Ben Carson Says Evolution is a Fairy Tale

[iNow]

News also came out this week showing a video of Carson claiming the pyramids were hollow and that he suspected they were used for grain storage. Clearly, that's badly mistaken and the Internet has been having a field day with it.

 

Check out some of these great ones with the hashtag #bencarsonwikipedia:

http://www.collegehumor.com/post/7034687/twitter-is-trolling-ben-carson-with-ridiculous-bencarsonwikipedia-facts

 

Perhaps my favorite so far is this one:

 

"Stonehenge was a set of dominoes for dinosaurs before God made them extinct for supporting gay marriage. #bencarsonwikipedia"

[John Cuthber]

Is any political candidate a viable president after the internet gets through with him/her ?

 

Yes.

have a look at all the reports that were posted of moronic Left wing candidates here.

http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/68375-has-the-republican-party-lost-its-collective-mind/

The internet (which includes the members of this forum) has had plenty of opportunity to make them look as dumb as their Right wing counterparts.

Those candidates who were left behind by this process "survived" the internet.

Oh, hang on; none of those who got panned by the internet were from the Left.

Odd that, isn't it?

Feel free to add Left wing "lunatics" to the thread there.

[StringJunky]

...Feel free to add Left wing "lunatics" to the thread there.

Jeremy Corbyn... oops! Wrong country.

[Bells]

 

Actually old and cynical enough to know that some politicians are actually bat-shit crazy. And worldly wise enough to understand that writing everyone in politics off as a unprincipled pragmatist is foolish and dangerous - unfortunately lots of them have strong, deeply help, and highly dangerous principles which they would not hesitate to act upon to the majority of humanity's detriment.

 

There is a sense of a messiah complex with Ben Carson. Presently, his stories about his life are under scrutiny, because they cannot be corroborated. The stories of how he was a violent teenager, intent on harming others, and then finding God and being reborn, if you will. It is very contrived. Whether this is deliberate or he truly believes this remains to be seen.

 

There have been countless of articles written about Ben Carson and his messiah complex.

 

"Ben Carson 'brilliant'? There's no real evidence of it, so find another label"

 

"Ben Carson's chilling God complex: The commencement speech I won't soon forget"

 

 

Are just two of them.

 

What is abundantly clear, however, is that Ben Carson, like Donald Trump, is all about Ben Carson. He is the messiah, come to save and cleanse the world of the evils of progressives and the left and save it, like he has saved lives in the past as a neurosurgeon. While Trump is loud and brash, Carson is softly spoken in his self aggrandisement.

 

It is possible that he is this mentally disturbed. And it is possible that he is clever enough to have tapped into the psyche of the religious right, to tell them just what they want to hear. He knows what will set them off. From his comments about immunisation, to his disbelief in evolution and the big bang, to his comments about homosexuality being a choice and how men who go to prison come out gay, to his comments about how the Jews could have prevented the holocaust if they had been armed with guns, and so on and so forth. His supporters lap it up.

 

Does he actually believe this? Maybe yes. Is he stupid? No.

 

I do agree with you that he is crazy.

 

Whether it is an insanity that is born from a desire to tap into the religious fundamentals or whether his insanity just exists within him and is part of his persona, neither of which are good. One makes him inherently dishonest and the other makes him dangerous and not someone who should have access to any nuclear launch codes.

[John Cuthber]

Jeremy Corbyn... oops! Wrong country.

For those who don't know, Mr Corbyn is the leader of the Labour party in the UK and he keeps being described as "unelectable" by the right wing media.

 

He was, in fact, elected.

 

(He beat three other leadership candidates and got more than 50% of the vote in what might have been expected to be a fairly even 4 way split).

[Bill Angel]

Lawrence Krauss wrote an article in the New Yorker titled "Ben Carson's Scientific Ignorance" that is worth a read. Because it's his speciality, Dr Krauss is particularly critical of Carson's assertions in the field of cosmology and the Big Bang. See http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/ben-carsons-scientific-ignorance

 

Carson should have stuck to brain surgery, a field in which he apparently was respected.

Edited November 7, 2015 by Bill Angel

[overtone]

It's probably a good idea to mock Carson's appeals to ignorance. But it doesn't solve our problem he exemplifies with what is currently the dominant political Party in the US, and its abetting by the dominant media.

 

Carson can get elected to the Presidency, speaking and campaigning as he has been, if the corporate controllers of the US media decide he's their best bet and throw in behind him. If they do that, all these complaints about his apparent rejection of the elitist and socialist and liberal "science" stuff will be relegated to the lefty and liberal and elitist margins of the public discourse. The mockery will be referred to, but not presented as anything other than personal attack and illustration of disrespect. The average voter will encounter only a "both sides" presentation, with continual repetition of the virtues of Carson's independence of mind, respect for the opinions of ordinary people, desire to reduce the burden of government on already burdened citizens, strong morality and faith, etc etc.

 

Ronald Reagan got elected - twice - on this:

 

Well, it {evolution} is a theory, it is a scientific theory only, and it has in recent years been challenged in the world of science and is not yet believed in the scientific community to be as infallible as it once was believed. But if it was going to be taught in the schools, then I think that also the Biblical theory of creation, which is not a theory but the Biblical story of creation, should also be taught.

 

and this:

 

Trees cause more air pollution than automobiles do.

 

and so forth.

 

And Reagan's economic policies made no more sense than Carson's. Neither did he have any notably better understanding of Egyptian history, greater accuracy in autobiographical recall (he was famous for confusing his movie roles with actual historical event), etc.

 

edit in - more Reagan quotes, out of curiosity, comparing the much mocked but twice elected and enormously influential Reagan with the currently mocked Carson:

"Trees cause more air pollution than automobiles do."

“Within the covers of the Bible are the answers for all the problems men face.”

“It isn't so much that liberals are ignorant. It's just that they know so many things that aren't so.”

“Unemployment insurance is a pre-paid vacation for freeloaders.”

“Freedom prospers when religion is vibrant and the rule of law under God is acknowledged.

“I'm no linguist, but I have been told that in the Russian language, there isn't even a word for freedom.”

“Fascism was really the basis for the New Deal. It was Mussolini's success in Italy, with his government-directed economy, that led the early New Dealers to say "But Mussolini keeps the trains running on time.”

“A tree's a tree. How many more do you need to look at? ”

“Why should we subsidize intellectual curiosity?”

“All the waste in a year from a nuclear power plant can be stored under a desk.”

Edited November 7, 2015 by overtone

[MigL]

Well it seems only overtone understood what I was attempting to say.

( thank God I didn't go into teaching )

 

But I'd say that even B. Obama and A. Gore ( to use your two examples ) have been 'soiled' by internet rumors.

There are still rumors floating around that Obama isn't American, that he wasn't born in America and that he's a Muslim.

 

Sometimes the internet explodes rumors way out of proportion and relation to the office the person is running for.

Clinton's ( and Kennedy's ) philandering ways would have seemed quaint and even tame to most Europeans. In the US, they almost cost his presidency.

Even H. Clinton's e-mails ( and sexual preference ? ) have made the rounds of internet rumors.

And of course a candidate's understanding of the economy is important, but do I really care if he thinks pyramids were grain silos ? What impact will that have on his job performance ?

( of course I'd worry for education, though, given his views on evolution , if he actually believes that )

[John Cuthber]

 

And of course a candidate's understanding of the economy is important, but do I really care if he thinks pyramids were grain silos ? What impact will that have on his job performance ?

Well, I don't get to vote on this because I'm not in his country, but I still think that a man who believes that is demonstrably irrational (there are old writings that tell us what the pyramids were made for, and they would be too small to be much use for grain stores- not to mention a stupid shape etc).

 

What jobs are there where a lack of connection to reality wouldn't affect performance, and is the presidency one of them?

It isn't the pyramids' purpose as such that is the problem here. The problem is a lack of critical thinking skills..

If he makes plainly dumb decisions about that, why would you suppose that he won't make equally dumb decisions about stuff that is important?

Edited November 8, 2015 by John Cuthber

[MigL]

Well I suppose having an intern under your desk in the oval office is also a dumb decision.

But I don't think it impacted B. Clinton's efficiency as president.

 

Nor should it.

( besides its all pretty tame stuff compared to the riding crops and leathers that your Brit politicians get up to in their scandals )

[iNow]

Well I suppose having an intern under your desk in the oval office is also a dumb decision.

But I don't think it impacted B. Clinton's efficiency as president.

Are you suggesting that thinking pyramids were used for grain storage, that Obamacare is the worst thing since slavery, that the Big Bang is a fairy tale and the notion of evolution encouraged by the devil, that climate change is irrelevant, that presidents can ignore the Supreme Court, that prison proves that being gay is a choice, that protests against police murdering civilians helps ISIS, or lying about getting into (via scholarship) West Point and about trying to stab someone as a kid are acceptable... Are all based on a biological urge to reproduce and create offspring and are equivalent to acting on said urge?

 

Because that's what it looks like you're doing...

[MigL]

No.

You misinterpret my post.

[iNow]

Okay, will you please clarify for me then?

[Bells]

And of course a candidate's understanding of the economy is important, but do I really care if he thinks pyramids were grain silos ? What impact will that have on his job performance ?

( of course I'd worry for education, though, given his views on evolution , if he actually believes that )

 

How will his beliefs that the Egyptian pyramids were grain silos affect how he governs? The answer to that question is to look at what the man believes. Apply his beliefs to other areas of Governance.

 

For example, Ben Carson's tax plan is from what he read from the Bible.

 

Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson said on Sunday his proposed flat-tax plan of about 10% was inspired by the biblical practice of tithing.

“You make $10bn a year, you pay a billion; you make $10 a year, you pay one. That’s pretty damn fair if you ask me,” Carson said on Fox News Sunday.

Carson, a former neurosurgeon who announced his presidential campaign last week, has cast himself as a non-politician and a problem solver in an attempt to set himself apart from the Republican field.

He is a long shot in the race, but his idea of a single, proportional tax may resonate with conservative evangelical Christians who believe in tithes and with Americans frustrated by a complicated tax system.

“I like the idea of a proportional tax – that way you pay according to your ability,” Carson said. “I got that idea quite frankly from the Bible.”

 

His beliefs will have a tremendous impact on his job performance because he is incapable of separating his personal religious beliefs from how he would govern.

 

The insanity does not end there. When questioned about the debt ceiling, Ben Carson also exhibited what can only be described as being complete ignorance on the debt ceiling and what happens if said debt ceiling is not raised. Nor does he understand the gravity of what would happen if the US defaulted.

 

Ben Carson appeared to have some difficulty in explaining exactly whether he would support raising the debt limit in a recent interview.

"Let me put it this way: if I were the president, I would not sign an increased budget. Absolutely would not do it. They would have to find a place to cut," Carson insisted in a Wednesday segment with Kai Ryssdal of the American Public Media radio program "Marketplace."

Ryssdal pressed: "To be clear, it's increasing the debt limit, not the budget, but I want to make sure I understand you. You'd let the United States default rather than raise the debt limit."

"No, I would provide the kind of leadership that says, 'Get on the stick guys, and stop messing around, and cut where you need to cut, because we're not raising any spending limits, period,'" Carson asserted.

"I'm really trying not to be circular here, Dr. Carson, but if you're not gonna raise the debt limit and you're not gonna give specifics on what you're gonna cut, then how are we going to know what you are going to do as president of the United States?" Ryssdal asked.

 

In other words, Ben Carson does not understand that the debt ceiling is not about future expenditure, but is about the debt that already exists. This is fundamental and vitally important for a prospective President to understand.

 

Now, you queried what does his beliefs about the pyramids being grain silos have to do with how he would govern? Consider the subject of foreign policy and what Ben Carson's comments show to the world. Instead of relying on factual history, what is known and established, he prefers to believe in his biblical stories. How well do you think that will play out in US relations with the Middle East, primarily with that of an ally of the US, if the President refuses to acknowledge or believe that Egyptians built the pyramids to bury their dead kings and instead, turns it into a biblical fantasy? How well will that play with US/Arab relations if he cannot even acknowledge that Arabs essentially built the pyramids for the purposes of burying their kings? Not only that, how well will his foreign policy be received when he makes comments like this:

 

In his 2012 book, "America the Beautiful," Carson says America should have gone into Iraq and leveled entire cities. Further, he suggests the reason America is afraid to do so is because "political correctness dictates we cannot kill innocent women and children in the process of destroying the enemy."

"I would have announced via bullhorns and leaflets that in seventy-two hours, Fallujah was going to become part of the desert because there were substantial numbers of terrorists hiding there," he wrote. "This would have given people time to flee before the city was destroyed, and is a tactic that would actually save lives not only of women and children, but also men."

 

War crimes for everybody!

 

The man is a doctor and he is saying that the US refusal to commit war crimes by bombing civilian men, women and children is based on political correctness.

 

Not only is he openly denying Egyptian history, which is exceptionally insulting and offensive, he also complains that the unwillingness to slaughter men, women and children in Iraq, an Arab nation, is because the US Government is too politically correct.

 

 

His comments about the pyramids have everything to do with how he plans to govern. Because his religious beliefs will infect every single part of how he governs.

 

As for your concerns about what he might do for education, consider this:

 

Speaking to Chuck Todd on “Meet the Press” over the weekend, Carson laid out his plan to combat “indoctrination” within higher education: he’s going to have students report instances of “propaganda” to the Department of Education, which will then “investigate” the offending professor.

Carson’s insistence that he’s “thought about this” notwithstanding, he obviously has no idea what he’s talking about. This is obviously illegal and a flagrant violation of the First Amendment. But Carson thinks he can get around a professor’s constitutionally guaranteed right to free speech because the students are the ones reporting the “propaganda.” That doesn’t change the fact that he’s proposing a series of government investigations to determine if college professors are saying things that run afoul of what the Ben Carson administration would consider acceptable speech. Carson either doesn’t understand how the Constitution works, doesn’t understand how his own plan works, or both.

A quick trip over to the “Education” section of Carson’s campaign website reveals yet another layer of incoherence. “In recent years, there has been a troubling trend of the U.S. Department of Education increasingly trying to dictate how children are educated in our primary and secondary schools,” it reads. So government intrusion in primary and secondary schooling is “troubling,” but heavy-handed government restrictions on how people are taught in universities are necessary and justified.

More broadly speaking, the policy Carson has proposed here – students denouncing their own professors to government authorities as a way of fighting “propaganda” in educational institutions – would find a happy reception in really any totalitarian regime you can think of. With one breath, Carson worries about what will happen when people are afraid to express themselves. With the next, he proposes government monitoring of intellectuals to control what they say.

And what if an offending professor happens to be a Muslim? Carson has already made clear that he has a blanket mistrust of Muslims and would be suspicious of those who seek to be in positions of influence and authority, so how would they fare under this surveillance-state proposition of his? And what happens when the Supreme Court rules that this absurd scheme is, in fact, illegal? Well, according to Ben Carson, the president can just ignore the court.

 

His pyramid beliefs are just another symptom or marker to a much darker and frightening prospect.

[MigL]

Maybe Bells can show us all where it says in the Bible that the pyramids were grain silos.

How is that Carson's 'religious belief' based on 'Biblical stories' ?

 

You've just proved my point.

Anyone can take an internet snippet, and stretch it to the point of absurdity.

Now I'm not defending Carson by any means ( I certainly wouldn't vote for him ), but I still don't see how his uninformed views on the pyramids would affect his presidency ( in the unlikely event he should ever achieve it ).

That's like saying that B. Clinton was an ineffective president because he doesn't think oral sex, is sex ( or is dishonest and lies under oath ).

History shows that to be demonstrably false.

 

As for Carson's other views, such as his beliefs about evolution, I'm already on record stating that would be harmful to education policies.

But I don't see why these views on the pyramids are getting so much internet traction.

 

 

By the way WW2 saw the deaths of approx. 40 million people.

War crimes for everybody!

Edited November 9, 2015 by MigL

[Airbrush]

 

As for Carson's other views, such as his beliefs about evolution, I'm already on record stating that would be harmful to education policies.

But I don't see why these views on the pyramids are getting so much internet traction.

 

Because of the risk of electing a VERY delusional president. That level of delusion is shocking. The Bible is the biggest "fairy tale" along with the Quran, Vedas, Joseph Smith, and all religious scriptures, even though they may be comforting to the masses. The Bible and "great" religious scriptures are mostly unsupportable by the scientific method, especially the bogus "miracles". Carson is as delusional as Hitler, maybe more so since Hitler believed in evolution long before it became fashionable. People believe the fairy tale scriptures only because they WANT to believe, along with effective brain washing, that is all. Factual info is irrelevant to them.

 

And if Carson actually does NOT believe the outrageous claims about science he is making, then he is the most sophisticated, pathological lier we have ever seen.

 

WW2 was started by delusional leaders in Germany and Japan.

Edited November 9, 2015 by Airbrush

[CharonY]

 

WW2 was started by delusional leaders in Germany and Japan.

 

Eeeeh, let's not draw up that comparison. It is too much of a simplification to state that the respective leaders were delusional and randomly decided to plunge the world into war. There are many more causes and, with the existing ideologies and information present at that given time, for many the war was a rational decision.

[Phi for All]

As for Carson's other views, such as his beliefs about evolution, I'm already on record stating that would be harmful to education policies.

But I don't see why these views on the pyramids are getting so much internet traction.

Seriously? I noticed you ignored Bells mention of what our Egyptian allies might think about Ben's hypothesis.

 

By the way WW2 saw the deaths of approx. 40 million people.

War crimes for everybody!

Did Ben Carson say he would have killed everyone in Berlin and Tokyo to make sure he got all the soldiers? Otherwise, I can't see where this comment is at all relevant. Are you saying his stance is OK because war crimes were committed 70 years ago? Or because he's conservative? Or is this more of a modern media "spread the blame and make all positions equal" tactic?

[John Cuthber]

Maybe Bells can show us all where it says in the Bible that the pyramids were grain silos.

How is that Carson's 'religious belief' based on 'Biblical stories' ?

 

Because he says it's the storage that Joseph came up with to deal with the famine that God sent.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_and_the_Amazing_Technicolor_Dreamcoat

(I always wanted to cite that as a reference.)

 

Without the Biblical famine, there's no call for the stores.

 

Also, maybe it's just me, but I think that Clinton probably didn't expect to get caught.

If he hadn't been caught it would have been a reasonable (if immoral) action.

So, he made a reasoned decision; weighed the possibilities and decided to chance it. His luck didn't hold.

That's not the same as what Carson did.

If Clinton had screwed a girl on live TV then tried to pretend he hadn't, then his judgement would be in the same league as Carson.

.

But I don't see why these views on the pyramids are getting so much internet traction.

 

Because it's as batshit crazy as this guy.

 

Edited November 9, 2015 by John Cuthber

[MigL]

So you're saying there were no actual famines in Egypt ?

The fact that he thinks God is responsible for the famines is inconsequential.

 

The fact that Clinton didn't think oral sex is sex, and that a standing president can lie under oath didn't make him a bad president.

I'm saying that a president can, likewise believe the pyramids were grain silos, and possibly still be a good president.

( but not Carson, he has plenty of other baggage )

 

And no, Phy, I'm not trying to 'spread' faults equally, I just use Clinton as an example of a good president with some crazy and unethical views. And do you really think Egyptians view the pyramids as something other than tourist attractions ? Or do you think that they are delusional for believing that they are the tombs of God-kings, and so , would be outraged by Carson's views ?

Which is more offensive ?

 

I only brought up WW2 because Bells mentioned the bombing of Fallujah, possibly killing several hundred thousand people.

Whereas in WW2 several tens of million people died. Are there no just causes anymore ? Are all the participants in WW2 war criminals ? Should we be ashamed that we're not greeting each other with a " Hail Hitler', and there are still Jews and homosexuals in Europe ?

[overtone]

The fact that he thinks God is responsible for the famines is inconsequential.

Only if we're lucky. If we are unlucky, and famine in North Africa or the Middle East or Mexico becomes a critical matter of US foreign policy and military involvement, President Carson's attribution of cause and consequence to Egyptian food shortages may well prove significant.

 

And no, Phy, I'm not trying to 'spread' faults equally, I just use Clinton as an example of a good president with some crazy and unethical views.

If you think Clinton's views on oral sex are as crazy as Carson's on anything Biblical, you are delusional yourself.

 

I only brought up WW2 because Bells mentioned the bombing of Fallujah, possibly killing several hundred thousand people. Whereas in WW2 several tens of million people died. Are there no just causes anymore ?

 

 

The ability to distinguish a just cause from whatever the US motives were in bombing Fallujah would be kind of important in a President, as we in the US have recently discovered. Carson seems to have certain incapabilities of mind, in this regard.

 

Or to quote my go-to blog (driftglass) for expression of my exasperation with the obliviousness to incompetence that has taken over the Republican Party:

 

 

First, a quick refresher on your favorite cult and mine, the Tribe That Rubs Shit In Their Hair:

I mention this in because I am very lazy and it spares me typing new stuff and because there are many professionals in our Great American Media who seem baffled by the fact that Dr. Ben Spacey continues the float dirigibly above every other Republican candidate except Donald Trump. I, in turn, am baffled by their bafflement, because in so very many ways, Dr. Ben is the Kwisatz Haderach of the Tribe That Rubs Shit In Its Hair.

Longtime readers know that "The Tribe That Rubs Shit In Their Hair" is my shorthand for inbred Conservative meatsticks who have wallowed in wingnut Hate Radio racist dung and Fox News Liberal Conspiracy claptrap for so long that is has become the quotidian argot of their wretched lives. It is their tavern-talk -- their worst, paranoid delusions, externalized, validated, tarted up as The Unvarnished Truth and then regurgitated back to them by ghouls and treason-mongers like Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly... which are, in turn, passed around again like so many fish stories, getting bigger and wilder and truthier with each iteration. It is the shit they eagerly rub in their hair -- the shit which, year after year, they sculpt into ever more elaborate pompadours because everyone else in their dingy, lightless corner of Universe is doing it and they lost their sense of smell 40 years ago.

They preen over each other. They are happy in each other's company. They praise each other on the little, individual touches with which they have customized their Shitheap Toupees -- an extra layer of Benghaaaazi, perhaps, appliqued over something something the New Black Panther Party because ACORN!.

And all is right with the world...right up until they leave the cocoon of their Wingnut Pig Sty and step into the normal world, where they are Shocked!Shocked! that ordinary people flee from them in horror.

...

The prophet and savior for whom they have waited for so long.

Mental Ben is a doctor who rejects science. A black man who drops wildly inappropriate Nazi and slavery references as casually and frequently as Trump drop the word "Yoooge". A leading Republican candidate for President of the United States who cannot tell you how the deficit works. Or the debt. Or the difference between them. He cannot tell you how foreign policy works, or who the players are in the various interlocking quagmires into which we have waded up to our knees. He doesn't understand how our government works, how a bill becomes a law, or how the enactment and enforcement of that law gets paid for.

But he can recite -- chapter, verse and footnote, passionately and verbatim -- every single debunked, ALL CAPS fucked-in-the-head wingnut/birther conspiracy theory your Crazy Uncle Liberty ever forwarded along to you on the email machine:

Edited November 10, 2015 by overtone

[John Cuthber]

So you're saying there were no actual famines in Egypt ?

 

The fact that Clinton didn't think oral sex is sex, and that a standing president can lie under oath didn't make him a bad president.

I'm saying that a president can, likewise believe the pyramids were grain silos, and possibly still be a good president.

( but not Carson, he has plenty of other baggage )

 

If the best you can do is that straw man, it's time to give up.

Nobody said there were no famines.

What they said was that the pyramids were not built because of the famine in the bible.

It's true that they get food shortages- and they build much more sensible grain stores so, if anything, Carson's claim that the pyramids are granaries is insulting to God who would have ordered better ones.

 

I doubt that Clinton believes that oral sex isn't sex.

I rather suspect that, like many people caught in an awkward position, he lied.

Isn't that the simplest explanation of events?

An, given that the root purpose of sex is making babies, you could argue that he would be right to believe it anyway.

[Bells]

Maybe Bells can show us all where it says in the Bible that the pyramids were grain silos.

How is that Carson's 'religious belief' based on 'Biblical stories' ?

 

 

Are you aware of the biblical story of Joseph?

 

In the Old Testament, Joseph rises to become a top aide to an Egyptian pharaoh after being sold into slavery in Egypt by his jealous brothers. At one point, the pharaoh has a dream vision that Egypt will fall into a great famine, and Joseph advises the pharaoh to store a lot of grain — a move that eventually helps Egyptians survive.

Carson does not read this as a mere allegory about God's grace (since God was willing to provide a vision to save so many people), but instead interprets the story literally. So he believes that this grain had to be stored somewhere, and that the structure would have to be very big and sturdy — certainly strong enough to last to this day. The structures that naturally fit into that view, according to Carson, are the pyramids.

Wiki has a very good breakdown of the biblical story.

 

If you wish to refer to the Old Testament, it starts from Genesis 37 or thereabouts.

 

 

You've just proved my point.

Anyone can take an internet snippet, and stretch it to the point of absurdity.

 

And if that was the case this time, we would not be having this discussion. Ben Carson first made these beliefs known during a commencement speech at a university.

 

Carson made the remarks about pyramids during a 1998 commencement speech at Andrews University, a Michigan school associated with the very conservative Seventh-Day Adventist Church. Carson was addressing a religious audience, and he knew it. (Some of the audience members even shouted, "Amen!" toward the end of his filmed remarks.)

[...]

Carson also argued that the advanced engineering the pyramids required can be explained by divine intervention. "And various of scientists have said, 'Well, you know there were alien beings that came down and they have special knowledge and that's how' — you know, it doesn't require an alien being when God is with you." (For the record, scientists do not believe that aliens taught the Egyptians how to build the pyramids.)

Carson defended his views on the pyramids to reporters on Wednesday, stating, "The pyramids were made in a way that they had hermetically sealed compartments. You wouldn't need hermetically sealed compartments for a sepulcher. You would need that if you were trying to preserve grain for a long period of time."

It was not the media or the internet that stretched this to the point of absurdity, as you put it. I would suggest that it is Ben Carson's beliefs that are stretched to the point of absurdity.

 

 

Now I'm not defending Carson by any means ( I certainly wouldn't vote for him ), but I still don't see how his uninformed views on the pyramids would affect his presidency ( in the unlikely event he should ever achieve it ).

That's like saying that B. Clinton was an ineffective president because he doesn't think oral sex, is sex ( or is dishonest and lies under oath ).

History shows that to be demonstrably false.

 

I don't really think you can compare Clinton's actions to Ben Carson's beliefs. Clinton's sexual escapades did not directly affect how he governed. Remember, that Ben Carson intends to lead and govern as per his biblical teachings, from his tax plan being based on the bible, to implementing laws and changes to the Supreme Court to support his religious teachings. It isn't that it is his beliefs about the pyramids will affect the Presidency if he were to somehow or other, manage to win the election. The issue is that it is becoming abundantly clear that Ben Carson is incapable of leaving his religious beliefs behind and he will lead as per his religious teachings and beliefs.

 

So in that sense, his beliefs about the pyramids become important. Not only that, it also opens the door to a horrific situation whereby a President and leader of a country is so anti-science and willing to disregard history for the sake of his religious beliefs and as a result, will end up insulting an ally to the US in the Middle East. How well do you think Arabs are going to be willing to negotiate, especially during a time of war against a terrorist organisation that does threaten security around the world, if the President is so openly anti-Muslim and anti Arab that he is willing to erase a large portion of Arabic history in Egypt and replace it with his biblical teachings and beliefs?

 

 

As for Carson's other views, such as his beliefs about evolution, I'm already on record stating that would be harmful to education policies.

But I don't see why these views on the pyramids are getting so much internet traction.

 

It goes to the heart of how he will govern. The man has already said that he intends to change the tax system to be like what he read in the bible. And that's just for starters. He has already said that he views people who question his story telling in his books, and querying his questionable honesty as being "secular progressives", which to me is even more of a concern than his moronic statements about pyramids.

 

It's not just that his beliefs will be harmful to education in the US. It is that it will be harmful across the board, from foreign policy, education, science and research, defense and the military, as well as health and general policies that affect the poor in the US.

 

 

By the way WW2 saw the deaths of approx. 40 million people.

War crimes for everybody!

 

 

And the point of that comparison is what? An excuse for his beliefs that Iraq should be razed to the ground and if millions die, so be it? Are you aware that what happened in WWII was deemed as being war crimes and people were put to death as a result of those atrocities?

 

 

 

I only brought up WW2 because Bells mentioned the bombing of Fallujah, possibly killing several hundred thousand people.

Whereas in WW2 several tens of million people died. Are there no just causes anymore ? Are all the participants in WW2 war criminals ? Should we be ashamed that we're not greeting each other with a " Hail Hitler', and there are still Jews and homosexuals in Europe ?

What just cause can you find in deliberately murdering hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians?

 

Are you suggesting it is okay because Hitler did it?

 

Were the participants in the genocide of WWII war criminals? Yes!

 

We are still hunting them down and they are still being tried for their crimes.

 

For a wannabe President to come out and complain that the US Government's refusal to openly razing a country and committing war crimes in killing innocent civilians in the war on terror, and whining that this refusal was based on political correctness is troubling and concerning..

[overtone]

 

 

An, given that the root purpose of sex is making babies, you could argue that he would be right to believe it anyway.

The New York Times published a legitimate (statistically valid) survey taken at the time of Clinton's trial among the constituencies of the Senate "jury" hearing the case, and found that among those citizens of the US more than 60% agreed with Clinton's answer: that oral sex didn't count as "sex".

 

Of course about half of those people - statistically - would agree with Carson that the Biblical account of Joseph offers a plausible explanation for the construction of the Pyramids under Judeo-Christian supervision.

[CharonY]

And probably neglect that even if we accept the narration as a historic fact, it would have happened almost 1000 years after the Pyramid of Giza was actually built.