Governor Beshear, Ark Encounter Announce Plans to Build a Full-Scale Noah’s Ark
“Ark Encounter” to employ 900, expected to draw 1.6 million visitors in first year

FRANKFORT, Ky. (Dec. 1, 2010)—Governor Steve Beshear today joined the Ark Encounter LLC to announce the planned construction of a full-scale Noah’s Ark tourist attraction in northern Kentucky. Partnering with the Ark Encounter is Answers in Genesis, which is most widely known for its high-tech and popular Creation Museum in Petersburg, Ky.

“We are excited to join with the Ark Encounter group as it seeks to provide this unique, family friendly tourist attraction to the Commonwealth,” said Gov. Beshear. “Bringing new jobs to Kentucky is my top priority, and with the estimated 900 jobs this project will create, I am happy about the economic impact this project will have on the Northern Kentucky region.”

The Ark Encounter is scheduled to open in spring 2014 in northern Kentucky. Multiple sites are being considered, although property in Grant County off I-75 is at the top of the list. A feasibility study conducted by the renowned America’s Research Group has indicated that the Ark Encounter may attract 1.6 million visitors in the first year and is expected to employ up to 900 full- and part-time staff.

The for-profit Ark Encounter project will be privately funded at an estimated cost of $150 million. The final site selection for the Ark Encounter is subject to the ability to acquire all of the land needed for the project, and the approval of certain state and local incentives and other assistance for the project.

“We are very pleased to be a part of this new project,” said Ken Ham, president and founder of AiG and the Creation Museum. “AiG has been blessed to see the Creation Museum host over one million guests in three years. Based on our experience and success operating the large, state-of-the-art Creation Museum, our board believes the time is right to partner with the Ark Encounter in building a full-scale Noah’s Ark. We hope that this fun and educational complex called the Ark Encounter will become another popular tourist destination for the state.”

In addition to the full-size Ark, the complex will include a Walled City much like was found in ancient times, live animal shows, a children’s interactive play area, a replica of the Tower of Babel with exhibits, a 500-seat 5-D special effects theater, an aviary, and a first-century Middle Eastern village.

To showcase the “green” construction methods and materials that will be used, the complex will also include a Special Events Area for large gatherings, highlighting some of the Leader in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) building techniques used to construct the Ark Encounter.

One of the factors in getting the Ark Encounter to launch the Ark project at this time was a November 2009 CBS News survey, which revealed that the remains of Noah’s Ark would be the greatest archaeological discovery of our day. CBS News stated: “CBS’ 60 Minutes news program, in conjunction with Vanity Fair magazine, recently conducted a web survey asking which archaeological discovery people would most want to see made next. The response: Noah’s Ark (43 percent); Atlantis (18 percent); Amelia Earhart’s plane (16 percent); Nixon’s lost tapes (13 percent); and Cleopatra’s barge (5 percent).”

The report continued: “Noah’s Ark continues to capture the imagination of the general public, and this interest spans all social, religious and economic segments. The Ark and the flood is one of the few historical events which are well known in the worldwide global circle.”

Following the release of the article, the Ark Encounter group became even more convinced about the viability of the project. It will be assembling virtually the same team that designed and built the Creation Museum, and have these same talented staff design a full-scale Noah’s Ark.

The howling and wailing by atheist bloggers has begun!   And their hopping mad with Kentucky Democratic governor Steve Beshear for scheduling a press conference with Answers in Genesis about the opening of a job creating theme park, Ark Encounter, in the Northern Kentucky region.  Not unexpectedly, Pharyngula’s PZ Myers and Friendly Atheist’s (sic) Hemant Mehta, are taking the lead in calling for an Internet attack on the Kentucky governor.   Both bloggers posted shortly after midnight as news began to spread throughout the United States.  (International coverage will probably begin in the next 24 news cycle.)

Oddly enough, Kentucky’s atheist lawyer and long time Creation Museum opponent, Ed Kagin, was quoted in the Louisville Courier-Journal paper as “defending” Answers in Genesis:

Edwin Kagin, a Northern Kentucky attorney who is also the national legal director for the group American Atheists, said it doesn’t appear to him to violate the law. If other projects with religious themes could qualify for the tax incentives, the law doesn’t discriminate.

“It might not be discrimination, but it might not be a good idea,” Kagin said.

We suspect that Answers in Genesis is very pleased with how our atheist friends are helping to spread the word about the Ark Encounter project!

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The word is out now about the Answers in Genesis Ark Encounter theme park!  News has been leaking out since the Cincinnati Business Courier first broke the story on November 17.

What makes this announcement unusual (compared to the original Creation Museum announcement) is that Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear will make the official announcement December 1, Wednesday morning at 9:30 am in the state capital. Looks like atheists and secularists will have a fit over this that will make the opening of the Creation Museum seem like a non-event.

You can find all the current news stories at the Creation History Wiki website.

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Ian Juby and a Canadian pastor respond to a recent article and letter to the editor in the Canadian newspaper, The Compass.

Good job, Ian!

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I write in response to a letter written by Dennis Galway, which was published in the Nov. 9, 2010 edition of The Compass, and headlined “Creationism short on facts, says writer.”

Mr. Galway’s letter to the editor skillfully avoided any discussion of the scientific evidence, except in stating the “ fact” that there have been intermediate fossils found.

Actually, the only fact is that fossils have been found. The intermediate appearance of said fossils is an interpretation, not a fact. Last year, Scientific American published a wonderful piece of propaganda depicting (in a two-page spread) the alleged intermediate fossils connecting humans and apes.

I went down this list one-by-one, showing that the fossils in question are either completely ape, completely human, or completely fraud. The dinosaur-to-bird connection is hotly contested, even within the evolutionary community. There are huge issues with the dino-to-bird connection, such as evolutionary reversals.

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First, there was Stephen Hawking’s April 2010 warning to avoid contact with aliens from space.

Then in September we have Mazlan Othman, Director of the Office for Outer Space Affairs for the United Nations purportedly saying we need to be ready to meet and great aliens when they come to Earth. Mazlan’s office eventually convened an October press conference to explain what she really meant to say. Mazlan categorically denied “that she had been appointed or would in the future be appointed as an ambassador for extraterritorial life forms…” (Why not? The UN wants to be in charge of everything anyway!)

Today we have a newly released film, Skyline, quoting Stephen Hawking’s comments about aliens are not necessarily good.

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The astrophysicist’s warnings become a sci-fi reality in Skyline

“Stephen Hawking, astrophysicist and arguably one of the smartest people on the planet, warned us about the possibility of aliens from outer space.” So begins the teaser trailer for Skyline, a science-fiction alien invasion movie that opened today without any advance screenings for critics. (See the Post’s review in Monday’s paper.)

The film may be science-fiction, but the quotation is science-fact. Hawking did in fact release a statement some time ago in which he suggested that first contact with intelligent aliens might have the same effect on us Terrans as first contact with Europeans had on First Nations people. “Maybe we should have listened,” the trailer continues bleakly, before showing crowds of people being unceremoniously vacuumed up into giant, decidedly unfriendly looking alien ships.

So: Do aliens suck? Well, a second trailer is still pretty tight-lipped about what’s going on in the film, but this much is certain. (1) Blue lights fall from the sky — first over Los Angeles, of course, which is Ground Zero for most alien takeover plans, but eventually across the planet. (2) Big ships follow, with that hyperreal look we’ve come to expect from the likes of District 9 and Monsters — both of which, like this movie, feature lots of special effects but few recognizable stars. (3) Let the vacuuming begin.

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