Dr. Joel Gregory tells the story of a neurotic rooster. Joel won’t mind if I embellish it a bit, but I heard the story first from him. And I offer this disclaimer: This story is not intended to harm or defame any rooster, living or dead, and any similarity to any rooster living or dead is hereby disavowed, is unintended, and, should it occur, is completely accidental.
So there. If pharmaceutical pushers feel the need to spend three-quarters of their ubiquitous and usually annoying commercials spouting off lawyer litter, maybe I should sleep better knowing I’ve done proper rooster risk management here.
Now to the story.
It seems that the rooster in question was quite an intelligent creature, or at least, observant. His education was a little lacking, though, or he might have known something about the post hoc, ergo propter hoc logical fallacy.
That’s Latin for “after this, therefore because of this.” An example (for which I apologize) might be, a fellow eats too many beans and the result is predictable. Right at the moment of the predictable result, a sinkhole suddenly appears two houses down the block and swallows up Fluffy, his neighbor’s cat. His conclusion? Flatulence causes sinkholes and feline fatalities. He is wrong, having fallen foul of, blundered right into, the post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy.
Here’s a more serious example of the fallacy: The number of vaccines kids are getting is increasing, and the number of kids being diagnosed with autism sometime after being vaccinated is increasing; therefore, vaccines cause autism (this example from the Wikipedia article on this fallacy). No.
Back to the story. The rooster in question fell into the fallacy in focus.
You see, the rooster noticed that “everything” started every morning whenever he crowed. Not least, the sun itself came up when—the bird soon was saying “because”—he crowed.
This went on for a while, but before long, this bird turned into an insomniac rooster. You see, he was a very conscientious bird, albeit weak in logical thought. He could sleep hardly at all because he was so terrified that he might not wake up in time, might not crow at the appropriate moment. And then the sun would not come up, and everything would not start.
I wish the story had a happier ending, but the sad truth is that the poor bird was finally carried off to a home for troubled roosters.
What’s the moral?
It might be, be careful what you crow about.
Or it might be, remember that your crowing is not all it’s cracked up to be.
Or it might be, open your eyes more and open your beak less.
Or it might be…
This universe has one King who has been and will be King from everlasting to everlasting. He loves you completely. He loves me completely. He made us to be loved by Him and to praise Him. Forever.
It seems logical that any time we spend crowing ought to be spent crowing about Him.
You’re invited to visit my website at http://www.CurtisShelburne.com!
Copyright 2015 by Curtis K. Shelburne. Permission to copy without altering text or for monetary gain is hereby granted subject to inclusion of this copyright notice.
