Evidence. Can't go there due to a prior committment

[Fred]

"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.

Science hasn't lived up to promise of better health and longevity? You cannot possibly be living in this reality and agree with that nonsense. Pick an unsubstantiated anything in science. In fact, science is entirely about substantiation. This man had a profound misconception about both our history (and the quality and brevity of our lives before science) and the basic mechanics of scientific understanding. Care to explain a big question by invoking deity? The final sentence of your post is akin to claiming conspiracy.

I don't want to go off on a tangent right out of the box, so maybe we could just stick with the main point initially. The materialist commitment is an a priori stance that runs counter to your claim that the observation must lead to the conclusion and not the other way around. I think the best way of putting this was the wag that observed that Daniel Dennett's book would have been more accurately titled: Consciousness Explained Away.