The most amazing thing about the original author's post is that he completely misconstrues the quote by Dr. Richard Lewontin:
1 " Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs,
in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life,
in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism.
2 It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated.
3 Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.The eminent Kant scholar Lewis Beck used to say that anyone who could believe in God could believe in anything. To appeal to an omnipotent deity is to allow that at any moment the regularities of nature may be ruptured, that Miracles may happen."
1 Regardless how absurd an idea may seem at first, scientists follow where the results lead them. Whether they like these results or not. In the 1970's plate tectonics was regarded as a joke in the geographic community. The idea seemed patently absurd. Yet more and more evidence piled up until now plate tectonics are regarded as a fact by most scientists. This is done because scientific studies can back these claims up. And if someone creates a bat****-crazy theory and wants to establish it as "the truth", scientists still accept that idea, and then procede research that topic to prove or disprove its validity.
2 We have a commitment to materialism due to the fact that we have no other way to test for cause and effect. We cannot establish connection between events unless there is a way to make it measurable. So any claim that is unfalsifyable is pretty much useless in predicting the state of the world or how it is going to change. This goes back to Karl Popper, who established this scientific principle.
3 Alowing for divine interventions in science would limit their applicability. If you cannot be certain that things will usually happen on a cause-effect basis, then you might as well not try predicting anything at all. At any time, God could show up and completely change the rules. If you try to take this into consideration, you cannot perform science, since God is an unknown factor. Imagine an insurance company trying to come up with a cost for yor partner dying of cancer, and then factoring in that he might be killed by Leprechauns riding radioactive deer. It just isn't any good. It does not help in predicting the probabilty of dying of cancer. So if you consider that something is God's work in a scientific study, you basically throw the towel, since you're admitting that you do not know what is leading to the state that we are observing today.
It's kind of like the rules of Blernsball in Futurama.
