Ark Encounter Loses Tax Incentives

Reuters is reporting that the AiG-fronted Ark Encounter project has lost the tax incentives it so desperately wanted for the construction of the life-sized (but not necessarily biblically-based) Noah's Ark.  Steve Bittenbender writes:

Kentucky has pulled potential tax credits for a proposed Noah's Ark-based theme park, telling the developer on Wednesday that the plans had evolved from a tourist attraction into a ministry seeking to advance religion.

State tourism officials had given preliminary approval for tax incentives of potentially more than $18 million over 10 years for the Ark Encounter park slated to open in 2016, but later warned the park's parent company, Answers in Genesis, that it could lose them if it hired only people who believed in the biblical flood.

Nobody has yet been hired but it is pretty clear that the tourism board became uncomfortable when the hiring dust-up occurred and finally just got cold feet. Mike Zovath says that the project will continue but chief counsel Mike Johnson was quoted as saying this “will be a huge financial loss to the organization.” I can only guess that this decision, which the Ark Encounter may fight in court, will have a large effect on the sale of the junk bonds to finance the undertaking. This is a huge win for opponents of the project.

Ironically, this comes on the heels of a huge ad campaign to promote the project, including billboards in Times Square. Here is a YouTube video of the 15-second ad clip: 

Ark Encounter Hiring Update

Yahoo News is running a story that the state of Kentucky has contacted the organizers of the Ark Encounter in connexion with its CAD designer position.  Chief arkhead Mike Zovath has responded.  Steve Bittenbender writes:

The developer of a Noah's Ark-based theme park in Kentucky said on Wednesday he would fight for his religious rights after state officials warned he could lose millions in potential tax credits if he hires only people who believe in the biblical flood.

Ark Encounter, which is slated to open in 2016 in Williamston, Kentucky, is not hiring anyone yet, but its parent company Answers in Genesis asks employees to sign a faith statement including a belief in creationism and the flood.

It still isn't clear what the job ad actually says. The one I saw did not have a requirement of a statement of faith. This seems to be a case of the state preventing any possible future violations of the law. Absolutely none of this would be an issue, however, if Ham and co. had actually managed to get all of the funding privately. The fact that they are now issuing junk bonds to achieve the necessary funding is an indication that it will be a struggle to get it finished.

Hat tip to Panda's Thumb.

AU Opposes Tax Incentives for Ark Encounter

The organization Americans United for the Separation of Church and State has written a letter to Steve Beshear, the governor of Kentucky, urging him to deny the tax incentives for the Ark Encounter.  WLKY has this:

Americans United for the Separation of Church and State said in a letter to Gov. Steve Beshear that the website of Answers in Genesis requires that job applicants agree with its Christian "Statement of Faith."

Americans United officials said an applicant must profess that homosexuality is a sin on par with bestiality and incest. The group said the policy amounts to discrimination.

The coordinator of the theme park project, Mike Zovath, said hiring policies have not been written.

Not sure what document AU got a hold of, since Zovath essentially is saying that such a document doesn't exist.  It is likely anecdotal for now.  Here is the AU's letter to governor Beshear.

Creation Museum in Financial Trouble?

The Libertarian Republic (and quite a few other outlets, it seems) is running a story about the financial struggles of the Creation Museum.  Austin Peterson writes:

The Creation Museum, a venue aimed at educating people from a biblical creationist viewpoint of history, is in financial trouble and struggling to make ends meet. With declining attendance, the museum has begun to veer into new ventures such as ziplines and sky bridge attractions in order to draw crowds. The biblically themed museum has also taken up a new exhibit dedicated to asking the question of whether dinosaurs were actually dragons. When asked what dragons and ziplines have to do with the museums mission, Mike Zovath the co-founder and vice-president claims that they are irrelevant.

Irrelevant? If they are irrelevant to the mission of the museum, then what are they doing there? An attempt to try to explain one of the prevailing mysteries in the Genesis account: the absence of dinosaurs, and it is deemed irrelevant?  What happened to the "behemoth" explanation, anyway?

One of the local news teams did a story on this development:

One of the byproducts of the struggles of the Creation Museum is that the Ark Encounter construction has been brought to a standstill. As Tzvi Ben-Gedalyahu of the Jewish Press noted a few weeks back:

The Creation Museum in nearby Petersburg was opened six years ago and was supposed to be the source of funds for the Noah’s Ark project, but it got hit by the recession. Since then, visitors have been staying away in droves, denying the proposed new park the funds that were supposed to finance the project that will cost nearly $150 million. If the Noah’s Ark project is not completed by next May, it will forfeit tax incentives and leave a further gaping financial hole. The backers are a part of the same Bible thumping ministry that built the Creation Museum, which sticks to a literal view of the Creation. It is headed by Ken Ham, who is at war with Darwin and scientists who claim the world is older than almost 6,000 years.

You will recall that, a bit back, Ken Ham took great pains to portray the Ark Encounter as a separate endeavor from the Creation Museum. If the people that support the Creation Museum are the same people that support the Ark Encounter and they have fallen on hard times, however, then the ark will not be built.

On the other hand,  if it is built it will, apparently, feature a new ride modeled on the theme of the ten plagues of Egypt.  Won't that be fun!!  Riding along while locusts swirl about your head or having frogs drop out of the sky.  And what about when we get to the tenth plague?  Will there be corpses strewn around the landscape?  No, evidently not:

Mike Zovath, senior vice president and co-founder of the Ark Encounter, told The Christian Post on Monday. "The ride is not a thrill ride, it's a seven to 11 minute ride through the nation of Israel, where visitors will see the plagues portrayed."

Sort of like the "Its a Small World, After All," ride in Disney World but without the happy feel to it.

Ken Ham and Mike Zovath have done more to damage the reputation of Christianity than anyone else I can think of.  This is a travesty. One can only hope that this ersatz, Ellen White-inspired monument to flat-earth Christianity will, itself, become irrelevant. 

AP Covers Ark-n-Park

I think it was Barry Lynn that came up with the term “Ark-n-Park” and I like it. The AP has a story on the extravaganza. This story showed up everywhere. I swiped mine from Yahoo News. Dylan Lovan writes:

"The message here is, God's word is true," said Mike Zovath, project manager of the ark. "There's a lot of doubt: 'Could Noah have built a boat this big, could he have put all the animals on the boat?' Those are questions people all over the country ask."

The ark will be the centerpiece of a proposed $155 million religious theme park, called the Ark Encounter, and will include other biblical icons like the Tower of Babel and an old world-style village.

It's an expansion of the ministry's first major public attraction, the controversial Creation Museum. It opened in 2007 and attracted worldwide attention for presenting stories from the Bible as historical fact, challenging evolution and asserting that the earth was created about 6,000 years ago.

"The ark is really a different approach" than the museum, Zovath said. "It's really not about creation-evolution, it's about the authority of the Bible starting with the ark account in Genesis."

General thoughts:

• The idea being put forth here is that “God's word is true” and “God's word is literal” are the same thing. This is a false dichotomy and implies that every passage in the Bible is to be taken at face value and nothing more. This is counter to hundreds of years of Biblical interpretation and study and, as I have written before, results in a completely flat understanding of scripture—something that AIG is, unfortunately, quite well-known for.
• It is good to finally see AIG front and center on this in print. It brings into sharp focus their duplicity in denying their central involvement during the questions that arose regarding the tax deduction proposal presented to the Kentucky government in complete absence of an economic impact plan.
  
• “It's really not about creation-evolution, it's about the authority of the Bible starting with the ark account in Genesis.” If Mr. Zovath believes this, he is the only one who does. Fully half of AIG’s central message is an attack on evolution. The literal ark interpretation expressly implies that all of the modern-day flora and fauna are direct descendents of what was on board the ark and not the product of millions of years of evolution. They are inextricably linked and I am quite sure that there will be anti-evolutionary messages to be found at the Ark-n-Park.
  

Construction begins in the spring...

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