Ark Encounter’s public funding contradiction

There seems to be a strange dichoto­my between AIG (Answers in Genesis) and state and local offi­cials. On the one hand, AIG clear­ly con­sid­ers itself a reli­gious enter­prise, as evi­denced by numer­ous doc­u­ments and state­ments. And if one vis­its the web­site answersingenesis.org it is imme­di­ate­ly appar­ent that the oper­a­tion is reli­gious­ly based.

For instance, many of the ques­tions on AIG’s employ­ment appli­ca­tion are obvi­ous­ly reli­gious-ori­ent­ed. [Author’s com­ments in paren­the­ses.]

• How old would you esti­mate the earth to be? (If you answer four bil­lion years, don’t both­er to answer any more questions.)
• Do you believe the flood of Noah’s day was a local or glob­al flood? (nev­er mind that they don’t ask if you believe there was even such a flood)
• Do you agree that the only legit­i­mate mar­riage sanc­tioned by God . . . is the join­ing of one nat­ur­al born man and one nat­ur­al born woman? If you do not agree, please state your posi­tion. (I sus­pect that a selec­tion of dis­agree­ment would cause the review­er to imme­di­ate­ly dis­card the application)

A whole series of ques­tions relate to one’s church affil­i­a­tion: Name of the church you attend, loca­tion, phone num­ber, web­site, URL, denom­i­na­tion, senior pastor’s name, how long have you attend­ed, how often do you attend? (It’s easy to sur­mise that a response that one doesn’t attend church would result in not being hired.)

If one is cho­sen to be an employ­ee, he or she must sign a “Statement of Faith” in which they agree that:

• God cre­at­ed heav­en and earth, time, and all things, vis­i­ble and invis­i­ble, liv­ing and non­liv­ing, mate­r­i­al and non­ma­te­r­i­al (not sure why invis­i­ble and non­ma­te­r­i­al things mat­ter much)
• Christ rose bod­i­ly from the dead, is seat­ed at the right hand of God and will return in per­son as judge of the liv­ing and the dead
• Scientific aspects of cre­ation are impor­tant but are sec­ondary in impor­tance to the procla­ma­tion of the gospel
• God has revealed him­self in Scripture in the male gender
• The Bible is the unique, writ­ten word of God. Its asser­tions are fac­tu­al­ly true. Its author­i­ty includes its asser­tions in such fields as his­to­ry and science.
• The account of ori­gins pre­sent­ed in Genesis is a fac­tu­al pre­sen­ta­tion of actu­al events and pro­vides a reli­able frame­work for sci­en­tif­ic research into the ques­tion of the ori­gin and his­to­ry of life, mankind, the earth and the universe
• The var­i­ous orig­i­nal life forms were made by super­nat­ur­al cre­ative acts of God, not by nat­ur­al, phys­i­cal process­es over mil­lions of years.
• The great flood of Genesis was an actu­al his­toric event
• Scripture teach­es the ori­gin of man and the whole cre­ation with his­to­ry span­ning 4,000 years
• The days in Genesis do not cor­re­spond to geo­log­ic ages but are six con­sec­u­tive days (who­ev­er wrote this one must have been aware of the ques­tions that arose in the Scopes trial)
• No evi­dence in any field of study, includ­ing sci­ence, his­to­ry, and chronol­o­gy can be valid if it con­tra­dicts the teach­ing of Scripture
• Human death is a direct con­se­quence of man’s sin

So, if AIG is oper­at­ing as a strict­ly reli­gious enti­ty, why is the state of Kentucky pro­vid­ing a year­ly remu­ner­a­tion of over a mil­lion dol­lars through the Kentucky Tourism Commission?

On the oth­er hand, if AIG, and its sis­ter the Creation Museum, are act­ing as a busi­ness — which cer­tain­ly seems to be borne out by the fact that a huge selec­tion of items are avail­able to the vis­it­ing pub­lic at its shops — why is it not pay­ing the appro­pri­ate state and local tax­es? Further proof that it is sim­ply a busi­ness is illus­trat­ed by the fact that a sin­gle gen­er­al admis­sion tick­et to Ark Encounter is $54.99 and park­ing costs an extra $10 per day. And if one wants to vis­it the Creation Museum (where humans reside along­side dinosaurs) it will cost an addi­tion­al $35.

It’s time for our state law­mak­ers to reach some real­i­ty. If AIG is tru­ly a reli­gious enter­prise, then no state funds should be avail­able to it. If, on the oth­er hand, it is to be con­sid­ered a busi­ness, it should be required to pay all the appro­pri­ate state and local tax­es or be put out of business.