My friend Jim believes in global warming but doesn’t agree with the scientific community about its causes. “When we were kids, it snowed all the time. Now it doesn’t,” he said. “What changed? Everyone got snow blowers. Snow blowers ruined everything. No snow blowers, no global warming. Think about it.”
I thought about it, and decided he was right.
He was also right when he told me Jewish people are better drivers than Christians because, in all his years of driving, he’d never seen a Star of David memorializing a crash site. Come to think of it, neither have I. Every time I’m with Jim, I learn something new.
Jim and I have drawn other conclusions. Opossums can’t see cars, but elephants can, because you never see an elephant squished flat on the road. Men are better drivers than women because 90 percent of professional race car drivers are male. And my personal favorite, God thinks some heads are more beautiful than others, so covers the ugly ones with hair.
Jim and I shared our observations with our wives. His wife rolled her eyes and said, “Why can’t men be as smart as women?”
“But following your logic,” Jim said, “Women are dumber because they tend to marry men.”
Have I mentioned that Jim is a flat-out genius?
My wife, who majored in math in college, told us we were confusing causation and correlation, and then told us about the stork theory, how in Germany, when the stork population increased, the rate of babies delivered at home also increased, suggesting that storks delivered babies.
“That’s nonsense,” Jim said. “Storks don’t bring babies.”
“That’s my point,” my wife said. “Correlation is not causation.”
“Not only that,” I said. “Babies come from a big gumball machine in the sky. People make love, God turns the crank, and the next baby in line slides down the chute to its mom and dad.”
She looked at me like I was crazy. For a college grad, my wife is remarkably uninformed about human biology. But she might be right about correlation and causation.
Last fall, two hurricanes struck Florida, a red state. A U.S. Representative from Georgia said Democrats controlled the weather and were using it to hurt conservatives. If you know anything about weather, you know that’s nonsense. Minnesota is a reliably blue state but is Africa-hot in the summer and bitter cold in the winter. Besides, everyone knows Zeus and Thor control the weather.
The confusion between correlation and causation is responsible for a lot of the world’s problems. Take those hurricanes, for instance. Just as soon as people cover their windows and doors with plywood, a hurricane is sure to follow. It’s so predictable it’s as if Zeus and Thor are keeping tabs on plywood sales in Florida!
The same is true with phones and cars. As soon as cellphones enjoyed widespread use, people started crashing their cars more. It’s clear to anyone with half a brain that cellphones are rendering steering wheels inoperable. Now people are crashing into trees, running into ditches, and knocking over fire hydrants. In parts of Arizona it’s gotten so bad they’re running out of water. If you’ll remember, there were no water problems back when people only used landlines. Come to think of it, that’s about the same time this climate change issue started heating up. Coincidence? I don’t think so.
Philip Gulley is a Quaker pastor and author of 22 books, including the Harmony and Hope series, featuring Sam Gardner.
This article is featured in the January/February 2025 issue of The Saturday Evening Post. Subscribe to the magazine for more art, inspiring stories, fiction, humor, and features from our archives.
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