dye

Jennifer is the man... opps I mean Jennifer is the woman!  She asked what I would have asked.

dye

It could be her kind attitude.  It can also be her intelligence.  A lot of good qualities are common to both man and woman,

The challenge is even if your DNA show you are a woman, you may not think like a woman.  And even if you think like one, you may not identify yourself as one.

To conclude, I will respect your wish you be recognise as woman.  No DNA test is needed.

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Back to the topic:

Where is the data to support the theory of?
a) Christian has more cancer
b) Buddhist has less cancer
c) There is a causation link between believing in Christ, and cancer

dye

You mean hypothesis.

Where is the data?

dye

It is reserachable.  If you have a formal hypothesis and it sounds convincing enough, try apply for Templeton Foundation for funding.

I would agree with Jennifer.  I doubt there will be any result.

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For general medical data, I believe I have seen somewhere that religious fellow have less heart attack.  It is because they are better at dealing with stress.

dye

1)  Correlation does not = causation

It can also be factor C such as people who have cancer tend to change their believe in Christianity because it help!

Just because there are more patient in hospital, does the hospital is the source of sickness.

Above is a valid line of reasoning provided by CS Lewis.

To see wether he is right, we will need to see the change, if any, when people enter and leave the religion.  A special phenomenon of hosptital is that people tend to leave the hospital as a healthier person.  This is not applicable to religion as they claim that only those who are sick will leave.  

The other phenomenon is that people who is entering the hospital tends to get heathier. Now THIS, is observable.

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2)  Factors, factors.  We do not need to find identical individual, but we will need to take factors away one at a time.  Such as smoking, age, sex, habit, diet, etc

We will need quite large a samples set to reach anything conclusive.

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3) To dissect even further to see which ritual of religion causes cancer, we will need even further study in great detail.  It can be that seeing the cross causes cancer beause cross is made of cancer cauing material

Or perhaps being happy is the reason, and religion make people happy (again, a different type of reason C)

Maybe the baptism water is contaminated with radioactive material.
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For smoking causes cancer, it is quite conclusive as there is massive amount of data on the second point in the same direction.  If it is only a few anedote evidence, it cannot be very conclusive.

But how sure are we?  No quite.  Since you are studying econ, you already know, what is a cost analysis without benefit?  What is the benefit of smoking to balance out the risk? For the God damn Christian, the benefit is eternal life...