John Edwards on teaching evolution
CNN: Democrats discuss faith on CNN
JOHN EDWARDS (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I believe in evolution.
O’BRIEN: What do you say to all the people — and there are millions of people who go to church every Sunday and who are told very clearly by their pastors that, in fact, the Earth was created in six days, that it’s about creationism? Are those people wrong? Are their pastors wrong?
EDWARDS: No. First of all, I grew up in the church and I grew up as a Southern Baptist, was baptized in the Baptist Church when I was very young, a teenager at the time. And I was taught many of the same things. And I think it’s perfectly possible to make our faith, my faith belief system consistent with a recognition that there is real science out there and scientific evidence of evolution. I don’t think those things are inconsistent. I think a belief in God and a belief in Christ, in my case, is not in any way inconsistent with that.
O’BRIEN: There are some people who say, well, it’s actually — isn’t it mutually exclusive? I mean, either man was created by, you know, from Adam’s rib or, in fact, that man came evolution-wise from apes? Aren’t the two mutually exclusive?
EDWARDS: No, I don’t think they are. Because the hand of God was in every step of what’s happened with man. The hand of God today is in every step of what happens with me and every human being that exists on this planet.
