an embodiment of a higher power, than I would not describe you as an athiest; however, even if you describe yourself as an athiest, I welcome you to join our church and hear more of the good word, and I think that many former athiests may join us in the future. I myself was raised as an athiest, but also spent a significant amount of time attending church a little later in my youth, and my beliefs have evolved over time. I hope yours continue to develop and that we may influence that development.

Please come join our member list, and please stop by our IRC channel for our Sunday morning service at 11am EST.

Thank you,

Henry