NOW here's a scary statistic. According to a survey by the journal Scientific American, 45 per cent of Americans believe that God created life some time in the past 10,000 years. Not only were they born yesterday, they think the world was as well.

I'm not much of a scientist or a person of any obvious religion, so I enter this subject with a polite knock on the door, before taking a seat in the corner.

Those who believe God created the world as it is written in the book of Genesis are known as creationists, possibly because they are always creating a fuss.

Those with the unassailable evidence at the tips of their microscopes are known as scientists. Sorry if a certain bias has already crept in, but say what you like about scientists, at least they deal in hard facts.

Creationists insist that God knocked up the world over a long working week about 10,000 years ago, while scientists believe that human life evolved gradually over millions, or possibly billions, of years. That almost half of all Americans should lean towards the creationist view is surely alarming, indicating that the most powerful nation on earth is stuffed with people who eat McDonalds for breakfast and believe the literal truth of the Bible, especially that bit in Apostles about "what will this babbler say?" Well, they always want to know what the President will say next.

It is tempting to think that we are safe from such spiritual sloppiness in this country, but there are those among us who hold the book of Genesis above their head with pride. A state-run secondary school in Gateshead is full of teachers who do not accept Darwin's findings on evolution, and teach creationism alongside evolution, rather as if the two were an either/or box to tick. Evolution is presented as merely a theory, equal in weight to God's six-day week.

Emmanuel College was set up by the last Conservative government and has been designated a beacon school by New Labour. Many of its staff appear happy to teach that creation is an acceptable explanation of our origins, giving this Biblical story the weight of truth.

Here, after a website trawl, are some quotes from a lecture given in September 2000 by Steven Layfield, head of science at Emmanuel College. First, a telling snatch of words: "...we affirm that Creation is something which God historically did". With a statement like that, perhaps he should be demoted to teaching religious instruction.

After all, he does like reaching for his Bible: "Indeed, so self-evident is the truth of Creation that the Scriptures announce to us, 'For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities... have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse'."

For a scientist to use the Bible as hard evidence is a little puzzling. It hardly seems very scientific. Still, lessons must be mercifully short, being confined to the Biblical equivalent of "because I say so".

Now you might think that all this doesn't much matter. However, when we have a prime minister who believes that there should be more faith schools, the thought of state schools being run by people with such batty views is frankly disturbing.

Incidentally, as a non-scientific, non-religious sort, I'd like to make a calm suggestion. Religious belief and scientific wonder don't need to be on opposite sides, so long as all that creationist nonsense is ignored. After all, someone or something got us going all those billions of years ago.

Maybe it was God who made the original spark. But to accept the literal truth of the Bible is taking faith a bit far.

Updated: 10:35 Thursday, March 14, 2002