Answers in Genesis: an expensive violation of church and state separation

The Ark Encounter in Williamstown, Kentucky has devel­oped into quite an enterprise.

When it first opened it was grant­ed numer­ous con­ces­sions from the Kentucky State Government despite the fact that it was nev­er pre­sent­ed as any­thing but a reli­gious endeav­or. It also received numer­ous perks from Grant County and the city of Williamstown.  The Ark Encounter present­ly receives $1.825 mil­lion every year from Kentucky Tourism as part of sales tax rebate program.

So much for sep­a­ra­tion of church and state.

Founder Ken Ham per­pet­u­al­ly claims year­ly atten­dance in the range of 1.4 to 2.4 mil­lion, fig­ures which don’t seem to match up with the Ark’s month­ly paid atten­dance records.  In fact, from November 2022 through February 2023, month­ly atten­dance nev­er exceed­ed just over 39,000 and was only about 15,000 in January of this year.

The reli­gious under­pin­ning of AIG (Answers in Genesis) counts all oth­er world reli­gions as being evil, includ­ing Islam, Judaism and Mormonism.

No one can be an employ­ee of AIG who does not agree with the group’s Statement of Faith.

Among the tenets in the state­ment are:

• The sci­en­tif­ic aspects of cre­ation are impor­tant but are sec­ondary in impor­tance to the procla­ma­tion of the gospel of Jesus Christ as Sovereign, Creator, Redeemer and Judge.  (Unfortunately, the procla­ma­tions of the gospel dif­fer mate­ri­al­ly from the sci­en­tif­ic aspects of creation.)
• The 66 books of the Bible are the unique writ­ten Word of God.  The Bible is divine­ly inspired, inerrant, infal­li­ble, supreme­ly author­i­ta­tive, and suf­fi­cient in every­thing it teach­es.  Its asser­tions are fac­tu­al­ly [empha­sis added] true in all the orig­i­nal auto­graphs.  Its author­i­ty is not lim­it­ed to spir­i­tu­al, reli­gious, or redemp­tive themes but includes its asser­tions in such fields as his­to­ry and sci­ence.  (Somebody must have been watch­ing Inherit the Wind and copied all the argu­ments of William Jennings Bryan.)
• The final guide to the inter­pre­ta­tion of Scripture is Scripture itself.  (Very convenient.)
• The account of ori­gins pre­sent­ed in Genesis 1–11 is a sim­ple but fac­tu­al [empha­sis added, again] pre­sen­ta­tion of actu­al events, and there­fore, pro­vides a reli­able frame­work for sci­en­tif­ic research into the ques­tion of the ori­gin and his­to­ry of life, mankind, the earth and the universe.
• Scripture teach­es a recent ori­gin of man and the whole cre­ation, with his­to­ry span­ning approx­i­mate­ly 4,000 years from cre­ation to Christ (guess they can thank Bishop James Usher 1581–1656 for that lit­tle tidbit.)
• The days in Genesis do not cor­re­spond to geo­log­ic ages but are six con­sec­u­tive 24-hour days of cre­ation.  (Even Bryan couldn’t rec­on­cile that when queried by Darrow.)
• No appar­ent, per­ceived or claimed evi­dence in any [empha­sis added] field of study, includ­ing sci­ence, his­to­ry, and chronol­o­gy can be valid if it con­tra­dicts the clear teach­ing of Scripture obtained by his­tor­i­cal gram­mat­i­cal inter­pre­ta­tion.  Of pri­ma­ry impor­tance is the fact that evi­dence is always sub­ject to inter­pre­ta­tion by fal­li­ble peo­ple who do not pos­sess all infor­ma­tion.  (Apparently this last snip­pet of infor­ma­tion only applies if the evi­dence one is uti­liz­ing lies out­side the 66 books of the Bible.)

There are many oth­er tenets enu­mer­at­ed in the Statement of Faith which can be found in its entire­ty at https://answersingenesis.org/about/faith.  It is a most enlight­en­ing tome.

For those who may be con­tem­plat­ing a trip to Ark Encounter, be pre­pared to take your cred­it card or pock­et­book.  Present entry fees for adults are $59.95 per per­son; seniors get a $10 dis­count and young adults 11–17 are admit­ted for only $29.95. Children under 10 are admit­ted free.  This must be because AIG notes the impor­tance of cap­tur­ing young minds before they have devel­oped the capac­i­ty of crit­i­cal thinking.

And if you want to par­take of the Creation Museum (where dinosaurs romp gai­ly amongst ear­ly man despite the fact — denied by those who alleged­ly pos­sess all the infor­ma­tion — that some 65 mil­lion years sep­a­rat­ed the two, you will need to add about anoth­er $40 to each of the prices list­ed above.

So, an out­ing with mom, dad, one grand­par­ent and one teen will run you about $199.80.

Oh, and don’t for­get the park­ing, which is not free.

With these kinds of prices, one must only won­der why Kentucky Tourism needs to send a year­ly stipend of $1.825 mil­lion of your tax­pay­er dol­lars to the Ark Encounter.