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If there is a God who protects the faithful and answers their prayers, then why don't the faithful pay less for all types of insurance? They should be a lower risk to insure than the general public, since God is looking out for them. Thus they should pay less for insurance.
Why is no one upset at this obvious injustice?
The REAL problem here (other than another lame and childish Theism slam by the OP due to angst over how prolific and powerful Theism is, especially compared to Atheism) is a lack of understanding of Actuarial Science and how insurance companies assess risk and determine rates based upon those mathematical and statistical methods.
Educate yourself about it and you will have your answer.
I have argued for the existence of God...but honestly, I have no reason to believe you'd even have an open mind.
The fact is...we know that a creator exists because the universe exists. This creator has revealed himself to us. We can either choose to believe that such a creator is powerless to control evil, or he isn't.
You may accept "that a creator exists because the universe exists" as "truth" but you only speak for yourself and others who can't/won't open your minds to the immensity and complexity of the universe and the insignificance of humankind in the cosmic landscape.
The REAL problem here (other than another lame and childish Theism slam by the OP due to angst over how prolific and powerful Theism is, especially compared to Atheism) is a lack of understanding of Actuarial Science and how insurance companies assess risk and determine rates based upon those mathematical and statistical methods.
Educate yourself about it and you will have your answer.
You do not know the OP or what his anxieties are or aren't. In any case he wasn't claiming that theism isn't prolific or lacks hegemony, only that it is bleeding out.
Insurance, simply put, is a company betting against calamity. If I think I might die tomorrow, an insurance company will place a bet against that, offering to pay me mucho buckolas if I die before I fear I might die. And what do they base that on? My age, whether or not I smoke or have smoked, my weight, current diseases, and so forth. These data points have been identified as significant in influencing the accuracy of lifespan predictions.
All the OP is really asking is why simple theism or particular kinds of theism have not emerged as significant data points in such considerations. Because trust me, if they did emerge, they would be treated like any other.
Insurance companies don't discriminate in some unfair way by charging higher or lower premiums for actuarially determined risks. That identified / determined risks are about empirical behaviors and not beliefs, simply confirms that believing something doesn't make it so.
The REAL problem here (other than another lame and childish Theism slam by the OP due to angst over how prolific and powerful Theism is, especially compared to Atheism) is a lack of understanding of Actuarial Science and how insurance companies assess risk and determine rates based upon those mathematical and statistical methods.
Educate yourself about it and you will have your answer.
The REAL problem here is that actuarial science can't distinguish Christians and non-Christians or believers and non-believers or church-goers and non-church-goers in matters of health, longevity, safety, etc when it can demonstrate differences in health, longevity, safety, etc based on age, sex, occupation, weight, behavior, residence, etc.
Christians, though, still keep prattling on about god's "influence" in their lives. What kind of "influence" has no effect?
My point is very simple: if Christians (or other theists) are getting divine intervention in matters of health and safety, this fact should be evident when looking at the statistics.
I chose insurance as an obvious example, since insurance companies most definitely look at statistics to determine their premiums.
My point is very simple: if Christians (or other theists) are getting divine intervention in matters of health and safety, this fact should be evident when looking at the statistics.
I chose insurance as an obvious example, since insurance companies most definitely look at statistics to determine their premiums.
I will say that in modern times it's not Politically Correct to use 100% of this data in a directly applied way. And it is arguably not morally correct. An example is that while it's actuarially true that people with cancer are a lot more expensive to insure against cancer than people who don't already have it, society has recently decided that denying insurance or charging more for "pre-existing conditions" is a no-no. And I agree with this. Of course pragmatically that means that society has decided to distribute that cost across society as a whole -- we have decided to be our brother's keeper, even if that brother has, e.g., cancer. Especially if.
So while it's true that if the actuarials notice that, say, Free Methodists get cancer at half the rate of everyone else, it might be that Everyone Else would cry foul for paying higher premiums based on a religious affiliation ... the fact remains that the actuarials haven't even tried, and believe me, they WOULD try.
I will say that in modern times it's not Politically Correct to use 100% of this data in a directly applied way. And it is arguably not morally correct. An example is that while it's actuarially true that people with cancer are a lot more expensive to insure against cancer than people who don't already have it, society has recently decided that denying insurance or charging more for "pre-existing conditions" is a no-no. And I agree with this. Of course pragmatically that means that society has decided to distribute that cost across society as a whole -- we have decided to be our brother's keeper, even if that brother has, e.g., cancer. Especially if.
So while it's true that if the actuarials notice that, say, Free Methodists get cancer at half the rate of everyone else, it might be that Everyone Else would cry foul for paying higher premiums based on a religious affiliation ... the fact remains that the actuarials haven't even tried, and believe me, they WOULD try.
That's the downside of my insurance example: there are the moral/political issues with charging this group or that group more (or less) for insurance, especially based on something like religious affiliation.
But you bring up an excellent point: the moral/political issue of charging atheists more (and theists less) for insurance has never come up in our society. But it almost certainly would have come up if theists were truly a lower risk to insure.
You do not know the OP or what his anxieties are or aren't.
No, I don't...not with absolute certainty. But I'm pretty good at "figuring people out"...and I'd bet that I am correct. The disquietude of the writer bleeeeeeeds from many of these threads and posts...it's obvious.
If there is a God who protects the faithful and answers their prayers, then why don't the faithful pay less for all types of insurance? They should be a lower risk to insure than the general public, since God is looking out for them. Thus they should pay less for insurance.
Why is no one upset at this obvious injustice?
I'm sure your post/thread is facetious. And secondly, there is no reason religious people should pay less for insurance. If there was evidence religious people were a lower insurance risk, which there isn't, insurance companies still wouldn't give them lower rates for the obvious reasons: $$$.
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