Ben Carson, leading presidential candidate in the Republican primary, doubled down on comments he made years ago about the Egyptian pyramids being storage facilities for grain, rather than for burial and preservation compartments for pharaohs and royalty.
And at least one political competitor – Donald Trump, who's vying for top billing in the Republican Party primary for president – is vowing to use Carson's remarks against him in the race for the White House.
"It's still my belief, yes," Carson said, during a book tour stop in Florida, MSNBC reported. "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."
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Carson has come under fire for various religious-laced comments he's made over the months that counter left-leaning scientific views, particularly when he spoke of heterosexual males emerging from prison as homosexual. He also said in 2012 that Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, which he dismisses as counter to biblically based creationism, was a tool of the devil, MSNBC said.
In a previous "Meet the Press" interview, Carson said "religious beliefs should [not] dictate one's public policies and stances" but that he finds much of the commonly accepted so-called scientific facts are little more than "propaganda."
Carson was asked about his pyramids' beliefs this week, after BuzzFeed uncovered a video of a commencement speech he gave in 1998, during which he spoke of the facilities as grain-storage sites.
He said then: "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. And I don't think it'd just disappear over the course of time to store that much grain."
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Carson also said, during the speech: "And when 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 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."
Trump, who's rivaling Carson for the No. 1 spot in the primary, according to recent polls, took to MSNBC's "Morning Joe" on Thursday to say he's going to pounce on the former neurosurgeon's remarks as a campaign boost.
"I think I'll have to put that into my repertoire when I talk about Ben," Trump said. "That was a strange deal."