I used to be fascinated by people with strange beliefs, and as a freelance hack I used to write about them quite often - everything from hardline evangelical Christians through to more exotic sects and cults.

(Rule one; don't call cults cults. Most follow the teachings of L. Ron Hubbard on this one, and will sic the lawyers on you. Even when they don't have a leg to stand on, this is an expensive and stressful pain in the arse. Anyway, don't call them cults. Instead we use the neutral and non-judgemental term "new religious movements" (NRMs).)

NRMs are a lot like drugs. In the Daily Mail's book of Middle England nightmares, all drugs are bad, full stop. Fringe religion is the same. All bad, and God forbid your children should run off with any of them.

But as with drugs, some are harmful Class As, and some are kind of okay. A few NRMs are very sinister indeed, but others are just plain odd (check out the Panacea Society) and there's one I came across - the Aetherius Society - whose members are lovely, even saintly people, even if their beliefs are absolutely harpic.

I ended this strand to my career late in the year 1999 shortly after interviewing a Home Counties civil servant who assured me that Christ was returning in majesty within the next few weeks. I was tired of listening to people talking bollocks at me when actually they should be talking to therapists. It's pathetic really; I didn't even get a book out of all this, let alone a PhD.

But now all this religious craziness is coming back with a horrible rush of déjà vu.

Si and I are working on a graphic biography of Charles Darwin, it being his 200th birthday next year, plus the 150th anniversary of the publication of Origin of Species. As with our previous two books, the idea is that a hefty part of the print run will be given away to secondary school pupils. They'll also be available in libraries and other places in Bristol, Shrewsbury, Portsmouth, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Westminster and across the west of England.

Now you can't do Darwin without coming up against the issue of how you deal with creationism and its Trojan, "intelligent design". So do you ignore it altogether and try not to offend the religious sensibilities of the kids and their parents in the name of warm fuzzy multiculturalism and inclusiveness? Because whatever creationism might look like in America, in the UK it is often the domain of Muslim fundamentalists and evangelical Christian churches with their origins in Africa or the Caribbean.

You can't not address it, for the simple reason that today's creationism and ID arguments are exactly the same as the ones used in Darwin's day. They're still even using William Paley's watchmaker argument, which dates back to the 18th century (that's some of Si's artwork from the comic over there.)

Much of this fuss over creationism is the media's fault. Imagine Radio 4 was interviewing, say, a disabled woman who had just sailed single-handedly round the world. And let's say that in the interests of "balance", they put her head-to-head with a flat-earther.

"No," he would say (it would be a man with a beard), "no, you did not circumnavigate the globe, because the earth is not a globe. It's flat; you just sailed round the edge of it, yes you did. And those pictures of a supposedly globular earth taken from space are, in fact, forgeries. But congratulations on not falling off the edge. Way to go, sailing wheelchair lady!"

You would think that the radio people had taken leave of their senses in giving the credibility of airtime to an out-and-out whacko, no?

So how come the media, in the interests of "balance" gives airtime to pushers of creationism or ID? No-one in any position of responsibility takes flat-earthers seriously, and creationists should be treated likewise. Well, part of the answer is in the sheer visceral hatred that many in the scientific world have for creationists. This makes for good telly and radio; pitting an irresistible force against an immovable object.

To listen to some science fundamentalists, you'd get the idea that Biblical literalists are the biggest threat since the Black Death. This is partly because they are very influential in the States but partly also because many atheists erroneously mistake all religious people for loony fundamentalists.

Surveys in recent years put the proportion of Britons who "believe" the world and life were created by a God or gods at anything between 30% and 60%, which simply goes to prove how hard it is to reliably measure these things. Yet at the same time, a very small proportion of the population - something between 4% and 7%, again depending on your survey - are active members of any religion.

So when you look in Dawkins-like horror at the huge figures supposedly buying into creationism or ID, you're mostly looking at people who really don't have a clue in the first place. Most of the people telling pollsters they think God's involved usually have no real beliefs at all. They'll just as soon phone horoscope lines at £2 a minute, tell you there "might be something" in stories of alien abduction and waste their money on solipsistic New Age therapies.  (Actually, the Alpha Course is also a solipsistic therapy, but that's another rant.)

This sludge of incoherent superstition does not represent any kind of religion-driven backlash against science. If there is an anti-science culture in the UK it comes from a general mistrust of authority and a belief that big business is profiting. See, for instance, the business of worried parents opting out of the MMR jab, or arguments over GM crops.

The recent statement by the Anglican church reaffirming its belief in Darwinism is a timely reminder that boring mainstream Christianity in Britain is mostly a force for good. Through voluntary work, charitable giving and and political campaigning - e.g. Make Poverty History - these worthy Sunday churchgoers do lots of real good for real people on a real everyday basis. More than all the self-righteous Trots, anarchists, weekend hippies and middle-class Buddhists in the land lumped together.

Your actual minority of scriptural creationists are on the fringes. Muslim fundamentalists, old-school hardline Protestant Bible-thumpers, and members of African or African/Caribbean shurches from the inner cities. Often, though not always, these groups tend to be isolated from the rest of mainstream society. 

Christian fundamentalism is not a serious political force in Britain (though it arguably was in Northern Ireland while
the Rev. Ian Paisley was still influential). It was last tried in England 350 years ago and resulted in military dictatorship, the Barebones Parliament, the banning of Christmas and dozens of failed prophecies about the world ending. It's been fashionable among historians for a generation to see 17th century Puritans as proto-socialists, but in practice Cromwell's Commonwealth was a repressive theocracy detested by most who lived under it.

Despite oddballs like the Genesis Expo in Portsmouth or our own dear local Noah's Ark Zoo Farm, creationism hasn't caught on in Britain and isn't likely to. It's just one of the current headline stories of fringe religion that's always with us. It's a cult for the uneducated and disempowered who want to believe in fairies, led by gurus who get off on bossing the rest of us around.

It's a menace, but the levels of fear and hatred it attracts gives this potty belief system a force and authority it doesn't deserve.

2009 update: The book has now been printed and given away, and everyone seems quite pleased with it. Certainly  Si's artwork is superb. If you live in foreign parts, or didn't get hold of a copy and would like one, mail me and we'll see if we can sort something.