Well, they ARE both stories we tell. But the type of claim that I was talking about comes closer to what you were saying: I didn’t say only that these are stories, but that the relativist says “these are just stories we tell ourselves, generated as much by our preconceptions as by the data.” And that’s where this comes in:
Was that your point? That isn’t the sense I get from the original remark:
Admittedly that is consistent with a “soft” relativism, which asserts that there may be an objective reality but we have no access to it, as opposed to a “hard” relativism which asserts the absence of that objective reality, but it really does sound like an attempt to drag science down by insisting that its conclusions are the products of a “worldview” (aaaagh, my ears!) and hence not inherently more trustworthy than the conclusions of anti-science.
But – and this is the thing – whatever biases, predilections and inclinations one might attribute to scientists, scientists have got something which the competition has not got: a method which has a way of getting down to business, where the investigation of facts is concerned. What method can do better? If the earth is young, then the only way to show that that’s so is the rigorous, careful reasoned scrutiny of evidence. Alas for the young-earther, if the earth is NOT young, then the same holds. Presuppositions and bias will not carry the ball very far in the face of that sort of methodological approach. And when people are disappointed that that’s so, all of a sudden the discussion is no longer about the merits of the thing itself. All of a sudden it’s not about the evidence, but about throwing up one’s hands and saying, well, y’know, everybody’s biased, so what can be said, really? Guess I’ll stick with “turtles all the way down,” because the people who say it’s not really turtles are biased.