LONDON: A religious campaign to block the teaching of evolutionary biology is taking an inexorable grip on the US.

A survey published in Scientific American reveals that the doctrine of creationism - which holds that the origins of humanity and the Earth are recent and divine - is spreading in the world’s greatest technological nation at a disturbing rate.

More and more states are restricting the teaching of evolution in schools. The journal says that a startling 45 per cent of Americans now believe God created life some time in the past 10,000 years, despite research that has established the universe as 13 billion years old and that men and women are descended from apelike ancestors.

Even among US Catholics 40 per cent still insist God created human life a few thousand years ago - even though Pope John Paul II reaffirmed his Church’s commitment to the theory of evolution in 1996.

“At the time, newspapers in Mississippi wrote that this proved the Pope was senile and should be ignored,” said Amanda Chesworth, head of the anti-creationist Darwin Day group. “It is very, very scary. Creationism is spreading further and further. It now has missionaries across the world and even has bases in Russia and Turkey.”

Scientific American believes that the content of textbooks and lesson plans in schools is already being affected by creationism. Cheswell agrees. “Our nation went from the Earth to the Moon a few years ago, and discovered these worlds date back billions of years.” —Dawn/The Observer News Service.