This Is Why Reason Matters

June 19th, 2008, by The Angry Drunk

Today this story popped up on my radar via Skeptico. The basic story is, the class­room aide of an autis­tic girl in Ontario Canada went to a “psy­chic” who cold-read the aide and came to the deter­mi­na­tion that the autis­tic girl was being sex­u­ally abused.  Now, in a ratio­nal world, when pre­sented with this alle­ga­tion the local child ser­vices agency would dis­miss it out­right. In this world how­ever they mind­lessly sent forth a case worker to inves­ti­gate. Of course, the charges were bull-shit, and the mother was exon­er­ated imme­di­ately.  But still, this poor woman has had her life turned upside down, her child trau­ma­tized, and an entry made in the child ser­vices records (believe me, child wel­fare ser­vices record all alle­ga­tions, regard­less of the final dis­po­si­tion of the case.).

This is why rea­son mat­ters. I know that what I’m about to write may offend some of my friends, and I sin­cerely apol­o­gize for that, but it must be said. This is the result of a soci­ety that deval­ues rea­son and extolls the virtues of blind faith. Sure this time around it was some woo-slinging con-woman mak­ing the alle­ga­tion. But what hap­pens when the alle­ga­tions come from a pas­tor who received the infor­ma­tion from God? Would the result have been any dif­fer­ent? I don’t think it would.

The world we live can only truly be known in the bright light of rea­son. When we deny rea­son, and instead put our trust in the shad­owy realm of faith, we lose the abil­ity to dis­cern the truth.

4 comments - (Comments closed)
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  • http://bottomdwellersmusic.com Mark Eagleton

    A-fucking-men. Cheers.

  • http://bottomdwellersmusic.com Mark Eagleton

    A-fucking-men. Cheers.

  • http://www.yawp.com/mike/ Mike Stone

    Respectfully, I dis­agree with you, man. Cases like this have noth­ing to do with reli­gion. This is about litigation.

    Conventional thought says that when some­thing bad hap­pens, some­one has to be respon­si­ble. And the civil courts exist as a huge fuck­ing machine to estab­lish that blame. Even if no one is actu­ally to blame, the process of being sued is itself a vast and expen­sive form of punishment.

    The courts oper­ate on a sys­tem of antag­o­nis­tic fact find­ing, where each side works to keep the other’s ver­sion of ‘this is what hap­pened’ from being accepted as the oper­at­ing truth on which the court will ren­der judgement.

    It’s really hard to get a sub­jec­tive opin­ion writ­ten into the offi­cial record against a skilled and deter­mined oppo­nent. Objective, mea­sur­able facts are much eas­ier to defend.

    So when the peo­ple who run a bureau­cracy decide there’s no damn way they’re going to take the blame for any­thing bad that may ever poten­tially hap­pen, they sit down with their lawyers and write up a set of rules. Those rules are objec­tively mea­sur­able and can be eas­ily sub­stan­ti­ated in court. Then they aban­don all fur­ther sub­jec­tive judge­ment in favor of blind adher­ence to those rules.

    That’s how we get zero-tolerance drug poli­cies that kick fourth graders out of school for giv­ing a friend a cough drop. Or screw over the mom in the UK who recently got listed as a vio­lent herion addict because the woman with the crim­i­nal record had the same name and birthdate.

    The DFS will inves­ti­gate any claim of poten­tial abuse, regard­less of how stu­pid it may sound, sim­ply because fail­ure to inves­ti­gate any claim is an objec­tive, mea­sur­able fact that can be used against them in court.

    That’s all there really is to this story. The only con­nec­tion to reli­gion here is the stretch between ‘going to a psy­chic’ and ‘going to a church’.

  • http://www.yawp.com/mike/ Mike Stone

    Respectfully, I dis­agree with you, man. Cases like this have noth­ing to do with reli­gion. This is about litigation.

    Conventional thought says that when some­thing bad hap­pens, some­one has to be respon­si­ble. And the civil courts exist as a huge fuck­ing machine to estab­lish that blame. Even if no one is actu­ally to blame, the process of being sued is itself a vast and expen­sive form of punishment.

    The courts oper­ate on a sys­tem of antag­o­nis­tic fact find­ing, where each side works to keep the other’s ver­sion of ‘this is what hap­pened’ from being accepted as the oper­at­ing truth on which the court will ren­der judgement.

    It’s really hard to get a sub­jec­tive opin­ion writ­ten into the offi­cial record against a skilled and deter­mined oppo­nent. Objective, mea­sur­able facts are much eas­ier to defend.

    So when the peo­ple who run a bureau­cracy decide there’s no damn way they’re going to take the blame for any­thing bad that may ever poten­tially hap­pen, they sit down with their lawyers and write up a set of rules. Those rules are objec­tively mea­sur­able and can be eas­ily sub­stan­ti­ated in court. Then they aban­don all fur­ther sub­jec­tive judge­ment in favor of blind adher­ence to those rules.

    That’s how we get zero-tolerance drug poli­cies that kick fourth graders out of school for giv­ing a friend a cough drop. Or screw over the mom in the UK who recently got listed as a vio­lent herion addict because the woman with the crim­i­nal record had the same name and birthdate.

    The DFS will inves­ti­gate any claim of poten­tial abuse, regard­less of how stu­pid it may sound, sim­ply because fail­ure to inves­ti­gate any claim is an objec­tive, mea­sur­able fact that can be used against them in court.

    That’s all there really is to this story. The only con­nec­tion to reli­gion here is the stretch between ‘going to a psy­chic’ and ‘going to a church’.