The report has serious flaws, which are cause for concern.

To begin with, the report fails to make necessary distinctions. For one, the word "evolution" is used indiscriminately to refer to (i) the empirical fact that evolution has taken place and (ii) the neo-Darwinian theory, which accounts for the empirical fact of evolution in terms of random mutations and natural selection.

For another, "creationist" is used indiscriminately as a label for (i) those who claim that the world was created by God in six days and (ii) advocates of intelligent design (ID), who refer neither to a Supreme Being nor to Holy Scripture but merely put forward the hypothesis that certain aspects of the universe, notably the empirical fact of biological evolution and the structure of physical law, cannot be fully understood without reference to a superior intelligence — an intelligence that is not itself a product of biological evolution.

In addition, the report makes a number of assertions that are simply not true.

The report claims that "Scientific advances and discoveries in the field of genetics have made it possible to demonstrate the existence of genetic mutations that come about at random and are not oriented towards a particular goal." In reality, the belief in the objective nature of the randomness of "random mutations" is supported by nothing but an act of faith.

(The objective randomness of measurement outcomes in quantum physics must not be invoked in this context. Quantum mechanics has so-called "no-go theorems," which imply a certain amount of genuine randomness. A science that lacks such theorems can establish lawfulness, but it cannot possibly demonstrate randomness.)

The report points out "that the science of evolution cannot claim to give an explanation as to 'why things are' but tries to explain how things are happening or have happened." Quite so. But what about explanations as to what things are? Apparently we need not ask since the answer — matter — is taken for granted, notwithstanding the difficulties that physicists, philosophers, and philosophers of science face in defining "matter."

The report fears "a serious confusion being introduced into our children’s minds between what has to do with convictions, beliefs and ideals and what has to do with science".

There is nothing to fear. This serious confusion has long ago been successfully instilled into our children's minds (and our own when we were children) by the science establishment itself.

Consider, for instance, classical electromagnetic theory. Fact is that the calculation of electromagnetic effects can be carried out in two steps: given the distribution and motion of charges, we calculate a set of six functions of position and time, the so-called "electromagnetic field," and using these six functions, we calculate the effects that these charges have on any other charge. We do not know — by what mechanism or process — these effects are produced.

Fiction is that the electromagnetic field is a physical entity in its own right, that it is locally generated by charges, that it mediates the action of charges on charges by locally acting on itself, and that it locally acts on charges.

(Did you notice that this story fails to explain how a charge locally acts on the electromagnetic field, how the electromagnetic field locally acts on itself, and how the electromagnetic field locally acts on a charge? Apparently the familiarity of what seems to be local action makes us believe that local action is well understood. As DeWitt and Graham wrote, "physicists are, at bottom, a naive breed, forever trying to come to terms with the ‘world out there’ by methods which, however imaginative and refined, involve in essence the same element of contact as a well-placed kick."[1])

This sleight-of-hand — the transmogrification of a mathematical tool for calculating the effects that charges have on charges, into a physical mechanism or process by which charges act on charges — is made possible by the retardation of the action of charges on charges: causes precede their effects. Because the action of masses on masses in Newton’s theory of gravity is instantaneous, the same sleight-of-hand did not work for Newton, and this is why he refused to "frame hypotheses." Nor does it work for quantum mechanics — the fundamental theoretical framework of contemporary physics — since the quantum world features instantaneous correlations as well as retarded ones.

What is more, whereas the deterministic correlations of classical physics permit themselves to be thought of as co-variations between objective states of affairs, the statistical correlations of quantum physics do not permit this kind of interpretation. The laws of quantum physics correlate measurement outcomes. They cannot be construed as correlating physical properties or values that are possessed, or physical events or states of affairs that occur, irrespective of measurements. We do not have any scientific theory that explains how the actual outcome of one measurement influences the probabilities of the possible outcomes of another measurement.

Our ignorance goes deeper than that. Since the fundamental theoretical framework of physics presupposes measurements (to the possible outcomes of which it assigns probabilities), it must be consistent with the existence or occurrence of measurements, and it has been shown that this requirement of consistency implies the validity of all well-tested physical theories — the so-called Standard Model plus General Relativity — at least as effective theories.[2,3] (An effective theory is valid on some but not all scales of length. The Standard Model and General Relativity are valid on all presently accessible scales.)

But this means that the well-tested theories of contemporary physics are essentially tautological. They are apodictic in every possible world containing objects that have spatial extent (they "occupy space") and are made of finite numbers of objects that lack spatial extents, such as quarks and leptons.

According to the report, "A statement on the world can only be described as objective if it has been verified by an independent observer." Try to observe something independently of the central dogma of the scientific establishment — materialism — and see what happens!

"This verification," we are told, "depends on three factors: scepticism, rationality and logic and, finally, methodological materialism. These three pillars ensure the objectivity of a scientific result."

"Methodological materialism" is the scientific establishment's euphemism for what Popper has dubbed "promissory materialism". It is a metaphysical ideology if ever there was one. The first thing the scientific establishment ought to be skeptical about is this, its central dogma.

How often, for example, does it happen that a physics teacher truthfully admits his or her own ignorance about the mechanisms or processes that underly the deterministic correlations of classical physics or the statistical correlations of quantum physics? Instead, he or she spins tales that only serve one purpose: to stifle students' natural curiosity.

The report points out that "presenting a thesis as a scientific theory without providing any evidence can be compared to an attempt to manipulate minds". As several critics — not by any means all creationists or even proponents of ID — have stressed, this is precisely the problem with the neo-Darwinian theory. While random mutations and natural selection arguably account for changes in finch beak size, the claim that the same mechanism accounts for how finches arose in the first place is an empirically unwarranted extrapolation. Genes code for proteins. The belief that they also code for phenotypes — that they "carry information about the characteristics of a living organism, whether it be a simple bacterium or a human being" — requires a leap of faith of epic proportions.

A scientific theory is supposed to make predictions, rather than merely invent post hoc stories. A scientific theory of evolution would have to provide laws enabling us to predict, in principle, for every possible species and every possible environment, whether or not the species will survive, or for every possible trait and every possible environment, whether or not the trait will be selected. At the very least, it would have to be able to predict probabilities for all possible outcomes. Yet even if such laws existed, the situations to which they would apply (not to speak of the laws themselves) would be far too complex to be either proved or disproved. Hence they would not be scientific in the Popperian sense.

So if we were honest, we would admit not only that we know nothing about the mechanisms or processes that underwrite the physical correlation laws, but also that we do not have a scientific theory of evolution.

The report proudly announces that "Evolution has also entered the field of psychology: evolutionist psychology is a field of psychology that aims to explain the mechanisms of human thought on the basis of the theory of biological evolution. It is based on the fundamental hypothesis that the brain, like all the other organs, is the result of evolution and thus constitutes an adaptation to specific environmental constraints, to which the ancestors of the Hominidae were forced to respond."

Thus we now have titles such as Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating, Ever Since Adam and Eve: The Evolution of Human Sexuality, and The Dangerous Passion: Why Jealousy Is as Necessary as Love and Sex. In the wake of neo-Darwinism, science appears to be descending to the level of soap opera. Another book in this category, The Natural History of Rape, describes rape as "a natural, biological phenomenon that is a product of the human evolutionary heritage," akin to "the leopard's spots and the giraffe's elongated neck." Not long ago a Princeton University professor published an article defending bestiality, insisting that "sex across the species barrier... ceases to be an offence to our status and dignity as human beings." And in the wake of Columbia disaster, in an article in the Science Times reflecting on the fact that we are moved more by the deaths of individuals than by statistics, we were assured that "emotions, developed to enhance the species' survival, keeping early humans one step in front of hungry lions, sometimes mislead in the modern world." Welcome to brave new world of evolutionary psychology!

Yet what the report fears most is that "creationism could become a threat to human rights". Go figure.

Philosopher Daniel Dennett has described Darwinism as a universal acid that eats away every idea it touches, including moral values and any possible meaning of life. The authors of the report prefer not to see the causal link between that universal acid and the corrosion of values in our societies, resulting in greatly increased crime rates, shocking developments in the nature of violent crime, greatly increased use of drugs (including powerful drugs like crack cocaine and heroin), rise in teen pregnancy, rise in sexually transmitted diseases (including AIDS), increasingly violent entertainment products (movies, music, video games) — you name it.

Again, the report asserts that "advances in medical research with the aim of effectively combating infectious diseases such as AIDS are impossible if every principle of evolution is denied." (Needless to say, allegiance to neo-Darwinist dogma and denying every principle of evolution are not the only possibilities. Proponents of ID simply argue that evolution is better understood without materialistic blinders.)

As a matter of fact, advances in medical research rarely depend on neo-Darwinian ideas. The editor of the review journal BioEssays wrote in the introduction to a special issue on evolution (December 2000): "The subject of evolution occupies a special, and paradoxical, place within biology as a whole. While the great majority of biologists would probably agree with Theodosius Dobzhansky's dictum that 'nothing in biology makes sense except in light of evolution,' most can conduct their work quite happily without particular reference to evolutionary ideas. 'Evolution' would appear to be the indispensable unifying idea and, at the same time, a highly superfluous one."

The report explains that "In order to claim to be scientific, it is only necessary to refer to natural causes in one’s explanations. The intelligent design ideas, however, only refers to supernatural causes."

The claim that intelligent design ideas onlyrefers to supernatural causes is ludicrous, but let this pass. The question is, what is natural and what is supernatural? If materialism arbitrarily constrains the natural in biology to random mutations and "natural" selection, then those who do not toe the materialist line have no choice but to invoke the supernatural. Whose fault is this? What ought to be rejected is the artificial distinction between the natural and the supernatural, but this accepted and reinforced as much by neo-Darwinists as by intelligent designers.

Notwithstanding Crick’s “astonishing hypothesis,” according to which certain goings-on in our brains are the causes of, if not identical with, our conscious experiences, we do not have a single scientific theory that can explain how neural activity could cause, let alone be, conscious experience. A significant and growing number of neuroscientists and philosophers — none of them intelligent designers let alone creationists — arrive at the conclusion that methodological materialism is incapable of accounting for conscious experience. If so, the materialist dogma compels us to either deny conscious experience altogether or to treat as a supernatural phenomenon.

The report accuses intelligent designers of "a tendentious selection of facts". A tendentious selection of facts is precisely what "methodological materialism" requires of science. Thomas Kuhn didn't go far enough. Scientists do not simply fail to treat anomalies as counter-instances; they deny their very existence. Anomalies tend to get swept under the carpet until there are so many of them that the furniture starts to fall over. Materialistic approaches are increasingly recognized as self-contradictory and powerless to deal with consciousness. Backing off from the problem has led to a growing tunnel-blindness — major areas of relevant science are increasingly neglected or ignored.

Materialism insists on causal closure. That's fine, provided that the causally closed universe includes the laws of nature, their origin, and the power that keeps them in force. It takes a considerable degree of intelligence to understand the Standard Model or General Relativity. It took a much higher degree of intelligence to discover these theoretical structures. Their validity all but entails that the origin of intelligence is Intelligence, just as the reality of consciousness all but entails that the origin of consciousness is Consciousness. Neo-Darwinism is an insult to the intelligence of some of humanity's greatest minds, who realized that intelligible laws must have intelligent origins.

The report asserts that "The scientific approach consists in continually questioning models, which remain true unless and until they have been refuted". Since by the report's definition of science materialism is irrefutable, its eternal truth is assured. How convenient!

The report states that "In every creationist experiment, faith imposes a preconceived idea of the expected result. Faith does not permit them objectively to accept the result of a scientific experiment if it does not correspond to their beliefs, so it would seem impossible to reconcile faith and science."

Whatever the report may mean by a "creationist experiment", it is inevitable that preconceived ideas affect the interpretation of experimental results. Science operates within an interpretative framework that formulates questions and interprets answers. This framework is itself not testable. Materialism is such an untestable framework, and the more we investigate empirically, the less our findings fit.

Intelligent designers propose frameworks in which Intelligence is the origin of intelligence, Consciousness is the origin of consciousness, Love as the origin of Love, Beauty as the origin of aesthetic values, Good as the origin of moral values, and Freedom is the origin of free will. Such frameworks give meaning to life, they are consistent with the scientific method (minus the oxymoronic "methodological materialism"), and they make better sense of the empirical data and the actually known laws of nature.

The report claims that "It is necessary to separate belief from science." If science is committed to materialism, then the opposition between science and belief is misconceived. We are simply dealing with different systems of beliefs and different interpretations of the facts. Believe it or not, even Richard Dawkins made this point. In an interview with Jonathan Miller he said:

"I do regard the hypothesis of a supernatural designer as a scientific hypothesis. It's a wrong one, but it actually is science... The moment you talk about a supernatural Creator, Designer, anything, you are advancing a scientific hypothesis which is either right or wrong. A universe that has a supernatural intelligence, a supernatural overmind in it, is a very very different kind of universe from the purely scientific point of view than a universe which hasn't. And it's a very, very interesting difference. It's a massive difference. And I think it's scientifically interesting to hold a view of the universe, which I do, in which there is no supermind... People who hold the opposite view, that there was a supernatural intelligence right from the start responsible for it all, are advancing a very, very different, diametrically opposite hypothesis, which is either right or wrong. Even if we can't finally decide whether it's right or wrong, we must at least admit that it is a different hypothesis, a very different hypothesis, and therefore it matters."

Finally, the report's claim that "the construction of a myth has nothing in common with the construction of a scientific assertion" simply reveals its authors' ignorance of the relevant debates in the philosophy and sociology of science.

[1] DeWitt, B S, and Graham, R N (1971). Resource letter IQM-1 on the interpretation of quantum mechanics. American Journal of Physics 39, 724–738.

[2] Mohrhoff, U (2006). Quantum mechanics explained, quant-ph/0607005 [PDF].

[3] Mohrhoff, U (2002). Why the laws of physics are just so, Foundations of Physics 32 (8), 1313–1324 (2002); quant-ph/0202149 [PDF].