This Video of Ben Carson Explaining the Brain Is Mind-Blowing

The GOP 2016 contender can win the next debate by repeating this performance.

<a href=http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/GOP-2016-Carson/75623bfcf1954752b5f8419c982ed89e/40/0>Carlos Osorio</a>/AP

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

 

There is much that is impressive about Ben Carson. His rags-to-riches personal history. His medical accomplishments as a neurosurgeon. He is a best-selling author and a public speaker who draws substantial fees for his appearances. In the TV movie based on his life, Cuba Gooding Jr. plays the lead role. Carson certainly has won over many Republican voters: As a political novice now seeking the GOP presidential nomination, he routinely places in the top three in the GOP polls, mostly due to support from evangelicals. And when it comes to the brain, he knows his stuff.

Take a gander at this remarkable video of Carson explaining how the brain functions when mounting a simple task.

Carson did this incredible riff during a speech in which he was defending creationism. He has long been a foe of evolution and a passionate advocate for the view that God created the world and all its creatures in six days.

What’s intriguing about Carson is how he deploys his scientific knowledge to try to disprove the science of evolution. The point of his rap about the brain was to show that there is no way that such an intricate and amazing organ—look at those frontal lobes!—could have come into existence as the product of natural selection; it had to be the work of a higher and purposeful force. That is, God.

Carson, a devout member of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, quietly soared to the top of the GOP pack due to his appeal to social conservatives, but he may be able to reach out to other GOP voters by demonstrating his in-depth understanding of the brain. If he were to repeat his performance about how the brain works at the next Republican debate, Carson would indubitably wow the crowd. Even Donald Trump might be left speechless (for a brief moment). Carson would make the other candidates look like pikers. (No doubt, some rapper would subsequently sync it to a rhythm track.) And his stock among Republicans would go higher.

Especially among those social conservatives who get the message.

 

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate