Lux Lucet

For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it. – Exodus 20:11

As plans move ahead to build Ark Encounter, a historically themed attraction centered around a full-scale replica of Noah’s Ark, opposition from the usual suspects is building as well. When I first wrote about this story a few weeks ago, the local intellegensia were concerned about the constitutionality of the State of Kentucky providing tax incentives to Ark Encounter. This, they said, was a breach of the anti-establishment clause. But theirs was a weak argument. Ark Encounter is set up as an Limited Liability Corporation and managed by a subsidiary ministry of Answers in Genesis. It is not a church, and therefore the anti-establishment clause does not apply in this case. But even if Ark Encounter were a church, the Constitution’s anti-establishment clause applies only to the federal government, not to state governments, so there would still be no constitutional ground for denying the organization a tax break, or even, as appears to be the case with Ark Encounter, some sort of State funding. Not that I’m in favor of state-funded churches. I think they’re a terrible idea. But then so is misapplying the Constitution.

Having failed to dissuade Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear to dump the tax breaks on constitutional grounds, Ark Encounter opponants are now trying a new tactic: attacking Ark Encounter’s attendance projections that Kentucky used as the basis for granting the tax incentives. Here’s a few sample quotes,

• Projections that 1.6 million people a year would visit Ark Encounter – the proposed Biblical theme park in Grant County to be financed in part with Kentucky tax incentives – are wildly optimistic, according to a half-dozen theme-park experts.
  
• “Frankly, anyone who believes that this park will draw 1.6 million visitors a year really does believe that the Earth was created in just six days,” said Robert Niles, editor of themeparkinsider.com, an online publication.
  
• Timothy Beal, a religion professor at Cleveland’s Case Western Reserve University and author of “Roadside Religion: In Search of The Sacred, the Strange and the Substance of Faith,” said Ark Encounter risks alienation many Christians if, as promised, it promotes the literal Biblical interpreetation that the Earth was created in six days. “I think there are fewer and fewer people who are interested in that debate, including Christians,” Beal said.
  

Fairly harsh stuff, that. But to those who witnessed the uproar surrounding the construction of the Answers in Genesis Creation Museum, it comes as no surprise. For in the years leading up to the museum’s groundbreaking, there were what seemed like endless legal challenges put forth by its opponents. If I recall correctly, their main charge was that building the museum where it was planned would result in zoning violations. All this seemed rather strange to me, for the area surrounding the museum’s property was and is largely undeveloped. I mean, it wasn’t as if AiG was going out of its way, like one local municipality did, to bulldoze a neighborhood for the noble and necessary purpose of expanding an already large shopping center, or tear down a longstanding and profitable business district in order to build a taxpayer funded football stadium that sits empty 364 days a year like Hamilton County. No, AiG was guilty of something much worse: wanting to build a privatly funded museum that presents Genesis as actual history, not as myth, magic or metaphore. In the end, the critics’ real objections were to the Christian doctine of creation, not the construction of a building on a rural section of interstate. But if you followed the story in the local press, you’d have thought the folks at AiG were real estate robber barons bent on ripping off the unsuspecting innocents of Northern Kentucky.

And just as in the case of the Creation Museum, I believe the real reason behind the move against Ark Encounter is philosophical: secularists reject the Bible as history and hate and fear those who believe it. This fight should be an interesting one.