And this is the guy who's beating Trump...

Ben Carson thinks that the Egyptian pyramids were built not as tombs for pharaohs, but to store grain. In a college commencement speech he said:

"My own personal theory is that Joseph built the pyramids to store grain. Now all the archaeologists think that they were made for the pharaohs' graves. But, you know, it would have to be something awfully big if you stop and think about it.

It's flatly ridiculous: the pyramids would be useless for storing grain, because they are almost completely solid stone.  We know this because Egyptologists have been excavating these tombs for centuries and have found only tiny chambers and corridors inside them, as shown in this diagram:

Granaries are hollow shells, empty on the inside so that you can store large quantities of grain. What idiot would build a 450-foot-tall, six-million-ton pyramid that would hold less grain than would fill one barge going down the Mississippi?

Pyramids are massive structures filled with stone because the pharaohs wanted them to be huge and impressive, and the pyramid is the only structure primitive Egyptian technology could build that large.

And the times don't line up. The Great Pyramid was built about 2560 BC, and evangelicals' own biblical timelines put Joseph around 1916 BC, centuries later.

Then Carson spat out this gem:

And when you look at the way that the pyramids were made, with many chambers that are hermetically sealed, they’d have to be that way for various reasons. And various of scientists [sic] 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.’

"Various of scientists" think aliens built the pyramids? No. No real scientists think that. Only kooks like Erich von Däniken think aliens built the pyramids.

You don't need aliens when you have human ingenuity. Scientists know that ordinary people built the pyramids, using any number of techniques that we know they had access to. We found the pyramid builders' homes, tools, and graves. Scientists have tested these methods and found that humans could have designed and built the pyramids without any special magical knowledge or help from aliens or gods. It doesn't take a genius to build a pyramid: you basically just stack a bunch of rocks.

The same is true for the giant stone moai on Easter Island and Stonehenge in England: when people put their minds to it, they can usually figure out how to do something, especially when it's relatively straightforward, like moving big rocks around. Building colossal yet simple memorial structures is, as they say, not brain surgery.

The pyramids were hermetically sealed because tombs are sealed to preserve the corpses inside. And to keep out grave robbers (which they failed to do in almost all cases in Egypt). It's true, some small amount of grain was probably stored in some of the pyramids: all manner of food and other necessities of pharaonic life (food, gold, dolls, chairs, boats, slaves) were placed in the pyramids and other tombs, such as those in the Valley of Kings where Tutankhamun's tomb was located.

Carson continues to this day to defend this nonsense:

"Some people believe in the Bible, like I do," Carson told reporters. "And don't find that to be silly at all and believe that God created the earth and don't find that to be silly at all. The secular progressives try to ridicule it anytime it comes up and they're welcome to do that." 

What does this pyramid gimmick have to do with the creation of the earth? The bible doesn't say that the pyramids were granaries, it just says that Joseph stored grain. The pyramid idea is Carson's pet theory. And it's a stupid and patently false one.

But when someone calls him on it, he starts whining that he's the victim of secular progressives. Why does he change the subject to god creating the earth when the question is about his stupid pyramid granary idea?

Something is seriously wrong with Ben Carson's brain. When you read about all the various ways he's said he tried to stab another kid, his dealings with the snake-oil sales salesmen who run Mannatech, his love for kooky conspiracy theorist Cleon Skousen, and the virulently anti-mainstream Christian teachings of his Seventh Day Adventist church, and now this pyramid nonsense, you really have to wonder about his grip on reality.