There’s a sucker born every minute, and you’ll never go broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.

The Creation “Museum” is expanding and building a theme park. It’s simply a fact that Ken Ham’s Institution of Ignorance is doing business like gangbusters — it is well-attended and successful, has low-brow appeal, has negligible operating expenses (unlike a real museum), and is drawing in crowds of rubes and doing a great job of separating them from their money. I’m not at all surprised that Ham is rubbing his hands together and calculating new ways to fleece the flock; it’s what his kind does.

It’s a bit embarrassing having this gigantic, growing symbol of the failure of American education metastasizing in our midst, but it’s not their fault. The way we’ll fix it is not to shut down the stupid place, but to teach people that creationism is foolishness, so that Ham’s flock shrinks.

Otherwise, though, there’s also the hope that this may be a fatal attack of hubris. There have been other cases of evangelical Christians building theme parks, and they don’t end well. Balancing on that thin line between preachiness and fun isn’t easy, and I don’t think the thin-skinned and frighteningly dour Ken Ham can do it.