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CSS layouts are better in many ways than table layouts. Heres why:

Tables are not meant for layouts - Tables where made for one thing: to display tabular data. They were never intended to be used to make layouts.
Pages load faster - Since CSS can be used in an external file, it will be cached by the browser, meaning the person won't have to reload a huge HTML file full of tables.
Better search engine results - Search engines ignore CSS, meaning it'll only see the important stuff, not a huge amount of tables.
Redesigns are easier and more efficient - Want to change something in your site? Go to the CSS file and edit a line or two. In a tabled site, you have to manually change it in each page.
No more nested tables and spacer GIFs - Yes, you heard me! It's a miracle!


Learn CSS, and make your website better in countless ways. You may want to take a look at the Opera Web Standards Curriculum.

CSS or Cascading Style Sheets have been used until now for text formatting but recently, developers have started using it for positioning and layouts. CSS layouts are still difficult and time-consuming to implement but their advantages are certainly worth the trouble while Tables have been used in designing web sites for a very long time. Yet, even today, with the multitude of browsers available, many compatibility and accessibility issues rise to the surface. All these issues must be addressed in order to ensure a web site is completely functional to all users including those using alternate browsers.

Table based layouts had their place roughly 6 years ago and back when browsers were so wildly varied in the way they rendered but that isn't the case now. Doing everything in CSS means you can port your content to mobile devices easily. Reskinning is easier as you only have to work with a CSS file.
The debate isn't about whether we use tables or not anymore but how we use HTML 5 and CSS3.

This debate ended five years ago at least - you should be asking about the implications of using HTML 5 and CSS3