In the not-too-distant past, Republican presidential contender and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson denounced evolution as the work of the devil and called the Big Bang theory a fairy tale pushed by "highfalutin scientists."
Carson said in a 2012 speech delivered to fellow Seventh-day Adventists that he believed Charles Darwin's theory of evolution was encouraged by the devil, adding that many scientists do not believe in the theory but are too scared to admit it, reported Buzzfeed.
"I personally believe that this theory that Darwin came up with was something that was encouraged by the adversary, and it has become what is scientifically, politically correct," Carson said during the event, titled the "Celebration of Creation."
"Amazingly, there are a significant number of scientists who do not believe it but they're afraid to say anything," he said. Carson revealed that he planned to write a book called "The Organ of Species" showing how the organs of the body refute evolution - a play on the title of Darwin's breakthrough work "On the Origin of Species," published in 1859 and considered to be the foundation of evolutionary theory.
Carson graduated from Yale University in 1973, with a major in psychology and went on to get his medical degree from the University of Michigan. He then completed his residency in neurosurgery at John Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, and at 33-years-old, Carson became the director of pediatric neurosurgery at the hospital - the youngest physician to ever run a major division there, according to CBS News.
He made medical history in 1987 by becoming the first person to successfully separate conjoined twins connected at the head, leading a 70-member team in the 22-hour procedure.
Despite being one of the most accomplished neurosurgeons in the world, he doesn't support the mainstream scientific theory of how the universe first began, either, saying during his speech that he finds the big bang "really quite fascinating."
"I mean, here you have all these highfalutin scientists and they're saying it was this gigantic explosion and everything came into perfect order," Carson said. "Now these are the same scientists that go around touting the second law of thermodynamics, which is entropy, which says that things move toward a state of disorganization.
"So now you're gonna have this big explosion and everything becomes perfectly organized and when you ask them about it they say, 'Well we can explain this, based on probability theory because if there's enough big explosions, over a long period of time, billions and billions of years, one of them will be the perfect explosion,'" he said. "So I say what you're telling me is if I blow a hurricane through a junkyard enough times over billions and billions of years, eventually after one of those hurricanes there will be a 747 fully loaded and ready to fly."
He continued by saying the big bang theory is "even more ridiculous" because the universe appears to have order.
"Well, I mean, it's even more ridiculous than that 'cause our solar system, not to mention the universe outside of that, is extraordinarily well organized, to the point where we can predict 70 years away when a comet is coming," he said. "Now that type of organization to just come out of an explosion? I mean, you want to talk about fairy tales, that is amazing."
Carson has held second place in the GOP presidential field for about a month now. A RealClearPolitics average of polling data shows him with 18.8 percent support, behind Donald Trump, who has 28.5 percent.
