Honestly, I think the Ark Park is doing better than I would have expected, and they do have a steady flow of gullible visitors. There’s a regional travel agency that advertises trips from Morris, MN to the Ark Park all the time — they have to load it up with lots of other stuff to make it appealing, though.

The Itinerary: Wednesday, June 15th – Travel to Dubuque, IA Pickup locations: 7:00 AM – Morris, MN 8:15 AM – Willmar, MN 9:15 AM – Hutchinson, MN 10:00 AM – New Ulm, MN Afternoon: Visit Field of Dreams in Dyersville, IA Hotel: Dubuque, IA Thursday, June 16th – Celebration Belle full day Cruise Dubuque to Moline 7:00am Depart on the Celebration Belle on the Mississippi River– we’re headed to Moline, IL! Your day can be what you make of it, a learning experience or simply a leisurely cruise down the Mississippi River. Come Hungry, no cruise would be complete without food! You’ll enjoy 3 fresh meals right aboard the boat! 6:00pm Boat docks Hotel: Moline, IL Friday, June 17th – Travel to Petersburg, KY 6:00am Depart hotel (We lose an hour to eastern time zone) 3:00pm Arrive at Creation Museum Hotel: Near Cincinnati, OH Saturday, June 18th –The big day 9:00am Visit the Ark Encounter Late Afternoon Visit Churchill Downs, home of the Kentucky Derby Hotel: Louisville, KY Sunday, June 19th –Travel to Moline 8:00am Depart hotel (We will gain an hour with central time zone) 3:45pm Seating for dinner at Circa 21 Dinner Playhouse dinner theatre 5:00pm Show – “Beauty and the Beast”- The Broadway Musical Hotel: Moline, IL Monday, June 20th –Travel day 8:30am Headed home! 10:00 – 12:00pm Shopping and Lunch on your own at Amana Colonies Price: $1,299 per person double; $1,199 per person triple $1,099 per person quad; $1,499 per person single

I’m already bored at the starting bus trip from Morris to Dubuque. Would my wife and I pay $2600 for a week of random Midwestern tourism? No, we would not. But then I suspect their market is church-going old people with lots of disposable income, and we don’t meet most of the criteria.

There were a lot of suckers born 60+ years ago, so they do have a constant dribble of yokels bringing shekels to the AiG attractions. But is it the economic boon to Kentucky that they promised? No, it is not, as Americans United points out.

Americans United never opposed Ham’s building of Ark Encounter, but we did stand against taxpayers being compelled to support what is clearly an evangelistic enterprise. We believe Ham and his Answers in Genesis (AiG) ministry should have relied on voluntary contributions from his co-religionists.

Ham justified the raid on the public purse by asserting that Ark Encounter would be a great boon to the nearby town of Williamstown, whose leaders agreed to float $62 million in junk bonds to get the project going. Town officials clearly believed the attraction would benefit the area economically.

You just had to believe! They suckered the Kentucky state government into believing this monstrous monument to ignorance would be a world-class tourist attraction, but it’s not. It’s a senior-citizens-from-Dubuque-class attraction.

“It has never reached even the minimum number of visitors for its first year of operation,” Trollinger wrote. “And with every passing year the tourist site falls farther short of what AiG promised.”

Trollinger and his wife Susan have visited the ark several times, most recently last month. He writes, “After our March visit to the Ark we drove through Williamstown. Six years after the tourist site was constructed, and as documented by the wonderful film, We Believe in Dinosaurs, Ark Encounter has had little noticeable economic impact on the small town that provided the tourist site with such gifts.”

What about all those jobs Ham promised? Apparently, local residents either don’t want them or don’t qualify for them. (Ark Encounter employees must sign a statement of faith saying they agree with AiG’s fundamentalist religious views.) Dan Phelps, president of the Kentucky Paleontological Society, keeps a close eye and Ham’s doings and pointed out recently that Ham has proposed hiring students from nearby Christian colleges and is raising money to build housing for them on site.

Worst of all (for AiG), they can’t recruit the gullible locals to come work for them at low pay, in a job that requires you to swear a loyalty oath to Ham’s version of the Bible. Not even the residents of Kentucky who voted to pay for a giant pseudo-boat are stupid enough to do that. He’s building cheap dorm housing for Christians whose fanaticism blinds their common sense, and now he’s playing the culture war card: move to Kentucky and work for cheap before the liberals teach your children it’s OK to be gay!

The man in the photo is Phil Murphy, the Democratic nominee for governor of New Jersey, and therefore a proxy for Satan. You can see the videos that give conservatives conniptions right here; they’re rather tame, just saying that masturbation and confusion about sex is normal in adolescents. You can see the game he is playing, though, using fear of sex as a tool to get cheap labor for his boondoggle.

I don’t get the point, though. As we all know from the Bible, he only needs 8 employees to keep the Ark running. Less, even, since his Ark is mostly empty with nothing but lots of dioramas and wooden crates full of plastic animals, and isn’t even a boat.

Of course, Noah didn’t need parking attendants and ticket-takers. Or a zip-line! Yeah, that’s probably it, the zip-line is a huge resource sink.

Mano Singham has a few thoughts on the Intelligent Design creationism movement.

ID seems to have disappeared from view. One no longer hears from its most prominent advocates. There is not doubt that the 2005 Dover trial where the judge ruled that ID was essentially a religious belief structure and thus had no place in public school science curricula was a serious blow, exposing their entire stealth strategy of pretending that there was no underlying religious basis for their beliefs. In my 2009 book God vs. Darwin: The War Between Evolution and Creationism in the Classroom that was a historical review of the fights against evolution from the Scopes trial in 1925 up to the Dover trial, I said that it looked like ID had run out of steam and had nothing more to offer, something that one of their leading theories, the late Philip Johnson, agreed with.

During the period when I was engaged with ID, I was invited by them to many debates and panel discussions so I met many of the key players (Philip Johnson, Michael Behe, Jonathan Wells, J. P Moreland) and we had friendly exchanges. I never encountered William Dembski or David Klinghoffer though. After the Dover trial, Dembski washed his hands of the whole ID movement, especially expressing bitterness towards two religious groups whom he accused of undermining ID. One was the ‘theistic evolutionists’ (people who believe that evolution and belief in a god can be reconciled) who he said attacked ID because they felt that it was bad science and bad religion. The other was Young-Earth Creationists whom he accused of turning against ID when they realized that ID was not going to serve as a stalking horse for their literal interpretation of the biblical Genesis story of creation.

The tension between the intellectual approach taken by the ID movement and the YEC group was always apparent to those following the issue. When I spoke at ID-sponsored debates, it was quite something to see the people on the panel talk in sophisticated terms about science and religion and then later mingle with the audience and discover that they were biblical literalists to the core, right down to Adam and Eve, the serpent, heaven and hell. With one or two exceptions, they were nice to me even though they knew that I was not at all sympathetic to their ideas. They seemed to feel sorry for me that I would eventually be stewing in hell.

He’s right, you know. ID hasn’t literally disappeared, but it’s lost all the PR oomph it briefly held in the early 2000s — you can visit sites like Uncommon Descent and still find the zealots yammering ineffectually about it, but they’re all simply repeating the same tired pseudo-arguments over and over. When Stephen Meyer is your leading intellectual light, you’re in big trouble, because goddamn he is a tedious pompous bore with no substance to his arguments. ID is the same repetitive, ridiculous nonsense as young earth creationism, but with all the religious appeal cored out. And yes, it was exposed as a poor defense against scientific arguments in the Dover trial, and people realized it was a tissue paper shield, so why bother?

A lot of the ID proponents were motivated entirely by their religious ideology, trying desperately to hide it behind that pretentious pseudoscientific veneer. It didn’t work. Everyone saw right through it.

Nowadays, look where the money is going to see who won the ID vs. Open Creationism battle: it’s not the Discovery Institute, which has been branching into culture war nonsense instead (hi, Chris Rufo, I see you, you lying asshole). The winner is…Ken Ham and Answers in Genesis, the brain-dead religious approach that doesn’t even try to make good scientific arguments. No wonder Dembski is pissed off at them. Kent Hovind is making cult leader money and getting attention on YouTube and that’s about it. Young Earth Literalism turned corporate is the one successful strategy the creationists have cultivated.

So what happened to ID? Science and philosophy made it irrelevant, and then the religious creationists murdered it.

The Institute for Creation Research has a series of videos titled “That’s A Fact”, each one under 2 minutes long, with funky background music and physically painful kinetic transitions. No, really, it hurt my eyes to watch this one — the gimmick is a screen full of words in random orientations, and the camera zooms around to highlight the word the narrator says, and just the esthetics broke me. And then there’s the content…hoo boy.

For instance, here’s one titled “evolving bacteria”. For instance, in a 20 year study of E. coli…scientists looked at 40,000 generations of bacteria, and confirmed that the bacteria did not evolve into anything other than E. coli. That’s it. That’s all. Lenski set up this experiment to see bacteria evolve into a cat, didn’t see any evilution at all, and therefore proved that macroevolution is a myth. Apparently, Lenski writes all these papers that just say “Nope, still not a cat in any test tube”.

Sorry, guys, the Lenski long-term evolution experiment did not propose to evolve something other than E. coli (it would have been surprising if it did, and would have sent everyone scurrying off to rewrite the textbooks, calling evolutionary theory into question), and it did demonstrate evolutionary changes.

Hey, ICR, do you even know what the word “evolve” means?

Schisms are so confusing. There is this thing called the Independent Fundamental Baptist Movement, which I always thought was on the dangerously loony side of Christianity, but it turns out it wasn’t mad enough for some people, so they founded something called the New Independent Fundamental Baptist Movement, which is even worse. It’s led by Steven Anderson, known hate-monger, and is characterized by extreme anti-LGBT sentiment and anti-Semitism. These are the worst of the worst, the rotting dregs of Christianity. Greg Locke, who recently made news with his announcements about witches in his congregation, doesn’t seem to be NIFB, but he did break away from the Southern Baptist Convention to form his own schismatic group, and I don’t see much difference between Anderson and Locke.

But you know who is NIFB? Matt Powell.

He seems such a nice, baby-faced boy, you say. He’s definitely not very bright, but he couldn’t possible be one of them. Yeah, he is. It’s easy to forget that he has been calling for the execution of LGBT people. I just stumbled across this video of Powell haranguing a member of his congregation a few years ago, shouting, screaming, saying he is “acting like a woman”, gaslighting him, accusing him of betrayal, telling him he’s going to Hell. It’s extremely unpleasant, but mercifully a very short clip.

That has me wondering. I’ve seen a lot of speculation that Powell is throwing his life away by tying himself to Kent Hovind, that Hovind is exploiting his young acolyte. But Hovind is theologically extremely naive, not at all a deep thinker, somebody who is cartoonishly shallow. What if we’ve got it backwards? What if Powell is the serpent, the devious Sith who plans to drag Hovind further towards the Dark Side, inoculating him with even more extremist seeds of hate?

Sure, you can joke about Matt Powell keeping a giant inflatable banana in his backyard, but don’t let it distract you from the fact that he’s a pathetic hate-filled rage beast, and isn’t funny at all.

I’ve mentioned kook magnetism before — the idea that people prone to accept one loony idea are likely to adopt other loony ideas. When we promote one brand of absurd nonsense, we’re opening the door to a whole asylum worth of batshit stupidity to follow. Here’s another example: creationism and QAnon, sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G.

And all of this leads to the fact that – as PRRI polling reveals – 23% of white evangelical Protestants are QAnon believers (other polls have the numbers higher) and 20% of QAnon believers identify themselves as white evangelicals.

Ken Ham and Answers in Genesis (AiG) sit quite comfortably within the QAnon-loving camp. Not only have they established that to hold a “secular worldview” is to be a pedophile, but they opened Ark Encounter to right-wing conspiratorialist Trey Smith for the filming of The Coming Storm: A Donald J. Trump Documentary. The title of this nearly unwatchable video – the production values are non-existent, and the unwatchability is exacerbated by Smith’s determination to stick his face as close to the camera as possible – gives away the QAnon connection. So does Smith’s assertion that the Antichrist is present in contemporary culture, as evinced by Hollywood culture and the omnipresent ”witchy people” in the background. So does the fact that Smith – speaking just before the 2020 election – echoes QAnon predictions that God commanded that Trump would have two terms as president.

It is not surprising that young Earth creationists would find the QAnon conspiracy persuasive. The folks at AiG are the same folks who find the notion of climate change to be a hoax, as is the idea of the COVID pandemic (and thus, vaccination mandates are oppressive).

It’s conspiracy theories all the way down. Creationism itself is a conspiracy theory: it’s built on the bizarre idea that hundreds of thousands of scientists are all lying and trying to cover up the fact that a few paragraphs in a holy book are in fact the true and accurate and compleat history of the entire universe.

But let’s be fair. AiG unambiguously rejects the flat-earth BS, maybe QAnon is another bit of silly fluff they disavow. Let’s ask them!

AiG’s Bodie Hodge responded to Braterman’s argument in an AiG article, “Fact Checked: No Conspiracy Here (But a Lot of Fallacies There)”, in the process inventing some, well, nonstandard fallacies (e.g., “emotive language fallacy,” “insufficient evidence fallacy”). What is particularly interesting in Hodge’s lengthy and often tedious narrative is that he fails to make the obvious defense that young Earth creationism is nothing like the QAnon conspiracy. In fact, he has not one negative word to say about QAnon . . . just like his boss and father-in-law, Ken Ham. Pretty telling.

No negative word…in fact, no word at all. Ken Ham also commented on the accusation, and like his son-in-law, only brought up the “Q” word in citing the original article by Braterman, Why creationism bears all the hallmarks of a conspiracy theory, and rather than rebutting anything Braterman wrote, instead accuses scientists of being conspiracy theorists, going on and on about Haeckel’s embryos. But coming out and saying QAnon is wrong? Nope. No can do.

That might alienate those white evangelical Protestants who are their bread and butter.

They love their alliteration, with their Seven Cs of History. Go ahead, throw “conspiracy” in there. It fits perfectly. If they like that magic number of 7, I recommend replacing “Consummation,” which ain’t never gonna happen, with “Conspiracy,” which they embrace enthusiastically.

We don’t usually talk about doctrinal drift within the sciences — it’s kind of an alien category. It certainly does occur, for example the acceptance of plate tectonics, or in biology the increasing awareness of the importance of nearly-neutral genetic drift. There were many people who resisted the concepts, but the inexorable accumulation of data tends to eventually stabilize on a new paradigm. And it’s a good thing! Scientists tend to welcome new ideas, as long as they’re backed up by evidence and are productive in generating new hypotheses.

Religion, though, is a different story. Doctrinal drift is a horror that must be stopped — we must be rigid and unwavering in our fixed beliefs now and forevermore! It seems to be giving Ken Ham nightmares. He has written a lengthy post about all the things Answers in Genesis does to prevent doctrinal drift. It’s a bit amusing, because his entire ministry is the product of a significant doctrinal shift that occurred (after decades of evolution in various sects) in the 1960s. His version of the Christian faith is transient and will change again in the future. All he has to maintain it is authoritarianism.

It seems to me from all I’ve read and observed that within two to three generations of their founding, the majority of Christian institutions move away from their intended beliefs, mission, and purpose. There are many and varied reasons for this, including: employing someone who is great in one area but doesn’t take the right stand in other areas; not having a detailed-enough statement of faith, resulting in it being interpreted in different ways; allowing too much so-called “academic freedom”; using textbooks that compromise God’s Word in many areas; having a weak leader who won’t enforce the right standards; and compromising one’s position for the sake of financial support.

Interesting justification for having a “strong leader” running his show…I’m sure he thinks of himself as the protector of his version of the faith. I wonder who he’s grooming to run the show after his inevitable death? His son-in-law, Bodie Hodge, who seems like an amiable doofus to me? Or Georgia Purdom, who is often mentioned in this document? It’s a bit like Kremlin-watching at this point, and it’s going to be a decision that is definitely important to the future of AiG. It’s something Ken Ham is clearly thinking about.

A few years ago, I considered the future for AiG and recognized we are now getting closer to the next generation leading this ministry in all its various components. I pondered this and thought about how many institutions go off the rails when the founders are gone. I have thought and prayed through what to do at AiG to implement as many levels of protection as possible. Also, I recognize a great responsibility to our supporters. You are a part of the AiG family. You have invested (or may be considering investing) in this ministry financially and in other ways, and it’s important that we steward your investment so it will continue to be used to boldly proclaim and defend the authority of God’s Word and the gospel from the very first verse, as you likely intended.

Wait, what was that earlier bit about compromising one’s position for the sake of financial support? Keeping donors happy is a major concern for this outfit.

Authoritarian groups have to plan for the succession as much as Roman emperors did. It’s clear that Ken Ham is the Brian Cox of AiG.

He lists the layers of rules that he uses to lock in his interpretation of the Bible.

Statement of Faith
Our Statement of Faith is very detailed, and every full-time employee must sign agreement to and adherence to this statement of faith which is included in our handbook (along with our mission and vision). Each year we require staff to re-sign this document to ensure they haven’t strayed from it in any way.

Is that creepy or what?

Then all their content is screened before publication.

Editorial Review Board (ERB)
The content we teach and disseminate is a key element in all we do at the ministry. To ensure we never waiver in regard to content, I set up the Editorial Review Board (ERB), headed by Dr. Georgia Purdom, who I know has a passion to ensure AiG will never drift in the wrong direction or compromise God’s Word.

Purdom is an unimpressive follower. We’ll have to see where she ends up — it’s often been the case that women end up heading evangelical organizations, but they’re usually rather more ferocious than Purdom. There could be a fanatic lurking under her weird hairdo, though.

AiG Oversight Council
I also set up the AiG Oversight Council chaired by Bodie Hodge, who also has a passion for ensuring the ministry never gets off track.

I find it hard to believe that Bodie Hodge could ever be the iron will behind AiG. He’s too goofy.

Answers Research Journal Editorial Review Committee
Now in its fourteenth year of publication, I have added a layer of protection to ARJ and AiG by the formation of the ARJ Editorial Review Committee. This committee will be chaired by Dr. Terry Mortenson, and members will include Dr. Snelling and all members of AiG’s research department.

Yeesh. Two of the most dull, uncharismatic pseudoscientists in the AiG stable. They’re also old. However, evolution into a gerontocracy is not uncommon, so maybe…

Here’s the bottom line for his explanation of how they will make sure no one drifts from the absolute truth of Young Earth creationism.

Would you prayerfully consider making a generous gift to our core ministry as we get ready for what we believe will be a very busy year ahead? I’m grateful for your partnership with us in ministry—it is vital to our ministry outreaches and their impact in reaching people for Christ!

It’s money. Money money money. What they have now works, and the goal is to make sure the money flows forever.

Unfortunately for them, doctrinal drift, like evolution, is inevitable. Unfortunately for the rest of us, it’s slow. I just hope I live long enough to watch the power struggle.

Good work, design team!

After 52 years of fruitful ministry, the Institute for Creation Research is renewing its commitment to rigorous scientific research that affirms the truth of Scripture. As a staff, we’re delighted to reveal a new logo that reflects our mission and highlights an exciting field of research.

It certainly does reflect their mission and their rigorous scientific research.

They’ve got it backwards. That’s a left-handed spiral, DNA has a right-handed spiral.

Kudos!

(This is a fairly common mistake in commercial art, but it’s a bit incongruous in an organization that’s bragging about their scientific rigor.)^*

^*(Which they lack, anyway.)