PLEASE can we clear up the muddle about creationism, the teaching of which the Scottish Secular Society seeks to ban ("'Religious extremists infiltrating schools'", The Herald, November 12)?

We are told that it means "the belief that the universe and beings originate from acts of divine creation".' Like all Christians, I believe just that.

This is very different from so-called "young Earth creationism"- based on a literal understanding of the early chapters of Genesis, which suggest that the world was created in six periods of 24 hours a few thousand years ago. I hope that the Scottish Secular Society is gunning for the latter and not the former. Otherwise our schools could end up back in the old USSR, with state atheism as the boring official creed.

John Coutts,

138 Ladysneuk Road, Stirling.