Who needs click bait, when the chairman's behind Ben and Freedom Boy has a thing for cults ...

You don't need click bait when you've got Ben Carson ...

Look at the Graudian, hauling in over 2k in comments for Ben Carson: Egyptian pyramids were grain stores, not pharaohs' tombs.

Now the pond sometimes gets into trouble for celebrating, in a kindly way, how some loons are straight out barking mad, and surely creationist Ben is one of them, thanks in part to his involvement in the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

The Adventists were particularly active up Tamworth way when the pond lived in the centre of the known universe, and is aware that one of the many reasons for Bob Ellis growing up a little strange was the way his mother was a Seventh-day Adventist deaconess (see interview here).

The church has a particularly eccentric aggregation of beliefs, and is well worth a Sunday meditation, but what would the pond know, because suddenly Ben Carson is up there with the Donald being taken seriously as a candidate for the POTUS.

Not that we can talk downunder.

Freedom boy has been involved in the Religious Freedom roundtable, and apart from the notable element that the first meeting was conducted in furtive secrecy, the other was that the dangerous cult of Scientology was invited to attend.

In fact, it was a right royal gaggle of the weird and the strange, rubbing up against each other like a T. S. Eliot fog against the window pane:

Participants include members of the Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Catholic, Anglican, Baha’i, Russian Orthodox and Buddhist faiths. They will be joined by representatives of the Seventh Day Adventists, the Rationalist Society, the Humanist Society, the Atheist Foundation and the Church of Scientology. (here).

Cults love this sort of ersatz coating of respectability at the hands of government, and it's as if no one noticed that Freedom Boy was helping out the cult of Scientology, while in the United States the con is being exposed on what seems like a daily basis.

So gorgeous George turned up and spoke about bigotry, presumably including Scientology as one of the victims of bigotry. All hail Xenu.

Meanwhile, Ben is the best figure of fun doing the rounds, as you can read in Ben Carson Whines That 'Secular Progressives' Are Ridiculing His Pyramid Theory.

But here's the thing. Chairman Rupert has been Jonesing for Ben to get the POTUS gig for some time now.

So we have the head of one of the most powerful media organisations in the world cheering on a creationist, while locally Freedom Boy invites a secretive, punitive cult to a round table conference to talk about its need for religious freedom ...

Sorry, barking mad doesn't get anywhere near the forcefulness required to talk about this most peculiar world ...

It's got so batty that even magazines like The New Yorker have to take these sorts of ideas seriously and provide refutations, while having a little fun along the way:

There are theories, out there, that the pyramids of Egypt are really giant batteries, or even electric generators. Think about it: their granite blocks were originally encased in limestone, almost as if they had been insulated, as a power conductor is, with rubber. They once had golden capstones, a bit like the copper-tops on Duracells. All that granite piled up creates a magnetic field or a radioactive one, depending on which engineering schematics one favors—this reading of the pyramids takes a number of forms—and has a profound effect on negative ions. The King’s Chamber in the Great Pyramid contains what may look like a sepulchre but is really where all the gold wiring that ran through the pyramid met—a pharaonic circuit board. The pyramid is a cross between the Tower of Babel and the Tesla Tower: a massive source of wireless power, which explains why the torches that figures carry in Egyptian wall paintings aren’t plugged into anything. Delve too deeply, and the question seems less whether the pyramids are big and intricate machines built by ordinary hardworking Egyptians than whether they were built (perhaps, originally, upside down) by extraterrestrials, who might someday return to activate their force fields or laser beams. But that might be a bit much, as Ben Carson, who is running for President, would be the first to tell you.

Well yes indeed, and you can find the rest here, currently outside the paywall, but before you laugh, just remember that the Chairman is a fan of Ben's ... and so the lizard people meet grain storage silos and Freedom Boy thinks cults deserve a place at the table ...