Mike Pence: “I have always been interested in origins. Even though my training is in the law and in history, it has ever been an…”

“I have always been interested in origins. Even though my training is in the law and in history, it has ever been an avocation of mine to contemplate and to study the origins of man and of life here on Earth. Many theories of origins have been propounded throughout our Nation's history. In 1859, a sincere biologist returned from the Galapagos Islands and wrote a book entitled ``The Origins of Species,'' in which Charles Darwin offered a theory of the origin of species which we have come to know as evolution. Charles Darwin never thought of evolution as anything other than a theory. He hoped that some day it would be proven by the fossil record but did not live to see that, nor have we. In 1925 in the famous Scopes Monkey Trial, this theory made its way through litigation into the classrooms of America, and we have all seen the consequences over the last 77 years: evolution not taught as a sincere theory of a biologist, but rather, Mr. Speaker, taught as fact.”