Irritable reaching after fact and reason seems to be a fact of human life. Anna Fels, M.D. (a real doctor, mind you, not a Ph.D.) writes:

If you activate the area of the brain that generates laughter, for example, the subject may happily "explain" that his hilarity stems from an overly earnest looking doctor or an odd diagram on the wall.

Neurologists also happened upon the mind's tendency to concoct explanations for puzzling events. In rare instances when the left and right sides of the brain become disconnected, the verbal left half seamlessly fabricates stories to explain actions initiated by the right half.

Apparently, the mind abhors an explanatory vacuum and rushes in to fill the void, with no compunction about creating "reasons" out of whole cloth.