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Kentucky State Government: Now With More Stupid

December 3, 2010 8:39 AM

just read a story about how Answers in Genesis, the geniuses behind the Creation Museum in Kentucky, are now planning to build a full-sized recreation of Noah's Ark. While I think that's just fine, here's what I think is less fine: Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear is the guy who made the announcement about the Ark and how great it is while standing behind a podium with the Kentucky state seal. Oh, and the whole thing is getting tax credits under the state's economic development law that would allow the builders of the Ark to recoup up to 25 percent of the cost of the project from taxpayer money.

I suppose that the rationale behind giving the group the tax cuts--basically that, regardless of its religious theme, the thing is likely to draw lots of people to Kentucky that otherwise wouldn't have gone--makes sense. And it may even make enough sense to keep it from being an unconstitutional endorsement of religion by the government. I simply don't know that area of law well enough to make any sort of pronouncement about that. But, even if the whole thing is legal--which is vaguely troubling in and of itself--I've got some concerns.

First off, the Governor tries to justify the whole thing as being "a theme park." That makes the whole thing sound more like the Noah's Ark water park in the Dells, which has an overtly religious name, but which has the primary purpose of being a water park, not trying to convince anyone of the truth of one particular religion. The Answers in Genesis webpage, though, specifically disavows the notion that this thing is going to be a theme or amusement park. So, right from the start, the Governor is misrepresenting the project in an attempt to make it sound much more secular than it is.

Second, the first question reporters ask the governor is something along the lines of "Hey, isn't this blatantly unconstitutional?" The governor's response is simply, "Not at all." He goes on to say that this is merely an application for a theme park, again incorrectly conjuring images of rollercoasters and cotton candy. The Governor also tries to justify the project by saying that some people might not like Nascar, but he's not going to stop them from investing in creating more tourism in the state. The next reporter then points out that the Nascar obviously doesn't violate the Lemon test. After making it clear that he has no idea what that is, the Governor defaults to insisting that this project is totally cool and that people should stop harshing his mellow.

Then, just a few seconds later, someone asks whether there will be dinosaurs on the Ark. A guy from the Ark Encounter steps up and says that there will be and that, "Part of our mission . . . is to show the feasibility of how Noah would have been able to take care of animals for an extended period of time, so the Ark is being designed with that in mind."

Awesome, so now we've got tax payers partially funding a project the purpose of which is at least partially to help religious zealots prove that a contentious story in the Bible is literally true.

How could there be a problem with that?



12 Comments


kristin said:

I would totally go see this. Specifically, I would love to take the world's most sarcastic road trip to this, the Creation Museum, and Six Flags Over Jesus.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90435219

December 3, 2010 9:25 AM



tRJ said:

Spoiler: the dinosaurs were eggs or newly hatched babysaurs.

December 3, 2010 10:39 AM



Dee said:

I mean, when I hadn't thought about it much it sounded feasibly ok. If there are these incentives for new businesses as part of the state's economic recovery policy, it would seem unfair to deem a business ineligible because of a religious affiliation. But it's like you say, this place will not exist, like other theme parks, as a place for families to have fun in their own idiom. It's a place to learn THE TRUTH!!!!!!!!!!11 and no way should anything like that ever be publicly funded, ever. $24 million to build a model of something that once held two of EVERY LIVING CREATURE AT THAT TIME FOR AN EXTENDED PERIOD. That sounds like something that was left out of "idiocracy" by mistake, even before you tell me there will be fucking dinosaurs on it.

December 13, 2010 4:23 AM



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