Kentucky just launched a tourism campaign to tout the wonderful landmarks in their state — and Governor Beshear includes Ken Ham’s creationist “museum” as one of them. He has just slapped the whole state with a gross insult.
Really, Governor Beshear? You’re so desperate for tourist attractions that you pad your list with a shameful institution dedicated to lies and miseducation? They’re scraping the bottom of the barrel; next on the list is a garbage dump, or a sewage treatment plant, or a polluted lake.
Of course Ken Ham is laughing happily. Not only did he get the state seal of approval on his madhouse, but the state has committed $2 million to road work to improve access, with $9 million more on the way.
Man, the University of Kentucky must be rolling in cash if the state has so much to spare that they can waste it on roadbuilding to an attraction that doesn’t exist.
I see from the Ark Encounter website you can sponsor parts of the ark – e.g., a plank for a mere $100 per month, or a beam for $500 a month.
Just how much of a mug do you have to be?
I teach at a Kentucky university and have lived here for 18 years. There is much I like about the state, but this is really depressing, considering the draconian cuts education is looking at in the next few years. But…trust me on this, things would have been MUCH worse if either of his opponents had won. Sigh…so tired of the whole “lesser of two evils” thing.
For a while we actually had a governor who valued education and backed it up with money. Kentucky universities, especially the two flagship institutions, but not limited to them, made huge strides in his administration, and it was serious progress: salaries became more competitive, thus attracting better faculty; money went for research facilities; student retention and graduation rates improved. It wasn’t all about basketball. I knew it couldn’t last.
Thankfully there is not an afterlife or Abe Lincoln would be pissed.
Trying to add a little levity to an otherwise depressing post, the quote I love best from the “Ark Encounter” website is the following:
“What if we built the Ark (out of wood) today? Imagine the impact it could have on the world. What a powerful outreach to teach the world about God’s Word and the message of salvation!”
The real take-home message is that God is a major cosmic asshole who will smite the planet if you pesky humans don’t behave – i.e., you better do what we tell you God says to do!
On second thought, the sad thing is that some of those nimrods would actually endorse the above statement. What do the kids say nowadays? Levity “FAIL”?
I am from southwest Ohio and I have been through many parts of Kentucky. It really is a nice state. There is a lot of beautiful scenery and there is a lot of history there. It really is a shame that a few dingbats (including the governor) give the whole state a bad reputation.
Apparently, from their web site, they have already raised $5,347,241.
Hey, at least a a garbage dump or a sewage treatment plant has a useful function.
But the polluted lake analogy works for me.
What? What about Mammoth Cave? Natural Bridge? Lake Cumberland? The Horse Park?
Surely those are better and more factual in some way than the Bullshit Museum. Really, do we need more than the largest cave system in the world to attract people?
…Ok, we make bourbon, too.
“next on the list is a garbage dump, or a sewage treatment plant, or a polluted lake”
Hey, don’t compare sewage treatment plants to Ken Ham’s idiocy. At least they perform a valuable service to society.
I found this on their site and it amused me. “When construction begins, Amish craftsmen will likely converge on a site in Northern Kentucky to put up the Ark’s frame” Wouldn’t be great if everything got built like this.
If Anaheim can be proud of being the home of Disney’s Fantasyland, why can’t Kentucky be proud of being the home of an even bigger fantasy? Take that, Uncle Walt! Ken Ham has got you beat for imagineering!
I’ll take the Bourbon trail any day.
Kentucky’s’ Big bone lick state park should be promoted more. It is touted as the birthplace of American Paleontology. This is a much more worthy destination than the Creation museum.
Look, they’re trying to attract tourists, not make people smarter. Biblical literalists far outnumber us. Of course it makes sense for them to advertise their creation museum.
I happen to think gambling is an idiotic waste, aimed directly at people too stupid to understand probability, but Las Vegas and Atlantic City understandably brag about their casinos. What’s the difference?
So the government should be in the business of promoting religious nonsense?
That’s in Indonesia. It’s big enough to put a Jumbo Jet in. The discoverer got an agoraphobia attack and was unable to move for hours.
Do they? Do you know how the first poll pharyngulation went? That was a few years ago. It was about Expelled! and waged for days, if not weeks. In the end it turned out there were only about 900 creationists on teh whole wide intarwebz.
Casinos don’t spread anti-knowledge.
Casinos have more integrity?
“next on the list is a garbage dump, or a sewage treatment plant, or a polluted lake.”
To add to other comments, don’t dis the sewage treatment plants. In addition to being useful, they are technologically quite interesting. A lot of Science goes into treating water, which I consider one of the great accomplishments of humankind.
I think there are a lot more than 900 creationists. Have you seen (on the AIG web site) how many people attend their little shit seminars? That is truly scary.
The government IS in the gambling business, it is called a lottery.
I’ve just started to get in to blogs & this is the first one I’ve read,I came here because of the Richard Dawkins & Bill Mayer films I saw. I’m a Brit now living in oz. I would just like to say thank you for standing up to the Looney tunes Christians .i can not image being surrounded by such arrogant Close minded simpletons .this whole blog has inspired me to commit to try & stop this insane clap trap from taking hold here & back home in the UK. Keep up the good there are lots of people behind you over here & Uk.
Steve1:
Major brain acrobatics required to put the Bullshit Park and Big Bone Lick in the same brochure!
So, ‘The Curse of Ham’ rears its ugly wooden head again…
I see they offer ‘Lifetime boarding passes’… Presumably, they will be valid for 950 years, as that was Noah’s age?
People see the Berkeley Pit, so perhaps there’s precedent in a sense for people wanting to see another form of man-made disaster.
@ David Marjanovic, #16
A quick check of net listings concerning the ‘largest’ cave system in the world, two criterion come up: length, and volume. Within those two parameters, a cursory look brings up three regions: Mammoth in Kentucky, Clearwater and Vietnam–didn’t see anything about Indonesia, unless they’re relatively new. (?)
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=6&sqi=2&ved=0CIYBEBYwBQ&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.caverbob.com%2Fwlong.htm&ei=-D2pT4mpHMXTgQeSy-xa&usg=AFQjCNFEj5iGYZzLMKSNhQUtFGgJ5No3sg&sig2=KfYsXz_6YZc_DHJ0lh0_yQ
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/01/largest-cave/peter-photography
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave (see ‘Records and Superlatives’)
Correction: largest cave system by (by volume) to be Clearwater system in Mulu national Park in Indonesian archipelago); longest cave system believed to be Mammoth Caves
http://www.mulucaves.org/wordpress/the-caves-2/the-major-cave-systems/the-clearwater-cave-system
I understand there was a 9.2 magnitude earthquake in Kentucky the other day.
It did over $3000000 of improvements.
Louis
But if any spelunkers have dared to descend into the cavity between Ken Ham’s ears, none has managed to return and describe the vast and bottomless pit found therein.
I took my kids (ages 6 and 8) to Mammoth Cave last summer. We had a blast. They were enthralled and amazed. However, the first tour we took when we got there was just a short, self-guided one where you can walk around the main entry chamber to one of the systems. There was a ranger stationed there and asked the kids if they had any questions. My 8 year-old daughter asked him how old the caves were. He responded that “it depended on who you ask, but some geologists say that the caves could maybe be almost 300 million years old.”
Kentucky: where you get answers to your scientific questions which are backed by mountains of evidence qualified with creationist code words like ‘it depends who you ask’ and ‘some people believe.’
^10 million. Sorry for the typo. I was just having a discussion with a co-worker about a different scientific topic regarding 300 mya.
Would an actual real life sized ark be useful in demonstrating the complete impossibility of fitting between two and fourteen of every living species of animal into it? Will the ark museum have a section dedicated to Noah sacrificing animals as burnt offerings on an altar as thanks to God for his act of genocide? Will there be a section where dad can get totally ratted on home made wine and pass out naked in a tent so that the kids can look in and then point and laugh?
Deepest cave is the Kubera Cave in Abkhazia (the western breakaway region of Sakartvelo). See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krubera_Cave for details.
Geologically very interesting as it sheds light on the freshwater springs offshore in that part of the Black Sea.
A actual real life sized ark wouldn’t exist and would be useful in showing the complete impossibility of the construction of such a wooden boat.
It’s dimensions are too large IIRC even with a metal frame it still wouldn’t be sea worthy
Not at all–the arc was roughly That’s 450′ long, 75′ wide x 45′ high. There are wooden structures that are bigger. Now, it is “possible” that Noah and the other 7 people “could have” gathered all of the timber, pitch, nails, and rope necessary before rot, rats and the elements destroyed everything. Because, you know, god.
What would happen to such a structure when it entered the water? There’s a word for it: hogging.
The problem is that the center of the arc would weigh less than the ends, and thus, you start with a nice crack in the (severely-stressed) gunwales and end up with salty animal soup.
Proving once again that illiterate Bronze-Age nomads knew naught jack nor shite.
Um that’s what I said…a wooden BOAT could not exist and be sea worthy.
A sewage treatment plant is the reverse of Ham’s Bullshit Museum. The purpose of a sewage treatment plant is to take in shit and put out clean water. Ham’s purpose is to take in kids with relatively clean minds and put out kids whose minds now contain bullshit.
During a recent event at the Horse Park, Ham was kind enough to release a particularly ludicrous statement complaining about how the park’s Museum of the Horse has in it’s permanent exhibits a diorama explaining the evolution of horses.
It’s point? Equine evolution must be bogus because the various stages of development show the proto-horses evolving into larger animals, and yet today we have huge draft horses and tiny miniatures — SO EVOLUTION CAN’T BE RIGHT, Y’ALL! PRAISE JEEBUS!
how is selecive breading fromed? How woodchuk get hooves?
Or until the next global flood, whichever comes first? Because that’s why Ham and co. are building this, right? Because the park’s main exhibit is no mere replica. It’s The Real Thing™, doncha’ know!
Actually the inclusion of the creation museum is brilliant. It perfectly targets the sort of people that would be inclined to travel to Kentucky.
David Marjanovic:
That’s in Indonesia. It’s big enough to put a Jumbo Jet in. The discoverer got an agoraphobia attack and was unable to move for hours.
I don’t think that is correct. Wikipedia lists the known length of the Mammoth system (Kentucky) to be about 400mi, much larger than the cave system attached to the Sarawak chamber (which news reports point out to be about 200mi).
On the other hand Sarawak does seem to be the current record holder for the largest single cave chamber, but that’s quite different from its length as a cave system.
David Marjakovic:
Also Sarawak is in the Malaysian part of Borneo, it seems, not the Indonesian part.
If you take the most liberal estimates of the size of the ark, and then consider the sheer number of species on earth, the ark would not be capable of holding them. But I do remember when the baptists showed up at the state fair with their traditional picture of the ark, and the pair of happy t-rex they had added to the zoo.
Look, I’m a christian, I believe and try to following the teachings of Jesus Christ. The first time I try to force my beliefs down anyones throat by any means I have failed my own beliefs. I believe in Him because I see the truth of his words bore out in reality.
If people wish to believe that we are merely an anomaly never to be repeated that’s fine with me, but any aetheist who wishes to disparage me because I don’t stop at evolutions explanation of how we came to be and seek the why we came to be as well. In my mind, without answering the why, we accept we are animals, and therefore have no reason to complain when animals act like animals.
@Fredjenkins
Do you realize why you face so much fire from atheists, dude? It’s not just that your belief is nonsense without accepting its premises beforehand. It’s that you are here, complaining about atheists being mean to Christians, rather than opposing your religious compatriots. That is fucking aggravating beyond measure. And don’t pretend for a second that the fact that we are mean to you justifies this; If you already grant that these people are wrong, and that evolution is the correct explanation for how life arose on this earth, that means you are putting whether we are nice ahead of supporting and spreading what is demonstrably true. If you jackasses fought your fundamentalists with greater vigour and frequency, perhaps atheists would not be inclined to take the divisions within religion more seriously.
Oh Gawd, special pleading already. Dude, you do realize you’re an animal right? Cheese and crackers, even in Florida’s Heartland, elementary biology had the decency to teach this. You’re a mammal, just a member of the smartest group of them.
I’m going to skip the fact that you’re making the assumption that there has to be a ‘why’ and address the whole ‘animal’ business.
First of all, we are animals. Fact. You can’t change that. We’re humans, mammals, vertebrates, animals, eukaryotes. Deal with it. I’ve never understood why people get so hung up on the ‘just animals’ thing. Animals are a pretty diverse group.
And acting like animals? Just what does that mean? Since we are animals, whichever way we act, we’re acting like animals. We act like humans. Chimps act like chimps. A praying mantis acts like a praying mantis. A slug acts like a slug. An ostrich acts like an ostrich. A flatworm like a flatworm… You seem to be assuming that since we’re ‘just animals’ we should be acting like some barbarian horde, raping and pillaging right, left and center. Why? Just animals =/= complete immoral monsters.
Er, that’s “would be inclined” not “would not be inclined”.
Thanks for the information about caves, everyone. I only knew about that chamber in Borneo; not sure why I thought it was in the Indonesian part of the island.
I wrote “there were only about 900 creationists on teh whole wide intarwebz” – there are certainly more on the Internet now. But we’re easy to underestimate, too.
Thread won.
between two and fourteen of every living species of animal
No! Both two of every “kind” of animal, and two of every treyf kind and fourteen of every kosher kind, at the same time.
Read the story. Having been put together from two different versions of an earlier story, it flatly contradicts itself.
That doesn’t follow.
Also, the argument from consequences is a logical fallacy.
I missed this yesterday, because I was taking my kids to the dinosaur exhibit at the Louisville Zoo, which, incidentally, does not have any saddles.
I know it’s fun to jump on an entire state and slam its residents for their ignorance, but isn’t that what Tennessee is for?
@fredjenkins
You mean like Jesus’s teaching that “If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple”? Or his teaching (by example) that if a fruit tree doesn’t have any fruit for you when you want some, you should kill the tree (Matthew 21:19)?