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We will consider any cause, except a Transcendent First Cause...they say they cannot allow the divine foot in the door. This is the basic underpining of all of their declarations.

You're citing biologist/geneticist Richard Lewontin, formerly of MIT, now at Harvard. regarding that "divine foot in the door."

The full quote definitely supports your insight about a priori commitment to metaphysical naturalism:

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 an absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.

Yikes. Looks like a "rigged game" to me. Of what possible value is this "commitment" WRT the scientific discovery of what is actually going on in the real world?

RE: Lewontin's statement: It seems to me the rhetoric we use ought to conform with reality, and not the other way around. The latter approach certainly isn't science. Your insight about "materialist magicians" is clearly on the mark.

This sort of inversion of the classical rules of scientific discourse is getting all too common these days....

What I can't figure out is why such folks think what they're doing is even science?

Thank you, dear Texas Songwriter, for yet another "spot-on" essay/post!