Rabbi Daniel Lapin was the guest on "WallBuilders Live" today where he discussed "the health benefits of attending synagogues and churches." During the conversation with co-host Rick Green, Lapin made the case that God designed people to interact and thus social connections were integral to good health, which is why people ought to regularly attend religious services.
That prompted Green to complain that under President Obama's "socialized medicine," states where people frequently attend church and are therefore healthier will end up having to "foot the bill" for all the states where people don't attend church.
That observation struck Lapin as quite insightful, who then offered his own bizarre theory that people who don't have children are "anti-social" because they are forcing other people's children to take care of them:
Green: If you are in a society and culture that has that connection and that places a high value on religion and affiliation there and you get the better health that results, it looks like now, the way that America is going with socialized medicine, those states that are like that are going to end up footing the bill for the states that choose the other path, which is less connection and less affiliation with religion and those things because they are going to have a higher health bill. But now, with socialized medicine, we'll pay for it.
Lapin: Oh, absolutely. And by the way, that is also true of Social Security. It's all very well people choose not to have children; not only do they pay a health penalty for that but the truth is that your children and mine are going to have to pay for them. People say "it's not true, I have my investments to take care of me, I don't need children." Well, that may be true, however your investments depend on a growing market of customers because your investments are in company and what characterizes a profitable company is that it has customers; it's customer are my children.
Green: Yeah, that's a good point, I hadn't even thought about that. If you don't have children, first of all, they are not contributing to the overall marketplace but also the tax base and everything else.
Lapin: That is exactly right. So I really do think that a claim of anti-social behavior can be lodged at the door of people who choose not to have children.
