The Ark Park is open for business, and yes, the Ark contains dinosaurs (baby ones, of course!). Bill Nye visited, and was prayed for by Ken Ham. I’m hoping the enterprise will fail, for it’s all about lies and propagandizing children. I, for one, don’t feel inclined to spend the $40—that’s right, forty bucks—to see the Ship of Fools. But below is a nice Ark Meme sent by reader Kenneth M., who found it on Twi**er.
The best takedown of this ludicrous story is found in the long and sometimes hilarious analysis of what it would take for the tale to be true: “The Impossible Voyage of Noah’s Ark,” by Robert A. Moore (1983). It was published in the defunct Creation Evolution Journal, once a great resource for fighting creationist nonsense, and I am fortunate to have a hard copy. But you can read it free online courtesy of the National Center for Science Education.
Sub
sub
ark
^ dinghy
I wonder if Ken took out flood insurance…
Apparently it was very busy today (sorry it’s a tw**t)
https://twitter.com/joesonka/status/751822777485852672
Ooh, I like that!
If you click on Joe Sonka in the tw**t, you can get to see more of the goodies on display, including scenes where Noah and his sons are missing. Well worth a look.
Thanks Joe. You saved me $40.00 plus driving from Nashville…
Did they all drown?
I love the fake packing crates artistically dressing up the line management area, as if Noah is loading up the ark with looted Nazi art or some other delicate treasures, and as if giant packing crates a) existed 4,000 years ago, and b) would be super convenient for a crew of 8 people to load on board.
(I also love the complete lack of windows on the ark – practical for not sinking, but not for the whole being able to see and to breathe inside the ark cooped up with the waste from the entire planet’s worth of animals. Heck, just one errant cat poop in my house seems to make it unbearable, and that’s with plenty of room and windows. I can’t imagine being able to survive a year in the conditions of Ham’s boat-like building without electricity and AC.)
Time once again to post a link to John Scalzi’s awesome review of Ham’s museum of creationism!
Too funny!
Nice.
A similar ark set ‘sail’ from the Netherlands recently and ran aground off Norway. The local Oslo newspaper reported that the 900 year old captain was taken into custody.
The Creation Museum report reminds me of Russell Seitz’s Ussher-compatible geochronology.
http://www.ees.nmt.edu/outside/courses/erth385/ussher.html
“1704 B.C.: Charshumash the Hittite bitten by first vertebrate; lawyers emerge from slime.”
Ooh, this explains so much!
‘4004 B.C.: Ra gets fired up by encountering humans; creationists emerge from the shadows.’
Too funny. Thanks!
I just tried to post the link to this page on FB, but near as I can tell, FB blocked it. Anyone else?
Oops, never mind. It was some sort of security check, I guess to find if I was a robot.
Are you?
Perhaps the $40.00 entrance fee is on account of forty days and forty nights.
Reblogged this on The Logical Place.
I think Disney should sue. There can be only one Fantasyland.
I don’t think they really followed God’s instructions for the ark. Why does the outside look so light colored? According to Gen 6:14. “… and coat it with pitch inside and out”. It should look almost black. Of course, then the AC bill would be huge. The smell of pitch (inside and out) would help cover the animal dung stench. Are they re-creating that? I really thought this was to provide the true ark experience. Turns out it just a sanitized Disney Ark.
Also, shouldn’t there be a lot of flood debris and bloated, rotting carcasses lying all around the grounds? Again, a missed opportunity at portraying the “real” experience.
How could there be pitch? I thought the whole idea of the flood was to account, in one year, for all the billions of years of geology, including burying all the organic matter that becomes oil, tar, and… pitch.
This post, the photo meme, and the comments really made me giggle. Thanks for the link to the Impossible Voyage. Will read and share.
Now that people are building medieval castles using medieval tools, materials, and techniques, why didn’t Ken Ham build his Ark with what was available in Noah’s time (assuming that could be known and that he actually existed)? Tyvek? Steel-reinforced? Come on!
Ham has been claiming that Noah had access to really advanced technology, stuff that still hasn’t been rediscovered. Goddidit, I expect.
I really hope no aliens come visiting. How embarrassing.
Anyone not a US citizen is considered an “alien” here. Prepare to be embarrassed.
I wonder, did Noah & Sons use all the same power tools back then? And g*d provided the electricity I am sure. Even so, from trees to finished boat would have taken how many years?
Shshshsh…you’re taking all the *MAGIC* out of it.
Not to mention the miracle…
They already got that one covered… by their careful and highly logical analysis of scripture, they figure it took 75 years, max.
So all those modern construction materials, equipment and tools were used just to shave 7 decades off the project, apparently. Makes sense to me.
yeah, the thing is, even if they had all the tools of today, which they did not, just Noah and 3 other guys would take 7 decades. With the primitive tools of the day, they would never make it. Probably what happened was g*d became damn sick of waiting, killed everyone and made up the boat and water story. Gives it that passionate feel.
$40? I’m skeptical that the business model can work. I might pay $10 if I were in the area.
Indulgences. Xians plunk for security of transcendence.
Only the righteous can board the Ark… and righteousness ain’t cheap!
Noah’s gift shops…
Lake Suigetsu in Japan provides clear solid proof of (i) the mythical status of the world wide flood and (ii) the veracity of C14 dating. There are well over 50,000 varves formed in this lakes very useful sediments.
e.g. see https://thenaturalhistorian.com/2012/11/12/varves-chronology-suigetsu-c14-radiocarbon-callibration-creationism/
How had I never encountered the word varve before? Thanks!
You illustrate well one of the good things to come out of such nonsense as the “Ark Park” – we can learn a lot of good science just by reading up on what allows us to laugh at the park. 50000, eh? Nifty.
In my local paper today was the full-page Associated Press write-up of the ark. Calls it a “mostly wood structure.” No mention of Noah’s Tyvek, etc.
Ham et al claim that the presence of this ark will “authenticate” the truth of the story. But of course one is not blessed with just how that can possibly be.
As the AP so-carefully reports it, AiG “says” that God created the Earth, man and dinosaurs about 6,000 yrs old, and that scientists “say” that dinosaurs died out 65M years before humans came on the scene. Could be wrong, but the word “evidence” not once mentioned.
Tri-State Freethinkers member quoted: “Basically, this boat is a church raising scientifically illiterate children and lying to them about science.”
I wonder if the Greeks would consider building a replica of the Deucalian “Ark” as a rival attraction?
An additional bit of silliness I’ve spotted about Ken Ham’s ark is its streamlined bow and stern, which would only make sense on a ship with a means of propulsion. All the ark was supposed to do was hold animals and float, so you’d think Noah would have squeezed as much space as possible out of those 450,000 cubic cubits.
I think the ark in Noah, the 2014 movie, makes more sense, although it was crude and ugly, and would probably have attracted fewer visitors.
I actually enjoyed that movie – as a work of pure fiction, obviously. There’s a neat shot of a bird flying (towards the ark I think?) that really sticks in my mind, because it almost looked like stop motion or something.
The sounds of people dying outside in the flood while they were in the ark, was pretty chilling too.
From what I remember, creationists didn’t like that film because of how it portrayed Noah.
It has to look similar to the Ark on all those nursery walls. Ugh!
You mean like this one, which shows a rainbow in the background as the animals are boarding the ark, contradicting Genesis 9:11-13?
Great cartoon about the ark, flood, and geological stratification:
http://66.media.tumblr.com/3e0a141b32f56772a842be0333749a19/tumblr_o6vqdye6Zm1rzlzxqo1_1280.jpg
Sourced here, with brief but useful accompanying discussion.
I read that entire “Impossible Voyage” article, and was nearly choking with laughter during some sections. Stuff like this is brilliant:
“After the dove failed to return, Noah decided that it was just about time to disembark. Instead of simply opening the door, he “removed the covering” of the ark (Genesis 8:13). Balsiger and Sellier indicate that this means that Noah tore holes in the top deck, which modern visitors to the wreck claim to have seen. Noah did indeed have his eccentricities! For fifty-six more days they remained on the ark while the earth dried, waiting for God to sound the liberty call—time enough to allow rain, snow, and mudslides to cascade through the holes in the roof and torture the miserable animals inside.”
And this was written all the way back in the early 80s!! Their arguments haven’t gotten any more coherent in at least 30 years!!
$40 to visit the lifeboat you’d have been excluded from. What a deal.
As I have said elsewhere, this project is more likely to spread scepticism than it is to gain converts. The concept of Noah’s Ark is totally preposterous to thinking people, but for some, sticking the complete absurdity of the whole thing directly into their faces is the only way to get through to them. The Ark Park does exactly that, in spades.
This would be an excellent example of unintended consequences.
Noah’s Fark!
“Laminated Composite Sturctures”
Come on… This meme would be just perfect without a glaring typo.
No one has ever seen The Doctor and Noah together at the same time. Maybe the ark was actually a tardis.
Where is Noah’s Alcohol Truck?
I wonder if there is a display of Noah in his tent, drunk and nekkid?
To believers in the Great Flood myth, this ought be like the moment when the curtain is pulled back in the Wizard of OZ,, by Toto, and there everyone sees that there is no Great and Powerful Oz, merely a man working dials and levers….