Kentucky will soon have a Creationist Theme Park

From MSNBC.com 
I don't make any of this stuff up.  I just copy and paste. 

FRANKFORT, Ky. — A huge replica of Noah's Ark and an 800-acre creationist theme park reportedly are coming to Grant County, Ky., according to NBC station WLEX.


Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear and Answers in Genesis, builders of the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Ky., are expected to unveil plans Wednesday for the $150 million northern Kentucky attraction, WLEX and other area news outlets reported.
The ark and theme park are expected to attract 1.6 million visitors annually, WLEX said. The operation is expected to create 900 jobs. That doesn't count employment at new restaurants and hotels expected to complement the park.

We are now doomed to see every new car wash, taco stand and whorehouse in terms of "jobs created and saved", thanks to our economically illiterate Porker In Chief.  Here's a hint: Prosperity isn't created by increasing the number of jobs.  It is created by saving time.  But I digress.... 

..The museum and private investors have been looking at several spots around the county, but efforts to place the park in Grant County have been under way at least for 18 months, officials told WLEX.

The Creation Museum, opened in May 2007 about seven miles from the Cincinnati-northern Kentucky airport, was estimated to draw about 250,000 visitors per year but surpassed 1 million visitors in less than three years, the Cincinnati Enquirer reported.
Exhibits represent the views of Apologetics Ministry, including the belief that the Earth is only about 7,000 years old and that dinosaurs were among the creatures on Noah’s ark.

Heavy, heavy sigh....This is what happens when you start taking metaphors and parables literally.  You get backed into these ridiculous corners where Bronze Age story characters can build boats with enough compartments to keep the T-Rex family from devouring the poodles. 

The Creation Museum is directly or indirectly responsible for bringing 2,100 jobs to the area and has an economic impact of $65 million per year, according to a study it commissioned.

Joining Beshear at Wednesday’s announcement in the State Capitol will be Mike Zovath, senior vice president of Answers in Genesis and head of the Creation Museum project, and Grant County Judge/Executive Darrell Link, the Enquirer said.

The project will be a joint development of Answers in Genesis and for-profit partner Ark Encounter LLC of Springfield, Mo., according to the Louisville Courier-Journal.
The developers are seeking state tax incentives under the Kentucky Tourism Development Act, which allows up to 25 percent of the cost of a project to be recovered, Courier-Journal said.

Atheist groups and church-state separation advocates noted that state involvement in the project may not appear to be right, but it does appear to be legal as state tax breaks are used to support tourism projects.

“It might not be discrimination, but it might not be a good idea,” Edwin Kagin, a Northern Kentucky attorney who is also the national legal director for the group American Atheists, told the Courier-Journal.

The existing 70,000-square-foot Creation Museum "brings the pages of the Bible to life, casting its characters and animals in dynamic form and placing them in familiar settings," says the Creation Museum website. "Adam and Eve live in the Garden of Eden. Children play and dinosaurs roam near Eden’s Rivers. The serpent coils cunningly in the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil."

Among other museum exhibits are a planetarium showing "the amazing 'Created Cosmos,'" four theaters including a special effects auditorium featuring "Men in White," a Dinosaur Den, Noah's Ark construction site, and a cave about "Natural Selection Is Not Evolution."

The pics came from this guy, who is probably going to enjoy the park as much as I will. 
Please note the section of the park where "The Ground Is Cursed - Adam Must Toil For Food".  Well, I gotta go to work.  Hope everybody can find a way to cope with this condemned, cursed, fallen, miserable world.  Remember....Eve ate an apple.  Therefore, you must be punished. 

My trip to the Creation Evidence Museum in Glen Rose, Texas

This past Saturday I went to the Creation Evidence Museum in Glen Rose, Texas. 
Admission is two dollars, and if I ever find myself in that part of Texas again, I'll gladly pay three. 

The Creation Evidence Museum is the work of Dr.(sic) Carl Baugh.  Go here to read about Baugh's academic credentials. 
Now that I've done some reading on the guy, this place might replace Lee Harvey Oswald's grave as my favorite destination to take out of town guests. 
Cedric Katesby, get ready.  If you ever make it to the U.S., we're going. 

The place is a shapeless mass of....things and ideas and stuff that "isn't even wrong" and generic rocks and hyperbaric chambers and glass cases of unrelated fossils and evangelical kitsch. 

You begin your museum experience with a 30-minute video of Dr. Baugh explaining how the fossil record proves the 6-day creation account found in Genesis.  I can't find the exact video on YouTube, but this one works just as well....
Don't bother watching or listening.  While you're reading, just hit play and let the pseudo-scientific gobbledygook bathe you in the hyperbaric chamber of Dr. Baugh's mind.  More on the hyperbaric chambers in a moment. 



Baugh's timeline is illustrated by a series of paintings, each one illustrating the condition of our planet on that day of creation.  A lot of his focus is on a "canopy" that was once over the earth (about 10 miles up), and this canopy of hydrogen and oxygen (known in academic circles as "water") remained in place until Noah's flood.  All land was in one mass until the flood, and it was only then that North America split off from Europe, South America broke away from Africa, and a sprinkling of fossils found their way onto mountaintops.  Or something. 

Here's some of the general flavor of what Baugh claims was going on during one of the creation days.  I don't have the patience to figure out which one....

The harmonic creation was established to endure forever. A crystalline firmament suspended above the planet filtered out short-wave radiation, and with its physical structure in place universal radio signals serenaded the earth with morning melodies. Planets in the Solar System were distributed at harmonic intervals on a large scale, consistent with the energy fields living seeds produce on a small scale.

I could write for days about that last sentence.  Planets in the Solar System were distributed at harmonic intervals on a large scale, consistent with the energy fields living seeds produce on a small scale.  What does that mean?  Is it possible for it to mean anything?  The planets were distributed at harmonic intervals?  And these intervals are "consistent" with the energy fields that seeds produce?  The (musical) intervals are consistent with the energy produced by seeds?  Ahhh....but it is on a smaller scale.  The seeds, as compared to the planets.   

Baugh continues:

The radiant sun transformed and ruled the day, and its glowing energy extending into the firmament illuminated the night. The reflecting moon added a romantic invitation to the sky. The stars produced measurable references by which time could be told; their colors and formations were as varied and imaginative as eternal reflection could appreciate.

Yeah. 

Ok, on to the hyperbaric chambers.  You'll never know it by going through the museum, but there are two hyperbaric chambers in the place.  Unless you're in the know, you'd think they were some leftover East Texas oilfield equipment, painted white and outfitted with some Disney-esque control panels and viewing windows.  Here's an explanation from a previous visitor, a guy who didn't have nearly as much fun at the museum as I did:

The Creation Evidence Museum also includes a large magenta-windowed "hyperbaric biosphere" in which Baugh claims to have recreated "earth's original pre-flood environment" (Figure 3). According to Baugh, the biosphere — which is connected to an oscilloscope — increases organisms' life-spans by 300%; it also detoxifies copperheads' venom. Near the biosphere is an aquarium in which Baugh grows "vegetarian piranhas." Baugh believes his discoveries support the vast life-spans of biblical patriarchs such as Adam (who allegedly lived to be 930), and the harmonious environment (that is, no carnivores or death) before Eve introduced sin into the world. Baugh hopes to grow dinosaurs in the biosphere. On the museum's walls, visitors can view paintings in which pre-flood children play with a baby Apatosaurus in the nearby Paluxy River. Visitors can purchase these replicas, as well as books, posters, and other materials such as certificates honoring recipients as "visionaries" for "supporting truth in education."

Get it now?  The hyperbaric chambers recreate life the way it was before the flood, before the "canopy" of hydrogen and oxygen came flooding down on Noah. 
Another item of interest is this:

See the human footprint covered by the dinosaur footprint?  That proves that humans and dinosaurs existed at the same time, right?  And that we really could have an earth that's 6,500 years old.  Readers wanting to scoff at this discovery can go here, and scoff up a storm. 
All I'm going to say is that compared to all the other dino tracks in Glen Rose, this thing is a little too perfect. 

There were other exhibits that proved Creationism by using the pictograms found in Mandarin Chinese.  The display only offered a hint of the theory.  You have to buy a DVD to get the full story. 

There was something going on in one display of meteor fragments, comparing the meteors to the 7 seals and trumpets in the Book Of Revelation.  I never did figure that one out. 

They have a massive painting of Noah loading all the critters onto the ark.  Note the soon-to-be-drowned scoffers in the bottom left corner.  Velociraptors are strangely absent. 

You can purchase paperback copies of Noah's Ark: A Feasibility Study in the museum gift shop. 

And they have Brontosaurus neckties with this verse from Job 40:15 - "Now look at Behemoth which I made along with you - he eats grass like an ox". 

Get it?  Get it?  Along with you?  Like, at the same time?  And your footprints are all mixed up with each other? 

I'm gonna start going to NFL games and holding up that verse in the end zone. 

Here's an entry for The Apostrophe Abuse Blog.  In a freakin' museum, ferchrissakes. 



But the main thing you'll notice is the big statue.  You hesitate to ask who it represents, but in the back of your mind, you know.
As you go through the museum, the statue's unblinking eyes look down on you and your group, lovingly, compassionately, but also giving the impression that he's not going to tolerate any dissent.  In his right hand he holds the names from The Lambs Book Of Life....  Or perhaps they're the names of The Just And The Unjust?  The Tibetan Book Of The Dead? 

We'll never know what he is holding; his Sphinx-like gaze betrays nothing. 

You ask why he's there, why Dr. Carl Baugh's Creation Evidence Museum has him up there, larger than life, looking down and casting judgement on believer and skeptic alike. 

I have no freakin' clue. 

But yeah, overlooking the entire Creation Evidence Museum is a massive statue of Dallas Cowboys coach Tom Landry. 

I loved every inch of this place.  Loved it, loved it, loved it. 
Some of the pics came from Flikr. 

Spontaneous Nostril Combustion

People in a hurry can safely skip to the 2:30 mark.