It isn't ridiculous it is a fact. His education was the study of religion. You have to have as much faith to believe complex life forms evolved from pond scum as you do in creation. But if someone demands that their folks came from monkeys who I am I to argue.
Life from pond scum isn’t a part of evolution theory. That’s a separate field of inquiry. Evolution doesn’t require faith because it’s evident to anyone who actually studies the evidence.
Your are badly mistaken about requiring faith. When John Sanford, who has seventy patens on gene splicing and taught graduate students for twenty-five years asked a colleague wht evidence we have for evolution he said, "We have none. We go on faith just the creationists." No one was there for the millions of years to see these supposed changes.
Denying evolution is not being pious, its just being ignorant.
You can still keep your faith, even if you pull your head out of your ass far enough to see that species have changed and evolved due to environmental pressures.
You are conflating change from on animal like horses and zebras and mules with the microbe to man theory. One is observable science the other is historical speculation from interpretation of facts.
