A SMALL minority of biblical creationists seem determined to indocrinate children with their views by campaigning for creationism to be included in our children's school science curriculum.

Sandra Delamere (Letters, September 1) is the latest correspondent to offer incorrect and misleading nonsense under the pretence of some kind of scientific validity.

The truth is that you either believe in a creator or you don't, and for Ms Delamere to refer to more "extreme forms of fundamentalism" as a way to lend credence to her own views is facile.

It doesn't really make any difference if her God only had a hand in "bits" of the Big Bang, or that perhaps in her mind he took longer than seven days to make a perfect world.

Ms Delamere's point concerning the artificial development of nucleotides and macromolecules that formed the building blocks of DNA show that studying a scientific subject and having a scientific mind are two different things.

The Cosmos is a somewhat larger laboratory and has been running "experiments" for rather longer. and anyway would the creation of life in a laboratory modify her own belief? Somehow I doubt it.

As Ms Delamere should know, any scientific theory is built upon the vast latticed framework of all existing scientific knowledge and at best we connect new knowledge onto that structure.

The idea of an external creator is clearly outside that structure and does not connect to it. The Bible texts that Ms Delamere refers to are themselves edited and imperfectly translated for political or factional motives, and interpretations given to some passages are slanted in favour of a desired outcome. They prove nothing, and have no place in schools science education.

ANDY KING, Locks Heath.