Scientism: The Demise of Common Sense
Christopher, who is in the midst of a graduate degree program in counseling and so is excused from not having posted in a while, was perusing the APA’s website last week and sent along a link to this story that they had featured that day. Here is the header:
Web pornography’s effect on children
Although research is scarce, investigators see links between young people who access Web porn and unhealthy attitudes toward sex.
The average person reading this would respond with “duhhh!!!!!” I would suspect. However, in reading the article, even the short intro above may seem to overstate the case. I say this because the author concludes the article with:
It’s too early to say what these findings mean—or even what to do if clearer results are shown. Some, for example, believe that being sexually curious is part of the developmental process and that Internet porn is one, albeit problematic, way to satisfy that curiosity. And it may prove nearly impossible to completely prevent it … .
This statement, while it certainly reflects the sad state of affairs, indicates that the sad state of affairs is contributed to in no small measure by a psychiatric academy that has jettisoned an integral view of the human person. Rather, they have left aside traditional morality as socially relative and completely unrelated to personal wellbeing. They do not even seem to know what comprises wellbeing any longer. For example, this appears to be the most that we can say about human flourishing in terms of healthy relationships:
“We don’t really know, but we suspect that exposure to, say, 10, 20, 30,000 pages of pornography may bias a young person in terms of what they consider a normal relationship,…
“We don’t really know.” This is the main point of this post. What is revealed by this statement is that theses folks assume that common sense must be dismissed in their new “world order.” Why? Because we do not “know” anything unless it has been empirically established and verified by other empirical investigators. This is scientism at its worst. That is, it is assuming that empirical science is the only source of valid knowledge.
But wait you say, isn’t this just medicine? Don’t we use the scientific method in medicine? Yes, we do. However, what is problematic is that when we reduce what we can know about the human person to that which can be established by empirical methods alone, then we have a reductionist view of the human person and so we make ourselves utterly incompetent in trying to understand him.
For example, one does not need to empirically verify in order to know as fact that anyone who habitually submits to his emotions without subjecting them to reason and gaining full possession of himself, will not flourish. Experience tells us that we will become slaves to our passions. We do not need a research study to tell us that this in order to know that it is true for everyone, though some experience it more severely with some things rather than others. We know that there is a universal structure to human beings that we call human nature. We know when we violate human nature, that sooner or later, we will suffer for it.
Furthermore, empirical data is meaningless outside of contextual models. The data has to be understood in terms of a world view for it to be useful. These models are built upon theories about the human person. The difficulties found among the soft sciences is that there is an inbuilt contradiction between the underlying presupposition that the subject of the study can be reduced to a biological entity describable by deterministic laws and the recognition that, in reality, there is something that cannot be accounted for (called intellect and free will) and this works at cross purposes with these presuppositions.
These models (not proven–i.e. not “scientific” but presupposed) cut the subject free from any structure that one could call human nature and so the subject is to be understood only in terms of the variety of individuals studied. The closest thing to nature they will allow is statistical averages. If one comes at this data from the reductionist perspective, he will interpret it completely differently than if one comes at it with the common sense, traditional, perspective…i.e. that there is such a thing as human nature and violating it comes with problems.
This is what explains the hesitancy of these so called “experts” to say that exposing kids to pornography will damage them. Someone with less knowledge and more wisdom can look at the data and say, yes, this confirms what we know about children and human nature. The academy, most of whom have traded wisdom for knowledge, say no we have to collect more data to be make such a claim because they rule out, out of hand, the classical understanding of human nature.
These are the people to whom we subject ourselves for healing when we, our children, or other loved ones experience psychological or emotional difficulties. The “experts” reductionism ought to scare you given the sage insights this article reflects. Added to that, is that too often, those who enter the profession (as Shelray has pointed out many times) are drawn to it because they suffer from the same maladies they are trying to treat. Because those treating them cannot heal them because they do not have an integral view of the human person, the most they have learned are coping skills. This brings to mind the local psych hospital in which the child sexual identity expert is a man who is undergoing a “sex change” operation. I cannot imagine a parent in good conscience letting her child be “treated” by someone who himself needs treatment.
I’ll tell you what. I think that the average person would be better off sitting down with a wise ole grandmother or grandfather who can apply their common sense with wisdom than subjecting oneself to these folks who are not willing to say that children should be prevented from being exposed to pornography because the data is not yet conclusive that it is harmful. If a psych doctor does not exhibit common sense, I would recommend exercising your own…and finding one who does (like here).
I recently finished reading a book entitled
Harvard University seniors Sarah Kinsella and Justin Murray
Fruit of the Loom withdrew their claim that a film made by Catholic film-maker Michelle Messina, called
The very creative Dawn Eden sends along a
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The St. Louis Review
Did the Baby Boomers make a Faustian bargain that they have come to regret? 

It is not possible to sin “accidentally.” Sin involves the act of the will or a conscious choice of accepting or rejecting a temptation. As a human person, there is a natural tendency to be attracted to one another, and there is no sinfulness in a natural response of the body. Once we have thoughts, what do we do with them? It is only natural after all, but how far can we take it without committing a sin?
“Souls begin to enter what is called “dark night†when God, gradually drawing them out of the state of beginners (those who practice meditation on the spiritual road), begins to place them in the state of proficients (those who are already contemplatives), so that by passing through this state they might reach that of the perfect, which is the divine union of the soul with God.â€
First, they often proceed from the pleasure human nature finds in spiritual exercises. Since both the spiritual and the sensory part of the soul receive gratification from sex, each part experiences delight according to its own nature and properties. The spirit experiences renewal and satisfaction in God. The sensory is gratified through it’s senses. It may happen that while a soul is in deep spiritual prayer, it will passively experience sensual rebellions, movements, and acts in the senses, not without its own great displeasure. “This frequently happens at the time of Communion. Since the soul receives joy in this act of love, the sensory is gratified, each according to its mode. Since these two parts are joined, each one shares in what the other receives. Because in the initial stages of the spiritual life, and even more in the advanced ones, God’s spirit is frequently received in the imperfected part of the sensory. Once the sensory is reformed through the purgation of the dark night, it is no longer afflicted by it’s previous infirmities. Then the spiritual part of the soul (not the sensory part) receives God’s spirit, and the soul thus receives everything according to the mode of the spirit.
“The second origin of these rebellions is the devil. To bring turmoil and disturbance on a praying soul, he attempts to excite impure feelings in the sensory part. If one is to pay any attention to these, the devil does them great harm. Through fear, some souls grow slack in their prayer — which is what the devil wants.  Many times, this is too much to endure and many give it up entirely, or they think the feelings come while they are engaged in prayer rather than at other times, and this is true because the devil enjoys to torment the soul while they are at prayer, so that they might abandon prayer. And that is not all; to make them cowardly and afraid, he brings vividly to their minds foul and impure thoughts. The thoughts will concern spiritually helpful things and persons. Those who attribute any importance to such thoughts, therefore, do not even dare look at anything or think about anything lest they thereupon stumble into them. These impure thoughts so affect people who are afflicted with melancholia that one should have great pity for them; for these people suffer a tormented life. Some who are so troubled with the profanity of evil, they clearly feel that the devil has access to them without their having the freedom to prevent it. Yet there a some who are able to endure this power of the devil. If these impure thoughts and Feelings arise from melancholia, individuals are not ordinarily freed unless they enter the dark night, which in time deprives them of everything.”
“The third origin from which these impure feelings usually proceed and wage war on the soul is the latter’s fear of them. The fear that springs up at the sudden remembrance of these thoughts, caused by what one sees, is dealing with, or thinking of, produces impure feelings without the person being at fault. Some people are so delicate that when gratification is received spiritually, or in prayer, they immediately experience a lust that so inebriates them and caresses their senses that they become as it were engulfed in the delight and satisfaction of that vice; and this experience continues passively with the other. Sometimes these individuals become aware that certain impure and rebellious acts have taken place. The reason for such occurrences is that since these natures are, as I say, delicate and tender, their humors and blood are stirred up by any change. These persons also experience such feelings when they are inflamed with anger or are agitated by some other disturbance or affliction.”
“If the inordinate love increases, then, as will be seen, the soul grows cold in the love of God and, because of the recollection of that other love, forgets him — not without feeling some remorse of conscience. On the other hand, as the love of God increases, the soul grows cold in the inordinate affection and comes to forget it. For not only do these loves fail to benefit each other, but, since they are contrary loves, the predominating one, while becoming stronger itself, stifles and extinguishes the other, as the philosophers say. Hence our Savior proclaimed in the Gospel: That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the spirit is spirit [Jn. 3:6], that is: Love derived from sensuality terminates in sensuality, and the love that is of the spirit terminates in the spirit of God, and brings it increase.”
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