In this file photo, Ken Ham, founder of the nonprofit ministry Answers in Genesis, poses with one of his favorite animatronic dinosaurs during a tour of the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Ky.
The state of Kentucky has recently come under the spotlight for the pending construction of a Noah’s Ark centered theme park dubbed The Ark Encounter.
Earlier in 2013 the project, which according to a Huffington Post article by Mary Wisniewski, will cost a total of $150 million to construct and was flagging in its fundraising campaign.
The recent and highly publicized Bill Nye and Ken Ham Debate rekindled the interest of donors nation-wide in the project, which was mentioned several times by both parties throughout the course of the televised event.
Ham is a creationist advocate and the President of Answers in Genesis and Nye is a science educator and advocate. The two debated the origins of life and the universe at Ham’s Creation Museum in Petersburg, Ky.
“That is one of the reasons [Bill] Nye got criticized before the debate,” said Jonathan Hoffman, a PhD candidate for the Department of Geology and Geophysics at UW. “Normally paleontologists and biologists tend to avoid these kinds of debates, because they give even footing to Creationism as though it’s a science, and it’s not, it’s theology.”
According to Ham, a fundamentalist Christian and proponent of young earth creationism, building a scale replica of Noah’s Ark is the best thing for America.
“Why is the time right to build another Ark? Well, today there is great rebellion against God and His Word in the land,” Ham stated in a press release on the Ark Encounter Website. “With increasing homosexual behavior and a growing acceptance of abortion, God’s hand of judgment is being seen as He withdraws the restraining influence of His Holy Spirits. There is no doubt God is judging America. And one major recent sign of God’s judgment is that homosexual behavior is permeating the culture.”
While Ham regularly makes statements in regards to his concern for the spiritual well-being of the nation, the Ark Encounter theme park will not be offered as a free educational service to the public.
As outlined by the park’s website, a lifetime pass for an individual will cost $2,000 all at once, or payments of $175 every month for twelve months. Family passes are $3,000 dollars, or twelve monthly payments of $265. Benefits of these passes include lifetime entry into both the Ark Encounter park and Ham’s Creation Museum, a genesis based and “historically accurate” museum that displays the creation of life according to the Bible.
Projects such as the Ark Encounter and the Creation Museum taken in tandem with a slew of Intelligent Design education legislation pushed forward in the mid-2000’s has prompted a massive response from the scientific community, indicated Hoffman.
“There’s been a really big shift in recent years to simply make scientific discoveries and research much more available and understandable,” Hoffman said. “There’s a huge misconception about science in this country, and I think Creationist movements are capitalizing on that by misrepresenting science in their claims.”
Ken Ham’s theme park is built as a way to address the literal interpretation of the Biblical account of the great flood in the book Genesis. Ham and the project managers involved with the park are attempting to provide an educational backdrop for which to display the veracity and accuracy of events described in the Bible, as stated specifically in the FAQ section of the park’s website.
“The one thing I’ll give Ham is that he’s very honest about his view that if one part of the Bible is disproven, then it’s all false,” said Hoffman. “To me it seems like just a personal insecurity issue. It translates over into the way he attacks scientific claims as well, he feels as if he can just disprove on thing about evolution, then he’s disproven the entire theory. Which is simply ridiculous, that’s not how science works.”
