Chapter 42 — When Mythology Comes Before Measurement

What happens when inherited writings, doctrine and supernatural explanation are given greater authority than observation, data, research and the scientific investigation of human behaviour, development and harm?

When an Explanation Arrives Before the Evidence ↑

There is a difference between having an explanation and having evidence that the explanation is correct.

Human beings have always created explanations.

We had explanations for storms before meteorology.

For disease before microbiology.

For seizures before neurology.

For madness before psychiatry.

For memory before cognitive science.

For the behaviour of frightened children before trauma research.

An explanation can be ancient.

It can be widely believed.

It can be repeated by authorities.

It can be written in a sacred book.

None of those things establishes that the explanation is correct.

What I Mean by Mythology ↑

I use the word mythology here carefully.

I am not using it simply as another word for stupidity or falsehood.

Mythology is one of the ways human cultures have organised stories about origins, gods, morality, suffering, death, good, evil and the structure of the world.

Those stories can carry enormous cultural value.

They can contain poetry.

Identity.

Moral reflection.

History.

Metaphor.

Memory.

And sometimes profound insight.

The problem begins when the story is given authority over observation.

When evidence has to fit the inherited explanation rather than the explanation remaining vulnerable to evidence.

The Direction of the Question ↑

That difference sounds small.

It is not.

One method asks:

What happened?

What can we observe?

What evidence exists?

What other explanation might fit?

What evidence would show this explanation to be wrong?

The other begins with:

We already know what this means.

Now let us interpret what happened so that it fits.

That reversal can become dangerous very quickly when the subject is a human being.

The Child as Evidence for the Story ↑

I have already written about adults describing children in supernatural terms.

Satan.

Possession.

Sin.

Evil.

Disobedience.

Spiritual corruption.

Once those explanations are accepted, the child's behaviour can become evidence for the explanation.

If the child struggles, the evil is resisting.

If the child screams, the ritual is working.

If the child goes quiet, the intervention succeeded.

If the child later cannot remember clearly, the uncertainty can be used against them.

The explanation becomes difficult to disprove because every possible response can be absorbed into it.

A Closed Explanation ↑

That is one of the warning signs I have learned to look for.

Can the explanation fail?

If there is no imaginable observation which could count against it, then the explanation has protected itself from evidence.

It may still be meaningful as belief.

It is much weaker as a claim about what actually happened.

The Difference Between Meaning and Mechanism ↑

A person may find religious meaning in an experience.

That is different from establishing the mechanism which caused it.

A recovery may feel miraculous.

That does not establish supernatural causation.

A frightening experience may be interpreted as demonic.

That does not establish the existence of a demon.

A person may feel forgiven after prayer.

That does not tell us what biological or psychological processes were involved.

Meaning and mechanism can coexist.

But they should not be confused.

The Danger of Starting With the Answer ↑

The problem becomes more serious when an institution begins with the answer.

The doctrine says this.

The scripture says this.

The tradition says this.

The bishop says this.

The priest says this.

Therefore the evidence must mean this.

That is not investigation.

It is interpretation inside a boundary which has already been fixed.

Snippets Become Systems ↑

Religious systems often draw authority from writings produced across very different centuries, cultures, languages and political worlds.

Small passages can be extracted.

Combined.

Interpreted.

Translated.

Reinterpreted.

Turned into doctrine.

Then doctrine can acquire institutional force far beyond the original passage.

A sentence written in one historical setting may eventually influence the way a school disciplines children, the way a priest describes sexuality, the way a family understands obedience or the way a frightened person is interpreted.

That journey deserves examination.

The Authority of Age ↑

Ancient ideas often acquire authority partly because they are ancient.

They survived.

Therefore they must contain something important.

Sometimes they do.

But survival is not the same thing as verification.

An idea can survive because it is useful.

Because it is beautiful.

Because powerful institutions preserve it.

Because questioning it is punished.

Because generations teach it to children.

Or because people find comfort in it.

Longevity alone does not tell us which explanation is true.

What Measurement Changes ↑

Measurement does something mythology cannot do by itself.

It makes a claim answerable to something outside the story.

How often did this happen?

To whom?

Under what conditions?

Compared with what?

What happened afterwards?

Did the intervention help?

Did it make things worse?

Can somebody else obtain the same result?

Does the explanation predict anything?

Can that prediction fail?

Data Is Not the Enemy of Compassion ↑

There is sometimes an assumption that measurement makes human suffering cold.

I have come to see almost the opposite.

Without measurement, suffering can remain anecdotal.

One child.

One woman.

One survivor.

One complaint.

One difficult priest.

One bad institution.

Collect the data and another picture may appear.

Patterns.

Repeated failures.

Common methods.

Shared consequences.

Numbers can make it harder to explain each person away as an exception.

The Number Changes the Moral Question ↑

One report of abuse requires investigation.

Ten reports raise another question.

A hundred raise another again.

Thousands change the scale of the problem.

At some point the question can no longer remain:

What was wrong with this individual?

It becomes:

What is happening inside this system?

Why Numbers Can Threaten Institutions ↑

That change matters because institutions can survive individual stories more easily than patterns.

An individual complainant can be doubted.

Discredited.

Misremembered.

Dismissed as angry.

Described as confused.

A sufficiently large body of evidence is harder to reduce to personality.

It begins to ask questions about structure.

Science Is Not a Collection of Certainties ↑

I once thought of science mainly as knowledge.

Over time I became more interested in science as a method for dealing with uncertainty.

A scientific conclusion is not strong because a scientist said it.

It becomes stronger when evidence survives attempts to challenge it.

That distinction matters.

Science is not supposed to replace one priesthood with another.

Scientists can be wrong.

Researchers can exaggerate.

Studies can be badly designed.

Institutions can defend careers and reputations.

Money can distort priorities.

Prestige can distort judgement.

The safeguard is not the personal purity of the scientist.

It is the possibility of challenge.

The Method Has to Survive the Person ↑

This is one reason replication matters.

Independent evidence matters.

Transparent methods matter.

Data matters.

Peer criticism matters.

Correction matters.

The method should not depend entirely upon trusting the person making the claim.

That is almost the opposite of authority based upon revelation.

What Happens When the Result Is Unwelcome? ↑

The most important test may come when the evidence produces an answer the institution does not want.

A treatment is harmful.

A respected leader abused people.

A doctrine produced fear.

A policy failed.

A diagnosis was wrong.

A record contains error.

A survivor was telling the truth.

What happens next?

That is where the difference between inquiry and self-protection becomes visible.

Can the Institution Say We Were Wrong? ↑

A system capable of correction has to be able to say:

We were wrong.

We misunderstood this.

We harmed people.

The evidence changed.

Our earlier explanation no longer survives.

We will change the practice.

Those words can be extraordinarily difficult for hierarchical institutions.

Especially when their authority has been built upon the idea that the institution possesses a privileged route to truth.

Certainty Has Institutional Value ↑

Certainty is useful to authority.

It reduces argument.

It creates obedience.

It simplifies teaching.

It makes hierarchy easier to maintain.

It can make doubt look like weakness.

Or disloyalty.

Or sin.

Uncertainty is much harder to govern.

But uncertainty is often where honest inquiry begins.

The Cost of Protecting the Explanation ↑

Once an institution becomes committed to an explanation, preserving the explanation can become more important than examining the harm.

If the child must be sinful, evidence of abuse becomes inconvenient.

If the priest must be morally authoritative, the complainant becomes a problem.

If the institution must be divinely guided, systemic failure becomes difficult to admit.

If doctrine cannot be wrong, the injured person may have to be reinterpreted instead.

The explanation survives.

The person pays the price.

When Faith Becomes an Investigative Method ↑

Faith can be a personal orientation to questions which cannot be resolved empirically.

The danger comes when faith is used as an investigative method for claims which can be examined.

Did this person abuse a child?

Did this medication cause a cognitive change?

Did this policy increase harm?

Did this institution receive earlier complaints?

Did somebody alter a record?

Did a frightened person consent?

Those are not questions which should be settled by theology.

They require evidence.

Observation Before Interpretation ↑

I have come to value a very simple discipline.

Describe what happened before deciding what it means.

The child screamed.

The person stopped speaking.

The patient's memory changed after medication.

The complainant reported abuse.

The oxygen level fell after a particular movement.

Those are observations.

The interpretation comes afterwards.

Possession.

Mental illness.

Attention seeking.

Drug effect.

Trauma response.

Mechanical problem.

Those are explanations.

Keeping the two separate is one of the most useful protections against premature certainty.

Feynman Again ↑

The question I keep returning to is simple.

What would show me that I am wrong?

If the answer is:

Nothing could,

then I am no longer investigating.

I am defending.

That applies to religion.

It applies to medicine.

It applies to psychology.

It applies to politics.

It applies to science.

And it applies to me.

Evidence Has to Be Allowed to Win ↑

That may be the central difference.

A genuine inquiry has to contain the possibility that the preferred explanation will lose.

The evidence may require a different conclusion.

The institution may have to change.

The expert may have to withdraw a claim.

The believer may have to reinterpret a text.

I may have to rewrite a chapter.

Without that possibility, the inquiry is theatre.

What We Do With Old Knowledge ↑

None of this requires us to throw away everything old.

Old knowledge can be tested.

Some survives remarkably well.

Some acquires new meaning.

Some becomes metaphor.

Some turns out to be wrong.

The age of an idea should neither protect it from examination nor condemn it before examination.

The question is what survives.

When Sacred and Measurable Claims Overlap ↑

There will always be areas in which belief and measurement occupy different spaces.

Does life have ultimate meaning?

Why is there something rather than nothing?

Is there a creator?

Those questions may remain philosophical or metaphysical.

But when a religious claim enters the measurable world, it becomes available to ordinary evidence.

If prayer is said to cure a specific disease, the health outcome can be studied.

If religious discipline is said to improve children, the effects on children can be studied.

If an exorcism is said to help, its outcomes can be examined.

If a doctrine is said to produce moral behaviour, behaviour can be observed.

The sacred description does not make the measurable consequence exempt from measurement.

The First Investigation Should Be Into Reality ↑

This may be the principle I was reaching for without always having the language.

When harm is alleged, the first investigation should be into reality.

What happened?

Who knew?

What records exist?

What does the person report?

What does the physical evidence show?

What patterns appear elsewhere?

What explanations fit?

What explanations fail?

Only after that should inherited mythology be allowed to contribute meaning.

It should not be allowed to decide the facts in advance.

The Cost of Getting the Order Wrong ↑

When mythology comes before measurement, the order of inquiry is reversed.

The story decides what the evidence is permitted to mean.

That can lead to extraordinary errors.

A traumatised child can become a sinner.

A seizure can become possession.

A survivor can become a threat to the institution.

A medication effect can become evidence of illness.

A disputed record can become more authoritative than the person it describes.

A failure of the system can be redescribed as a failure of the individual.

This Problem Is Not Unique to Religion ↑

It would be easy to stop here and describe this as a religious defect.

It is not.

Human beings protect explanations everywhere.

Doctors do it.

Researchers do it.

Police do it.

Lawyers do it.

Politicians do it.

Families do it.

Survivors can do it.

I can do it.

Religion is especially important in this story because religious explanations acquired unusual authority in my childhood.

But the underlying human vulnerability is broader.

We become attached to explanations.

Authority Changes the Consequence ↑

An ordinary person's mistaken explanation may remain an opinion.

An authority's mistaken explanation can become procedure.

A parent's explanation can become punishment.

A priest's explanation can become religious discipline.

A doctor's explanation can become treatment.

A psychiatrist's explanation can become diagnosis.

A police officer's explanation can become an investigation.

A judge's explanation can become a judgment.

A government's explanation can become policy.

That is why the next question matters.

Who gets to speak with authority?

How did they acquire it?

What happens when they are wrong?

And who is able to challenge them?