So how fast does evolution proceed? How do the religous fundamentalists explain the 'old' look of the earth and certain observable scientific facts that contradict a 'young Earth'?

I visited a tourist attraction at the weekend - somewhere that was one of my inspirations for studying geology. It was Wookey Hole caves. A giant underground cave complex in the Mendip Hills in the UK. Apart from the blatent tourist line fed to visitors about a witch turned to stone by a monk (clearly untrue but a fun story), and the superficial way that the geology was explained (I found myself doing a more specialist guide tour explaining some of the features and deposits) - necessary for the range of ages and science understanding of the visitors, I found myself yet again turning to creationist claims and finding huge holes and gaps in their interpretation of the evidence and a total lack of understanding of science and geology.

I simply offer 1 thing - the formation of stalagmites and stalactites. We can, and have measured the rates of formation for well over a hundred years. We have descriptions of the caves going back over a thousand years; these wonderfully impressive formations take hundreds of thousands of years to build in caves - yet we are told that the earth is less than 10,000 years old.

What explanation can the creationist come up with?

The only ones that fit are:

1. They formed faster in the begining and have slowed down.
2. They were created almost fully formed when the Earth was created.

This took me back to a creationist meeting I attended where the explanation for the apparent age of the universe according to measurements of the distances between ourseleves and other atronomical bodies using the speed of light as a constant and measuring light years and extrapolating from this the age of the universe was the simple retort that aetheistic scientists assume that the speed of light is constant, whereas it could have slowed down! And this came from a PhD scientist! I was so gob smacked that I just laughed at him. He then informed me that despite the fact I was being disrespectful, I should know that science has managed to slow the speed of light to almost a standstill experimentally (which is true).

Of course, when I stated that I would happily show him there and then how to slow doown the speed of light using a diamond or any other transparent or translucent material, he scoffed at me. It was clear that he had no understanding of the properties of light and that when light travels in a vacuum (space) its speed is indeed constant but that when it travels from one mediumk to another it can indeed be slowed down. A stick apparently bending in a glass of water demonstrates this just as well.

Isn't it about time we stopped fussing over creationism in schools? It has no place in any rational person's education.

If people wish to believe that the universe and all that therein is was created less than 10,000 years ago and that it came in a 'mature form' then fine, but please don't try and convince me (on no evidence whatsoever) that:

dinosaurs and people walked together; 
meat eating dinosaurs only ate vegetables until 'original sin'; 
the speed of light has slowed since the 'creation';
and all the other crackpot ideas...

Now, as long as they don't interfere with my life or scientfic and technological progress let them be to live in their deluded world. The problem is that they do try and interfere with progress. If we took the central message of 'intelligent design' creationism to heart, then we would make no scientific progress. In essence, the ID crowd simply say that anything that they cannot explain

But I am sick and tired of these so called upstanding Christian, seekers of truth who do nothing but deceive and lie. Even when you show conclusively that they lie they just ignore you and carry on lying. If that is what it means to be a 'card carrying Christian' then I, for one , resign from the club!

At least some places are being sensible. Here are a few reports of how creationism is being squeezed (quite rightly) out of the education system;

Creationism to be banished from Swedish schools

Published: 15th October 2007 07:57 CET
Online: http://www.thelocal.se/8790/

The Swedish government is cracking down on religion in schools. New rules will include a ban on biology teachers teaching creationism or 'intelligent design' alongside evolution.

STRASBOURG, France (Reuters) - Europe's main human rights body voted on Thursday to urge schools across the continent to firmly oppose the teaching of creationist and "intelligent design" views in their science classes.

"The purpose of this report is to warn against the attempt to pass off a belief -- creationism -- as a science and to teach the theses of this belief in science classes," she said. "Its purpose is not to fight any belief."

Supporters of intelligent design want it taught in science class alongside evolution. A U.S. court ruled this out in a landmark decision in 2005, dismissing it as "neo-creationism."