Half the wrong conclusions at which mankind arrive are reached by the abuse of metaphors, or by mistaking general resemblance or imaginary similarity for real identity. Thus, people compare an ancient monarchy with an old building, an old tree, or an old man, and because the building, tree, or man must, from the nature of things, crumble, or decay, or die, they imagine that the same thing holds good with a community, and that the same laws which govern inanimate matter, or vegetable or animal life, govern also nations and states.

However appropriate in one sense a good metaphor may be, in another sense there is something inappropriate about it. This inappropriateness results from the use of a sign in a sense different from the usual...

One unscrupulous distortion of the truth tends to beget other and opposite distortions.

However useful it is for pedagogical purposes, the biological metaphor of style as a sequence of life-stages was historically misleading, for it bestowed upon the flux of events the shapes and behavior of organisms.

You must know that it is very injurious to begin with this branch of philosophy, viz., Metaphysics; or to explain [at first] the sense of the similes occurring in prophecies, and interpret the metaphors which are employed in historical accounts and which abound in the writings of the Prophets.

This they do in the service of an imaginary science; and, like the astrologers and soothsayers whom they have succeeded, cast up their eyes to the clouds, and speak in immense, unsubstantiated images and similes, in deeply misleading metaphors and allegories, and make use of hypnotic formulae with little regard for experience, or rational argument, or tests of proven reliability. Thereby they throw dust in their own eyes as well as in ours, obstruct our vision of the real world, and further confuse an already sufficiently bewildered public about the relations of morality to politics, and about the nature and methods of the natural sciences and historical studies alike.

Metaphors are dangerous, Metaphors are not to be trifled with. A single metaphor can give birth to love.

Abuse of words has been the great instrument of sophistry and chicanery, of party, faction, and division of society.

Professed scientific philosophers have been wont to employ the remoter and refinished products of science in ways which deny, discount or pervert the obvious and immediate facts of gross experience, unmindful that thereby philosophy itself commits suicide.

On too many occasions, especially in matters concerning purported conversations and messages from gods, mystery has been employed by charlatans to hoodwink the people.

To provide scientific explanations, a creationist would have to identify the plan implemented in the creation. The trouble is that there are countless examples of properties of organisms that are hard to integrate into a coherent theory of design. There are two main types of difficulty, stemming from the frequent tinkerings of evolution in the equally common nastiness of nature. Let us begin with evolutionary tinkering. Structures already present or modified to answer to the organisms current needs. The result may be clumsy and inefficient, but it gets the job done.… (examples of the panda’s thumb, orchid self-fertilization, and the ruminant digestive system elided)
The second class of cases cover those in which, to put it bluntly, nature’s ways are rather repulsive. There is nothing intrinsically beautiful about the scavenging of vultures, the copulatory behavior of the female praying mantis (who tries to bite off the head of the “lucky” male), or the ways in which some insects paralyze their prey.… (example of coprophagy elided)

It is misinterpretation and incomprehension which, very often, provoked an important evolution in the history of philosophy and which, notably, led to the appearance of new notions.

A delusion, a mockery, and a snare.

Which means that we are seriously mistaken when we hope to see science play a role as an instrument of progress and civilization.