“But surely, if you believe in evolution, there’s no place for God.” I absolutely don’t agree with that.” – Jane Goodall’s interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! (November 24, 2005)
Goodall believes in the co-existence of religion and evolution and attributed her neutral stance to the influence of both her mother and her mentor, Leakey’s, whom both never saw the conflict between the two forces. In addition, Goodall had not started out her career wanting to be a scientist, but a naturalist instead. Therefore, she had always seen religion and evolution as two independent sources that could even work together.
Jane Goodall: “But I also had my mother. And she said she never saw the conflict between religion and evolution. Louis Leakey—my great mentor who dug up early man—he felt the same … But you have to remember, I didn’t start as a scientist. I wanted to be poet laureate, and I wanted to be a naturalist … I love science. I love analyzing and making sense of all these observations. So it was the perfect rounding off of who I was into who I am.” – Jane Goodall’s interview with Bill Moyers on Bill Moyers Journal (November 27, 2009)