Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc

This passage from "Powerless" brings to mind the logical fallacies that many of us often engage in in our wrestling with the goings on of the world around us:

"The relationship between power and knowledge, Focault tells us, is also an important one. A major source of power comes from claims of knowledge. To claim that a statement is true is to make a claim to power. Criminology, for example, can make claims that exclude the delinquent by creating theories of human behavior that place the delinquent outside of 'established norms.' From this derives a system of power relations in which the delinquent is dominated.
The other Focault, the pendulum one, who fortunately died long before the later Focault was born, and was therefore blissfully ignorant of his theories, did not believe that truth was a matter of power relationships. Truth, for him, stood outside the constructions of human minds. Focault's pendulum did not work because he had established a theoretical system that accounted for it, and that excluded systems in which it did not work. It worked because the Earth rotated, and would rotate whether or not human theoretical structures defined such rotation as 'normal.'"

The seems to be a sort of an take on the human limitations of logical reasoning. In particular it belies the glaring assumption that we even posses the ability to use reason and logic in a rational, accurate, and truthful manner. But then again, what is truth, you know? I'm no philosopher so I don't know if this fits exactly, but I am reminded of "post hoc ergo propter hoc" which according to Wikipedia is "Latin for 'after this, therefore because (on account) of this', and is a logical fallacy (of the questionable cause variety) which states, 'Since that event followed this one, that event must have been caused by this one.' It is often shortened to simply post hoc and is also sometimes referred to as false cause, coincidental correlation or correlation not causation. It is subtly different from the fallacy cum hoc ergo propter hoc, in which the chronological ordering of a correlation is insignificant."

"Post hoc is a particularly tempting error because temporal sequence appears to be integral to causality. The fallacy lies in coming to a conclusion based solely on the order of events, rather than taking into account other factors that might rule out the connection. Most familiarly, many superstitious religious beliefs and magical thinking arise from this fallacy."

So, how much of our lives is dictated by assumptions of truth? Maybe a measure of faith (not necessarily religious) is an absolute necessity in order to function in this reality...who knows. Even if you did know, Lord knows you couldn't prove it to be true, or does He?