Dr. Ben Carson (AP).

Dr. Ben Carson, a pediatric neurosurgeon, a member of the distinguished National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine, and the author of six best selling books, said that it takes faith to believe in God and to believe in evolution because both are “religion,” and he stressed that it requires “a lot more faith to believe in evolution.”

“I think it’s quite evident from what you’ve seen tonight, it takes faith to believe in God, it takes faith to believe in evolution,” said Dr. Carson during a speech at the Celebration of Creation conference, as reported by the Adventist News Network.

“I think it takes a lot more faith to believe in evolution than it does to believe in God,” he said.

“But they both require faith, and the fact of the matter is they’re both religion,” said Dr. Carson, who is a Seventh-Day Adventist Christian. “If we were really to put a litmus test on them and we said we can’t teach religion in school, we wouldn’t be able to teach evolution either.”

“[T]he fact of the matter is, we have to look at things based on what makes sense,” he said. “You look at the geological layers – it makes perfectly good sense that that was done by a worldwide flood. You look at the fact that there are crustaceans on the top of the Andes Mountains – it makes perfectly good sense that there was a flood.”

Dr. Carson continued, “It’s really a matter, again, of using the frontal lobes, analyzing the stuff, seeing how it compares with what God has said and with what Man has said.”

“You don’t find inconsistencies with the way God said it,” Dr. Carson remarked. “You find a lot of inconsistences with the way Man has said it.”

Ben Carson, 64, was educated at Yale University and the University of Michigan. He was the director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital, and was also a professor of oncology and pediatrics.

In 2004, Carson served on the President’s Council on Bioethics and in 2008 he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 2010, Dr. Carson was elected into the National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine, considered one of the most prestigious honors in medicine.

Dr. Carson is married (Lacena “Candy” Carson) and has three sons. He is a contender for the Republican nomination for president.

His latest book (co-authored with his wife) is One Nation: What We Can All Do To Save America’s Future. It is a New York Times best seller.