As we were closing Gangy’s coffin on that hot and sticky August day in old South Miami, my uncle—the same uncle who would only reach 59 before succumbing to lung disease—smiled and quipped, “She did all the wrong things in life. Gangy smoked, she was overweight for a good portion of her years, didn’t exercise a lick and she consumed a steady diet of fatty foods. Go figure.” Quick note to self: smoke, gain weight, refuse to exercise and eat garbage and you, too, can live to a ripe old age.
Something is obviously out of whack here. Of course it is; Gangy is the textbook description of a vivid example. We fall victim to the wiles of this fallacy when we take a freak or exceedingly rare example of something and try to generalize it for everyone. The vivid example is often held up as a model when it should be relegated to its proper place: the shelf of rare and improbable events. What do you suppose would happen if the Surgeon General took Gangy’s case and adopted its parameters as a model for American health? Exactly. We’d drop like flies, many of us at an early age. Let’s face facts: Gangy had amazing genes. She did nothing to earn them. She was simply conceived that way. And though she neglected her health for the vast majority of those years, it didn’t matter.
Morgan Spurlock (Supersize Me, 2004) was the lovable nut who conceived the idea to go on a McDonald’s-only diet for 30 days.1 I used to show the video to my juniors, but I ceded that honor to our freshmen Personal Fitness and Health classes a few years back. I don’t mind, actually. The younger the students see the film, the better. Before his ill-conceived dive into the cesspool of American fast-food, Spurlock obtained a health baseline: blood pressure, triglycerides, cholesterol, hepatic function, body weight, body fat, you name it. Here’s a guy who’s 6’2 and weighs 185 pounds—absolutely ideal for a man his size, or so some of the experts say. To put things in perspective, I’m 6’2 and in pretty good shape. I hit the gym about 5 times a week. I lift weights. I do the elliptical. I even do Spartacus on Wednesdays. But my weight bounces between 205 and 210 pounds. How does Spurlock do it? What the devil is his secret? It might have something to do with his vegan girlfriend, who feeds him a steady dose of exotic dishes. I’m really not sure.
So, as the Golden Arches diet progresses, Spurlock begins to gain weight. He checks back in with his doctors. His liver numbers no longer look so hot. His blood pressure has gone up. So, too, have his triglyceride and cholesterol counts. Lethargy has set in. His libido is suffering from a generalized state of fatigue and apathy. His doctors urge him to quit the diet, but he brushes them off. Along the way, Spurlock runs into a McDonald’s legend: Don Gorske. This guy has been consuming between 2 and 3 Big Macs a day (that’s 1,080 calories) since 1972, and he holds the record for the most Big Macs consumed by anyone on Earth. He even keeps several emergency Big Macs in his freezer in the event he’s ever snowed in.
One look at Gorske and I’m wondering, Heck, this guy’s tall and lanky. What gives? Actually, nothing gives. Like Spurlock, Gorske is 6’2. Unlike Spurlock, however, he still weighs 185 and has for years. That’s great, I think, but just imagine what his cholesterol count must be. Before I get to that, just consider that Gorske consumed his 25,000th Big Mac on May 17, 2011. He claims there have been only 8 days he failed to consume a single Big Mac since 1972—one of those being the day his mother died (she evidently made him swear he wouldn’t eat a Big Mac on the day of her funeral). Gorske, 58, claims to be in excellent health. He rarely, if ever, has to see a doctor. When he finally had to see a doctor in 2011, his first such visit since 1985, he had blood drawn. His cholesterol count came in at 156 mg/dL, well below the average of 208.2 Gorske continues to consume Big Macs at an average of about 750 per year. I’d ask my students and even you to consider a diet like this for a year, but we all know what the cholesterol numbers would say. There’s very little doubt, I’m afraid. Gorske is the vivid example of the Big Mac world.
One day I was lecturing about the effects marijuana has on the brain. I was rambling on and on about how pot is a dimmer switch for our enthusiasms, ambitions and drives, and how it is an idiot drug that routinely robs students of reaching their full potential. A hand shot up in the back. “That’s not true. I have this friend who smokes weed almost every day and he has straight A’s. He’s been accepted to six different colleges.”
Note to my three children: smoke weed and you, too, could be brilliant and in demand.
This is exactly why I teach logic at the beginning of the semester. I want my students to learn how to think before we attempt to tackle any of the heavy issues like relationships, drug use, abortion, business ethics, capital punishment, genetic engineering and so on. I find that, as we delve into these issues later on, I see them commit fewer fallacies. By the way, this reminds me of one of our faculty meetings back in the late 80’s. We had a guest speaker on the subject of drugs, and he told us of a VP who pulled something similar on him at a gathering of business leaders. “I smoke pot. I’m an executive in a company, I drive a BMW and I make six figures.” Our speaker said he took one look at the guy and replied, “Why aren’t you chairman of the board?”
Are there people who can use drugs and maintain high GPA’s? Of course. Does this mean the rest of us can behave this way? Come on, now.
Anyone who has coached a sport knows full-well what a gamer is. This individual usually possesses incredible athletic gifts. He has exceptional muscular development and coordination (Kinesthetic Intelligence, Harvard Psychologist Howard Gardner would say) and seems to have done very little in life to get to where he is. He’s usually not engaged during practice; he finds the repetition of drills, plays and formations absolutely monotonous. Yet, when the ball is teed up and the whistle blows, he swings into action and does one thing: he produces. I can tolerate a gamer if I can at least get him to show some interest in practice. Punctuality is a must and he can’t mouth off or get too cocky. He can’t be a cancer on the team. If he is, he’s out.
Gamers are vivid examples. Most athletes I’ve seen and read about have to work to get into shape. They must work hard and pay attention in order to be game-ready. And this is certainly true of my students who have gone on to play in the NFL, Major League Baseball and the NBA. If we took the gamer example and relaxed our discipline out on the athletic field, if we allowed all of our athletes to slack off, if we accepted less effort from our players instead of more, we’d never win a game. We’ve all heard the expression What does it take to get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, practice. And we can all hear the gamer now say, That’s not true. I hardly practice and I’m at the top of my sport. So what do you say to a quarterback who won’t practice, yet brags about throwing a touchdown pass in the last game?
Talk to me when you’ve thrown fifty of those in a season. That’s what I’d say.
In July of 2012, something unspeakable happened inside a multi-plex movie theater in Aurora, Colorado.
James Holmes sat through several minutes of the Batman movie, The Dark Knight Rises, before slipping out the back door and returning with a cache of weapons. Twelve died that night, including a six-year-old girl. Fifty-eight others were injured in the AR-15 assault rifle attack—one of the worst in U.S. history. People want to know where God was in all the mayhem. They want to know where He was during the Sandy Hook school shooting in December of 2012.
The O.J. Simpson verdicts were handed down in October of 1995. As Simpson was released of any legal culpability in the murders of Ronald Goldman and Nicole Brown Simpson, Denise Brown gasped, “God, where are you?” Her shock as well as God’s hand in all this will be the subject in a later chapter entitled: The Problem of Evil of Suffering.
We could go on and on. September 11th. The tsunami that hit Southeast Asia. The earthquake that rocked Haiti. The JFK assassination. The Holocaust. The Lincoln assassination. The Black Plague. People that are angry with God, or are irritated with Him, or even question His existence, love to needle believers with these vivid examples—these