"Would we not be better concentrating on ways to make life on earth sustainable?

We already understand how to do that in broad terms, but simply don't bother. Whilst the planet is exploited for the benefit of a wealthy few then it shall remain thus I imagine.

In the meantime, those of us who can continue to advance our understanding to the best of our abilities and for the common good. In one way or another all science contributes to a wider understanding of us, the planet and the universe and this knowledge often finds applications in areas quite different from the fields the researchers who found them are working in.

It's this interconnectedness of science that seems to be beyond the grasp of the fundamentalists. They can't isolate one area of study as being 'wrong' without condemning other areas as also being 'wrong' by implication. In my area of research, palaeontology we use a whole suite of cross-disciplinary techniques to study ancient life including particle accelerators and other advanced machines used by physicists to explore the very particles the universe is made of (they can help us decode the colour of dinosaur feathers, for example).

They could deny the lot (and the most extreme like Pete do, as he types on his computer), but the truth is that attitude would signify that nothing has been learnt in the past 300 years and if these people want to act like medieval peasants pissing themselves at the thought of the supernatural then good for them, just don't prevent it has any scientific validity and is should have parity when being taught to our children.

These people are the Christian equivalent of the Taliban, and should be treated with the same disdain, for they are as evil, ignorant and regressive.