With the media’s ongoing coverage of Donald Trump and his aggressive antics, fellow Republican candidate Ben Carson has been able to quietly sail under the radar. Behind Ben Carson’s quiet and seemingly shy veneer is a startling degree of ignorance and bigotry. On issues such as science, LGBT rights, and the Affordable Care Act, he has many questionable opinions of which many seem unaware. The focus on Trump and Carson’s impressive career as a respected neuroscientist mask what he truly stands for.

Carson is a devout Seventh-day Adventist causing him to clash with many commonly accepted scientific facts. Seventh-day Adventistism is a branch of Protestantism that maintains that the Bible should be understood literally. As a result, Carson does not think the Earth is six and a half billion years old as most scientists believe. His explanation is that  “carbon dating and all of these things really don’t mean anything to a God who has the ability to create anything at any point in time.” In a similar vein, Carson dismisses evolution as a myth. As a respected and world-renowned neurosurgeon, this is baffling. He claims that an organ as complex as the brain could not possibly be produced by evolution. In an interview in 2014, Carson rejected evolution by saying “Gimme a break. You know, according to their scheme – boom! [Evolution] had to just occur overnight. Had to be there.” Nobody argues that evolution occurred overnight. It is instead a process that spans millions of years and countless generations of organisms. A person with a seventh grade understanding of science could find the glaring problem in Carson’s argument. He further conflicts with mainstream science in his stance on climate change. In 2014 he said,  “There’s always going to be either cooling or warming going on. As far as I’m concerned, that’s irrelevant.” This dubious claim is at odds with 97% of scientists who agree climate change is a real and tangible threat. Despite possessing countless medical accolades and degrees, Carson has many backwards positions on scientific facts.

When it comes to LGBT rights, Carson is even more ignorant. Like many homophobic people, he has stated on multiple occasions that sexual orientation is a choice. In an interview with CNN, Carson claimed it is a choice, “Because a lot of people who go into prison go into prison straight – and when they come out, they’re gay.” His evidence is misguided, wrong, and frankly comical. Even more disturbing is that since he thinks homosexual people choose to be gay, he does not believe gay rights are equivalent to civil rights. Under his twisted logic, by choosing to be gay, one is not entitled to equality under the eyes of the law. In other interviews, he has tried to connect homosexuality to more sexually deviant groups of people. As the Washington Post noted, “Carson had mentioned bestiality and pedophilia while arguing against gay marriage in an interview,” proving that he harbors very negative views towards an entire group of Americans.

Carson’s opinion on the Affordable Care Act, commonly referred to as Obamacare, is equally as offensive. At a summit in 2013, he said “Obamacare is really I think the worst thing that has happened in this nation since slavery.” Even if one ignores the spates of mass shootings that have rocked the nation, 9/11, Pearl Harbor and the subsequent internment of Japanese people, his statement is still erroneous.  But Carson continued by saying “It is slavery in a way, because it is making all of us subservient to the government, and it was never about health care. It was about control.” Likening the Affordable Care Act to one of the most morally bereft periods in American history is disgusting. Such aggressive statements contribute little to a genuine discourse over the merits or perils of Obamacare. He is simply fomenting support among conservatives by playing into their irrational fear of governmental overreach.

Even with all of his odd beliefs and statements, Carson has been steadily rising in the polls. The most recent data compiled by Quinnipiac University shows Carson in second, only behind Trump. All of the scrutiny that is placed on Trump belies the fact that there are crazier candidates in the Republican party. It is time for people to move past Donald Trump and instead focus on the soft-spoken brain surgeon who believes the Earth is 6,000 years old and people choose to become homosexual while in prison.