Creationist Ken Ham Blames Atheists For Ark Park Failure

[Tars Tarkus]

You'd think with all those scantily clad displays there'd be more redneck attendance.

Seriously! I can imagine(as my teenage fundy self) thinking this is Utopia, totally worth being drowned, eventually.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

You'd think with all those scantily clad displays there'd be more redneck attendance.

Clearly it keeps bringing DrJim back.

 

[DrJim]

You'd think with all those scantily clad displays there'd be more redneck attendance.

Clearly it keeps bringing DrJim back.

Mmmmm sexy dancing figurines... Way better than hanging out in the lingerie section in dept. stores. It is interesting, though. the "pre-fall world" exhibit at the ark encounter is VERY popular! When I went in August last year, the place was pretty busy but this one exhibit had a huge lineup to view it.

 

[Derec]

Mmmmm sexy dancing figurines... Way better than hanging out in the lingerie section in dept. stores.

Maybe they can make the exhibit even more popular by having live reenactors. Like a sexier Colonial Williamsburg...

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Cute. And typical.

Of course, one could argue, what the basis for such an exhibit could possibly be seeing that there is almost nothing said of the time, other than 'man was very very naughty'. Does such an exhibit speak more to the AiG's desires than to anything else? Seriously, how bad could it have been while remaining sustainable?

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Clearly it keeps bringing DrJim back.

Mmmmm sexy dancing figurines... Way better than hanging out in the lingerie section in dept. stores. It is interesting, though. the "pre-fall world" exhibit at the ark encounter is VERY popular! When I went in August last year, the place was pretty busy but this one exhibit had a huge lineup to view it.

I imagined Ham's baby doll fetish to be arranged like a natural history museum where everybody just mills around from display to display. How is his biblical doll house arranged?

What Hambone needs is something to happen at his roadside attraction. He needs to have a vision of Jesus or Noah in one of those rooms, maybe Noah giving the world a warning about climate change.

 

[DrJim]

I imagined Ham's baby doll fetish to be arranged like a natural history museum where everybody just mills around from display to display. How is his biblical doll house arranged?.

Quite a few anthropology/museum studies folks have studied the AIG Creation Museum (Far fewer the newer Ark), and have commented that although it seems modelled on natural history museums it differs in that there is pretty much a prescribed direction. It is kind of preaching-to-the-converted "reconversion" ritual that this prescribed journey leads one on. In Righting America at the Creation Museum, Susan and William Trollinger write, “If visitors were to diverge from the path, they might miss the hidden secret of all history that is revealed by this narrative and that provides the answer to the darkness in the present.” (2016, 52). The Ark also has a prescribed path--last time I was there there was staff located at the ends of the big ramps from deck to deck making sure one when in the proper direction. To some extent this helps minimize traffic jams (contrary to what one reads sometimes, the both venues can get busy), but it also helps with the narrative flow. At the Ark, you start in the lower floor (i.e. "deck") with rows of tiny fake animal cages and storage jars. It is a bit dreary and claustrophobic. Bigger critters and exhibits on various things are on the middle floor on how the ark was engineered and its curious labor saving technology, etc.. In the top floor, one finds very luxurious crew quarters. One sort of goes from associating with critters and audio loops of waves and animals, to a nice cultured and comfortable setting. Very interesting from an anthro/religious studies sort of perspective.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

I imagined Ham's baby doll fetish to be arranged like a natural history museum where everybody just mills around from display to display. How is his biblical doll house arranged?.

Quite a few anthropology/museum studies folks have studied the AIG Creation Museum (Far fewer the newer Ark), and have commented that although it seems modelled on natural history museums it differs in that there is pretty much a prescribed direction. It is kind of preaching-to-the-converted "reconversion" ritual that this prescribed journey leads one on. In Righting America at the Creation Museum, Susan and William Trollinger write, “If visitors were to diverge from the path, they might miss the hidden secret of all history that is revealed by this narrative and that provides the answer to the darkness in the present.” (2016, 52). The Ark also has a prescribed path--last time I was there there was staff located at the ends of the big ramps from deck to deck making sure one when in the proper direction. To some extent this helps minimize traffic jams (contrary to what one reads sometimes, the both venues can get busy), but it also helps with the narrative flow. At the Ark, you start in the lower floor (i.e. "deck") with rows of tiny fake animal cages and storage jars. It is a bit dreary and claustrophobic. Bigger critters and exhibits on various things are on the middle floor on how the ark was engineered and its curious labor saving technology, etc.. In the top floor, one finds very luxurious crew quarters. One sort of goes from associating with critters and audio loops of waves and animals, to a nice cultured and comfortable setting. Very interesting from an anthro/religious studies sort of perspective.

Hambone knows his audience, it appears. He knows that they love the mythical spaceman named god.

 

[Underseer]

Dinosaur mannequins posed next to Biblical shepherd mannequins just can't compete with that.

Maybe if they showed more just how sinful life in that pre-Flood city was ...

As to the lack of development around the Ark, one has to consider that the park itself is pretty expensive ($40 for adult, $28 for a child, plus tax) and that thus your average YEC family will not have much disposable funds left over in their weekend getaway budget anyway. Admission for a family with 2 adults and 3 children is already $164 for a day. Add to that hotel stay (two hotels opened right outside the park, what more do those Williamsburgers expect, a fucking Ritz?) for maybe $150-$200 (two rooms), food ($70 a day if they subsist only on fast food) and gas for the Suburban (depends on where they drive from, but from Atlanta (eg) count $80 gas for the round trip). So just the necessities bring you to about $500.
And note that the Ark Encounter has a restaurant, which limits the need for dining options in the town.

It's almost as if giving then tax breaks to build that thing was a bad idea that couldn't possibly return what was spent.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Maybe if they showed more just how sinful life in that pre-Flood city was ...

They'd need to go well off script as the story of the The Flood doesn't really delve into any details at all. Not that such a thing wasn't impossible for their ark exhibit in the first place.

As to the lack of development around the Ark, one has to consider that the park itself is pretty expensive ($40 for adult, $28 for a child, plus tax) and that thus your average YEC family will not have much disposable funds left over in their weekend getaway budget anyway. Admission for a family with 2 adults and 3 children is already $164 for a day.

It is cheaper to go to some amusement parks! The price is incredibly high. And what helps keep me from even pondering about heading down there for a lookie. Fuck AiG, and the idiot politicians that gave them taxpayer dollars!