NAS and Creationism

Today the National Academy of Sciences published a booklet titled Science, Evolution, and Creationism. The booklet is too scant to convince anyone of anything -- in that sense it's kind of like a Chris Mooney radio interview --but it does seem to go out of its way to say something quite extraordinary:

Science and Religion Offer Different Ways of Understanding the World

Science and religion address separate aspects of human experience.
Many scientists have written eloquently about how their scientific studies of biological evolution have enhanced rather than lessened their religious faith. And many religious people and denominations accept the scientific evidence for evolution.

This is an extraordinary concession and makes you wonder where the NAS is coming from. The truth is that there is not a single shred of evidence in the human experience pointing towards a religious interpretation of the world. It is a profoundly anti-scientific statement from a purportedly scientific organization.

In his What's New column today, Bob Parks writes

The panel that produced the report was headed by Francisco Ayala, a biologist at UC, Irvine, and a former Dominican priest.... Released on the day of the Iowa Caucus, the Science, Evolution, and Creationism report was all but ignored by mainstream media. The report stresses that acceptance of evolution does not require abandoning belief in God. However, there is a growing mountain of
evidence supporting evolution and not a shred of evidence for the existence of God.

Personally, this type of concession bothers me much more than government meddling in reports about global warming. There the facts are clearly against them and can be cleared up in subsequent reports. But to assert that a profoundly anti-scientific view of the world is equivalent -- or as successful -- as the philosophy of science is quite extraordinary.