Anyone know how Ken Ham's Ark project is going?

[yellowcanine]

Back in March, Ken Ham had claimed that the the debate with Bill Nye had helped to raise enough money through the sale of municipal junk bonds (No, he doesn't call them that but everyone else does) to build his "Noah's Ark" theme park in Kentucky. Any word on whether Ham was lying (once again) or has the money actually been raised?

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/116830/ken-ham-bill-nye-debate-helps-fund-creationist-noahs-ark-theme-park

[Adrahil]

1. Not well.

There are two major problems.

1) They haven't raised enough money. They are more than $10 million form the stated amount they need to begin construction.

2) Kentucky is threatening to withdraw tax incentives. When the Ark Park posted employment policies online that required faith statements and pledges, Kentucky balked. Such things are fine for a private non-profit (no matter how nutty), but the for profit company managing the ark park project cannot run afoul of employment discrimination laws while sucking at the public teat of tax abatements.

Oh hell, a bonus one:

Attendance at the Creation "Museum" is falling off. Apparently, every creationist nut that wants to see it already has, and those of us who want to gawk at ignorance aren't going to pay for it twice.

[Beartracks]

2. So the ol' "silent majority" turns out to be not so majorious after all. :) n/t

[yellowcanine]

5. Not surprising that attendance is falling off. At $30 (Seniors $24) a pop who

is going to pay to see a bunch of cheesy dioramas with plastic dinosaurs? Kids under 5 are free and kids 6-12 used to be $16 but are now free also in 2014. What that tells me is they have had trouble selling tickets. (My guess is that it is quite easy to get deep discounts on the prices anyway if you go through your church or whatever). And it is downright laughable that the tickets ARE GOOD FOR 2 DAYS because "there is so much to see you can't see it all in only one day." So if I plunk down my $30 and come back the second day am I counted as 1 visitor or 2 visitors?

[longship]

12. Re: The Creation Museum

When one goes to a science museum one can go over and over again. Science changes as new discoveries are made. The museums have to be on their toes to keep up. So their exhibits change, new ones replace the old.

But when ones philosophy is based on everything true is sourced in one single two thousand (plus) year old tome the exhibits tend to be static. Plus, I suspect that one visit by anybody with a brain will conclude that the entire multi-million dollar edifice could easily be replaced by a single cardboard placard with three words.

God Did It!

Once or realizes that, there's no need to even visit once. Word gets around.

[TlalocW]

14. Essentially, their greatest enemy, evolution, is destroying them

In the sense that the museum cannot evolve. There is nothing new in Creationist "science." They have no equivalent to new fossils being discovered, new DNA research, or any other number of different branches of science that they can point to and say, "This confirms Creationism," like scientists can with evolution. There are no other "museums" at its level that they can get an exhibit from to draw people back in to see something new, and if there were, there would more than likely already be something similar in the Creation Museum to begin with.

And they realize this, which is why they're trying to build the Ark thing and needing tax money to do it, but also why they put in a zipline course - they know there's nothing they can add to the museum that will draw in repeat customers, and even if there were, they don't have the money to create anything new in the museum - hell, probably replacing the saddle on the Stegosaurus you can put your kid on for a photo brings them dangerously close to the red. Thus a relatively cheap addition of something they hope will be more of a repeat draw. I'm sure they're considering a paintball field as well.

At this point, some of their best repeat customers may be evolution believers that bring visiting friends to the museum for a laugh. When I lived in Tulsa, I would take friends that visited me through the six room tour of Oral Roberts' life in his "prayer tower" on the campus of ORU.

TlalocW

[Tyrs WolfDaemon]

20. You went to the Oral Robert's thing multiple times?

I probably would have been kicked out and ordered to never set foot on their campus again for laughing too hard.

Well, perhaps not the laughing, but definitely for the slightly above whisper level comments I would undoubtedly make.


I salute you for your self control

[TlalocW]

21. We stole a large rock once

From the bed of the small stream that goes through the campus.

One time was with a pretty religious friend (who wanted me to steal the rock). The other was with an atheist friend.

TlalocW

[Adrahil]

16. Astute observation. <golf clap> NT

[rug]

3. The Ark is sinking.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2014/10/ken_ham_ark_encounter_theme_park_religious_discrimination_may_block_kentucky.html

[yellowcanine]

6. I can see some college student working for minimum wage telling some kids that it is all a

bunch of bunk about the 6,000 yr old earth, Noah's ark and the Flood, etc. You know that is going to happen, regardless of what they might have signed to get the job.

[DavidDvorkin]

4. It's raining on Ken's parade

He's having trouble getting the project afloat.

[yellowcanine]

8. Drowning in debt, no doubt.

[DavidDvorkin]

9. Ha!

[tanyev]

10. Or maybe stranded high and dry.

[Warpy]

7. Maybe this will be Ken Ham's undoing

the way the theme park boondoggle did in Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker. "Heritage USA" was such a massive fraud that it drew the attention of all sorts of media people and even in the buckle of the bible belt, people knew something was up and it didn't smell good. The final nail in Jim's coffin was a sex scandal with one of his secretaries, but he did jail time over the theme park. Tammy Faye went on to develop into a human being, while Jim remarried, got a half dozen inner city kids to use as props, and is up to his old tricks with a cable show in a new boondoggle called Morningside, just outside Branson, Mo. Wikipedia says the plans look a lot like Heritage, USA.

And so it will likely go for Ken Ham, his investors seeing no progress for their millions.

Besides, where the hell do you get gopher wood? What the hell is gopher wood?

[yellowcanine]

11. I hate to even think about Jim Bakker shagging Jessica Hahn. Thanks a lot for the reminder.

But as bad as it is, the idea of Ken Ham and some young thing is even more disturbing somehow. Yet it might be happening RIGHT NOW on a bed made of gopher wood!

"Gopher wood" as it turns out, is quite a mystery, though that doesn't stop the flood apologists from speculating mightily (in a SCHOLARLY way, of course)! http://christiananswers.net/q-eden/gopherwood.html

Funny line at the end of that piece.

The bottom-line is that this ancient word remains a mystery. It is just one of many things I look forward to asking Noah about, when I get to Heaven.

Yeah right. Old Noah is really going to enjoy having all of these Christians asking him stupid questions about gopher wood.

[longship]

13. Moses: It's golfers, not gophers! You idiot!

[Fumesucker]

17. No, it's gofer wood

As in, gofer wood thou lackwit, yon pile groweth ever smaller forsooth.

[Blue Owl]

15. He refused to pay flood insurance

So Ham had to hock it...

[cbayer]

19. Ok, this is a really funny answer.

[cbayer]

18. On top of everything else that has been mentioned, he is having legal problems

because of his discriminatory hiring practices. This is leading to the state threatening to withdraw their tax breaks.

Someone may have already mentioned this and I missed it.