Rapture insurance

You may have heard of one of the more unusual bets to make on one of these newfangled prediction markets, polymarket. Those are unusually good odds. In fact, an identical bet was made for Jesus returning in 2025. If you had bought "No" you could have potentially made an annualised return of above 3.5%. Not bad at all. Now it turns out that the reason for such a high percentage was in large part because a separate polymarket bet was running, this one had people betting on the first bet (eg the likelihood will rise above 5 percent) so some went off and inflated the likelyhood to protect their investment . But this isn't a bad start for an idea to form, offering bets or insurance on impossible things that will never happen to the religious groups that are foolhardy convinced they will.

In a way this model has already been done, in 2010 3 Scottish sisters insured themselves for an immaculate conception. They paid 100€ annually, on the promise that they would receive a 1000 000€ payout if they birthed the next messiah. Eventually this had to be put to a stop in 2006 as the catholic church was throwing too big of a fuss about it. In a public statement about the matter the pope said "How dare this insurance company exploit the gullibility and naivety of people for financial gain. That's our job!" . I'm joking of course, the church didn't protest because they thought these women were being exploited, They protested because to claim that you might birth the incarnation of god you would also be claiming to be without original sin (according to Catholisism), which is a big no no heresy.

Then outside of organised religion you get things like Spooksafe, offering insurance against hauntings, vampires, alien abductions. Spooksafe is a UK specific policy, which is a shame, because im sure it would basically be a licence to print money in the USA.

but why not try and run further with this idea? or in fact why stop at insurance? Why not run a prediction market exclusively reserved to things like the christian god being proven once and for all to be the one true god, or the islamic on, or the jewish one? It could be marketed to the customers as an investment, guaranteed to pay out for when the (to their minds) inevitable happens.

Or alternatively for the more militant theists you could market it as a way for them punish the non-believers (i.e. you, the broker). Maybe play up the smugness a little, antagonise yourself to them. They might start taking the bets not only out of self interest , but to wipe that smug look off your face. To their mind, you should be perceived as a foolish non believer. You will want to instill in their mind the image of their god graciously descending on earth on all news stations, and confirming that they were right, While you (the insurer/broker) rip your hair out as the bank has your home taken in lieu of payment for your hemoraging debts "I'M RUINED!" you should be saying in their fantasy, "IF ONLY I'D KNOWN THAT [your god here] WAS THE ONE TRUE WAY!". Now please don't think that I think that all religious people are sadists that want everyone that disagrees with them to suffer. I only think enough of them are that you could make a neat profit from them.

The wonderful thing about this that for me just ties it all together is that if somehow against all odds, one of the religions really does get undeniably proven, and you have to start paying out... Who cares? you would have way bigger fish to fry. Material wealth would probably be a distraction from you new God anyway.

Stagging

To stag is to invest in an initial public offering at the offering price and then sell it immediately, trusting that the initial volatility will push the price up