Problems understanding naturalistically the beginning of the universe

[TheRocketSurgeon]

I do not accept any of the other accounts of scientific speculation to whether the life emerged from a primordial soup or from the outer space or whatever else because this is just speculation, and these speculations appear just because there cannot be accepted that this a being exists because there would be consequences for it, and there is a strong commitment to materialism at this moment by a large part of the scientific community, as Richard Lewontin a geneticist and self-proclaimed marxist would say: "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.".

*ahem* Ladies and gentlemen, a general announcement:

I FUCKING HATE QUOTE-MINERS!!!

You have completely and utterly misrepresented what Dr. Lewontin was saying, in that bit about "just-so" stories. Ironically, he's talking about trying to educate the public about science when they are in fact ignorant of it (and the class-revolt of the non-elites, since he's a Marxist, which included a fundamentalist backlash against naturalistic science), and therefore many people must simply accept what the scientists are telling them, even when it goes against what might be "common sense" to them. For instance, Quantum Mechanics defies "common sense" in numerous ways. Doesn't make it wrong. Do I understand it, truly? Nope! I'm not a physicist... so I take their word, even though I still struggle to understand concepts like subatomic particle probability field interactions.

Here's a broader context of the quote:

"With great perception, Sagan sees that there is an impediment to the popular credibility of scientific claims about the world, an impediment that is almost invisible to most scientists. Many of the most fundamental claims of science are against common sense and seem absurd on their face. Do physicists really expect me to accept without serious qualms that the pungent cheese that I had for lunch is really made up of tiny, tasteless, odorless, colorless packets of energy with nothing but empty space between them? Astronomers tell us without apparent embarrassment that they can see stellar events that occurred millions of years ago, whereas we all know that we see things as they happen. When, at the time of the moon landing, a woman in rural Texas was interviewed about the event, she very sensibly refused to believe that the television pictures she had seen had come all the way from the moon, on the grounds that with her antenna she couldn’t even get Dallas. What seems absurd depends on one’s prejudice. Carl Sagan accepts, as I do, the duality of light, which is at the same time wave and particle, but he thinks that the consubstantiality of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost puts the mystery of the Holy Trinity “in deep trouble.” Two’s company, but three’s a crowd.

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. 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. 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."

(Emphasis my own. In short, he's saying that because science cannot refer to magic, it sometimes makes guesses that are wrong, or even when proven right, that mystify the public more than the magical ones.)

And here's the source: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1997/01/...of-demons/

Edit to Add: Oh, and you copied-and-pasted your citation from this Creationist website, word for word, including referring to him as "a self-proclaimed Marxist", here: http://creation.com/amazing-admission-lewontin-quote