Built With Tax Breaks , Ark Encounter Hires Only Christians but Scams All

Look, we’ve all seen the Jurassic Park movies, right? Even if you haven’t, you’ve head of dinosaurs? I submit to you, if, as Ken Ham insists, Noah’s Ark also carried dinosaurs, then it came to rest on the top of Mount Ararat a ship of the dead. Because if you throw a T-Rex or a few raptors on that thing, everything else is going to be eaten.

Unfortunately, the death of Noah and his family, and all their animal victims, did not arrest the rise of stupidity in our world. I give you Ken Ham’s Ark Encounter, which opened July 7. “Come and be amazed,” they rave. Come and be robbed, I say.

There are people who not only believe the world is 6,000 years old (a precondition for employment at Noah’s Ark) but who are willing to pay $40 for adults (discounted to $31 for seniors) and a whopping obscene $28 for children. And that’s besides the $10 you have to put out for parking.

Presumably, Noah didn’t charge his guests a king’s ransom to get aboard. When you consider this 510 foot long “replica” was built on the taxpayer dime (including taxes from people who aren’t allowed to find employment there), it ought to be free. But then, Jesus isn’t around to knock over some tables at Ham’s sham.

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Ham and his cronies talk about the flood like it really happened. Protesters were more concerned about a “taxpayer funded flood of ignorance.”

Besides the exhibit being an obvious and morally repulsive paean of praise to genocide, there is ignorance in abundance, from dinosaurs who had been extinct already for tens of millions of years somehow hitching a ride on Noah’s Ark. Ham says in defense of his stupidity,

“Although there are about 668 names of dinosaurs, there are perhaps only 55 different ‘kinds’ of dinosaurs. Furthermore, not all dinosaurs were huge like the brachiosaurus, and even those dinosaurs on the Ark were probably ‘teenagers’ or young adults.”

In answer, we can only point out even ‘teenagers’ or young adults had been extinct for tens of millions of years, like their parents.

And as Nicholas Purcell, a lecturer in ancient history at Oxford University, pointed out according to The Daily Mail:

“If floodwaters covered Eurasia 12,000ft deep in 2,800BC, how did the complex societies of Egypt and Mesopotamia, already many centuries old, keep right on regardless?”

Do not ask questions, just believe. It has been the cry of conservative Christians for 2,000 years and they see no reason to change now. After all, they get to use taxpayer dollars to build this monument to ignorance and then deny jobs to any who disagree with them. As Ham said, “We’re requiring them to be Christians, that’s the bottom line.”

No. The bottom line is all scam. Evangelicals are facing persecution? Hardly. Ark Encounter is living proof.

Hrafnkell Haraldsson

Hrafnkell Haraldsson, a social liberal with leanings toward centrist politics has degrees in history and philosophy. His interests include, besides history and philosophy, human rights issues, freedom of choice, religion, and the precarious dichotomy of freedom of speech and intolerance. He brings a slightly different perspective to his writing, being that he is neither a follower of an Abrahamic faith nor an atheist but a polytheist, a modern-day Heathen who follows the customs and traditions of his Norse ancestors. He maintains his own blog, A Heathen’s Day, which deals with Heathen and Pagan matters, and Mos Maiorum Foundation www.mosmaiorum.org, dedicated to ethnic religion. He has also contributed to NewsJunkiePost, GodsOwnParty and Pagan+Politics.