Basics: What is an apriory commitment? (A-Priory)

Modern Science must rule out special creation or divine guidance.  (Julian Huxley, Evolution, the Modern Synthesis (New York, Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1942 p457, gleaned the Battle for Truth , DavidNoebel

or

WHY?

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-priori 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. Richard Lewontin "Billions and Billions of Demons"

http://www.drjbloom.com/Public%20files/Lewontin_Review.htm




So, why do we believe the earth was created recently, perhaps in the last 6000 years ....Simply put, it came from the Bible. Of course, the Bible doesn’t say explicitly anywhere, “the earth is 6,000 years old.” Good thing it doesn’t; otherwise it would be out of date the following year. But we wouldn’t expect an all-knowing God to make that kind of a mistake.

God gave us something better. In essence, He gave us a “birth certificate.” For example, using my personal birth certificate, I can calculate how old I am at any point. It is similar with the earth. Genesis 1 says that the earth was created on the first day of creation (Genesis 1:1–5). From there, we can begin calculations of the age of the earth.   Let’s do a rough calculation to show how this works. The age of the earth can be estimated by taking the first 5 days of creation (from earth’s creation to Adam), then following the genealogies from Adam to Abraham in Genesis 5 and 11, then adding in the time from Abraham to today.


Both statements above flow out of an aprioy commitment.  What commitment goes before these approaches to origins.