How can a doctor thumb his nose at science?
GOP presidential candidate and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson told CBS news Wednesday that he still believes that the Egyptian pyramids were built to store grain, not as pharaoh graves.
Carson reiterated to CBS News that “the pyramids were made in a way that they had hermetically sealed compartments….You would need that if you were trying to preserve grain for a long period of time.”
I say “still” because he floated this thesis in 1998 in his commencement speech at Andrews University. The Michigan facility is “the flagship educational institution” of the Seventh-day Adventist Church system, which is the world’s second largest Christian school system.
Carson is a Seventh-day Adventist. The Protestant Christian church observes Saturday as the Sabbath and “mainstream Adventism is primarily evangelical.”
Political analysts have credited Carson’s conservative religious beliefs as helping his campaign in Iowa; in 2012, evangelical voters composed 57% of the Republican caucus.
Paradoxically, Carson is a product of science.
In 2001, Dr. Carson was named by CNN and TIME Magazine as one of the nation’s 20 foremost physicians and scientists (source)… Dr. Carson holds 67 honorary doctorate degrees. He is a member of the Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society, the Institute of Medicine/National Academy of Science…
And yet he rejected — and still rejects — the pyramids as edifices to the pharaohs.
“[W]hen you look at the way that the pyramids are made, with many chambers that are hermetically sealed, they’d have to be that way for various reasons. 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.”
Aliens?
What scientist claims the pyramids were built by aliens? Other than (the fictional, c 1997) Dr. Daniel Jackson?
Known for gnawing at complex questions like a terrier with a bone. Digital evangelist, writer, teacher. Transplanted Southerner; teach newbies to ride motorcycles. @kegill (Twitter and Mastodon.social); wiredpen.com