Update on Ark Encounter (YEC theme park): creationist Ken Ham offering junk bonds

by adamah 12 Replies latest social entertainment

  • adamah
    adamah

    Seems the Ark Encounter project is having a hard time raising funds, but Ken Ham doesn't miss a chance to bash Obamacare to help raise funds. Ham is pushing junk bonds to help finance the project:

    http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2013/11/ark_encounter_finances_obamacare_sank_ken_ham_s_creationist_theme_park.html

    The Sketchy Finances of the Noah’s Ark Theme Park

    B uilding a full-scale wooden replica of Noah’s Ark forces one to confront a number of conceptual challenges. How, for instance, did Noah keep the ark from capsizing? How did he keep his wardrobe fresh? And how, during all that rain, did he and the animals avoid getting seasonal affective disorder?

    Ken Ham believes he has the answers to all these questions and more—and he needs only $73 million to teach them to the world. As president of Answers in Genesis, Ham has already gifted us with a bizarre series of children’s books and an unforgettable creationist museum. The next stage of his quest to convert America to young-Earth creationism is Ark Encounter, a massive creationist amusement park centered around an alleged life-size reconstruction of Noah’s Ark.

    Like most of Ham’s projects, Ark Encounter promises to be a heady combination of hands-on fun, perverse indoctrination, and apocalyptic terror. According to Ham’s fundraising newsletters, the ark itself will contain three levels of “edu-tainment” about Noah’s menagerie—which, as noted in his magnum opus Dinosaurs of Eden, included every species of dinosaur, even T. Rex. (How did they fit? As always, Ham has an answer: “When it came to the very few dinosaur kinds that grew to a very large size, God probably sent ‘teenagers,’ NOT ‘fully grown adults’ on the Ark.”) The ark’s exhibits will likely follow the lead of the Creation Museum, intertwining spectacularly weird animatronics, comically idiotic sophism, and menacing warnings of cultural decay.

    (Read the rest of the article at the link provided above.)

  • rmt1
    rmt1

    Magic box bigger on the inside than on the outside.

  • cantleave
    cantleave

    Ken Ham is totally bat shit crazy.

  • jgnat
    jgnat

    Perhaps his failure to raise the necessary funds is a sign that his peculiar brand of fundyism is losing favour. May it be so

  • adamah
    adamah

    It's somewhat paradoxical, since the entire premise of the theme park is God's upcoming punishment of the World; however, he's selling bonds, which mature in the future.

    I suspect he's trying to sell them to "true believers" who view their purchase as something they do in the name of God, and possibly buying "brownie points" which help assure their salvation. He's selling family admission packages for "charter lifetime boarding passes" for ONLY $140/month:

    http://arkencounter.com/

  • snare&racket
    snare&racket

    So with all our technology and knowledge , in 2013 the ark would cost 73 million dollars, but a drunkard old man managed with his inbred family thousands of years ago, noooooo problem....

    great work Ken, doing wonders for people who care to ponder!

  • bohm
    bohm

    Oh my!

    if it gets really bad, perhaps he should ask people to pray rather than send money?

  • rip van winkle
    rip van winkle

    Funny that this guy is named 'Ham' and he's trying to build a Noahs Ark theme park!!! Lol.

  • DeWandelaar
    DeWandelaar

    Someone in the netherlands already rebuilded the arc (with the same dimensions)!

  • adamah
    adamah

    SNR said-

    So with all our technology and knowledge , in 2013 the ark would cost 73 million dollars, but a drunkard old man managed with his inbred family thousands of years ago, noooooo problem....

    Yeah, well remember that this is a non-floating version, which is built on land (unlike the ark built in the Netherlands, which was built on a barge frame). Of course, Noah didn't need to worry about the additional costs of meeting State building codes, or allow for wheelchair access ADA ramps, etc.

    Hey, I see they've managed to make a scale model showing what the complex will look like: that's something...

    http://arkencounter.com/blog/2013/10/03/ark-model-hits-the-runway/ark-model-1/

    That's from their blog, which is pretty hilarious reading (and a post in the archives called "tool time with Noah" raises the issue of Noah's financing the original purchase of lumber (!), tools, pitch/tar, laborers, property, etc). It's actually not a bad idea: Disneyland for Bible-thumpin' creationists (i.e. those Xians for whom Disney is too edgy and risque). Of course, you'd have to count out the Amish, JWs, etc. since it's not their flavor of crazy: that's the likely show-stopper.

    Adam

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