Kentucky made it official Thursday to give a planned Noah’s Ark theme park $43 million in tourism tax rebates.
The Kentucky Tourism Development Finance Authority voted unanimously to grant the tax incentives for the $172.5 million project. Answers in Genesis, which built Kentucky’s Creation Museum, is behind the theme park. Gov. Steve Beshear defended the tax incentives because plans say it will create 600 to 700 jobs, almost assuredly just for Christians, and contribute $250 million to the region’s economy in the first year. Americans United for Separation of Church and State blasted the decision.
“The state of Kentucky should not be promoting the spread of fundamentalist Christianity or any other religious viewpoint,” said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United. “Let these folks build their fundamentalist Disneyland without government help.”
Of course, building the Ark according to biblical specifications should be a piece of cake thanks to this explanation by Creation Science Research:
The first objection assumes that Noah and his family had to have taken full-grown dinosaurs on board the Ark, which is typically presumed to have been smaller than its actual biblical dimensions. The Ark was at least 45 feet high, minus the required dimensions for hull structure.3 If the three decks that the Lord specified for its construction were evenly spaced from bottom to top, they would have offered about 15 feet of clearance. Tyrannosaurs could reach 40 feet in length, and the adults would therefore not have fit well on such a deck.
But why would Noah have taken older dinosaurs on board, when younger ones would have fit just fine? The juvenile Tarbosaurus under investigation would have stood waist-high next to most men, and therefore it would have been easily accommodated on the Ark.
Regarding the question of how all the different species could have fit on the Ark, Asia’s Tarbosaurus looks so much like North America’s Tyrannosaurus that some evolutionary paleontologists suggest that they should be considered the same species. The study authors found a list of clear similarities between their Tarbosaurus specimen and tyrannosaurs, including the “D-shaped” cross-section of the teeth and the distinctive two-fingered tiny forearms.
It is therefore very probable that both these creatures, though granted separate “species” names by virtue of having been found on separate continents, nevertheless were part of the same tyrannosaurids that were one of the “[beasts] of the earth” created to reproduce “after [their] kind.”4 Noah was not required to board every species, but only two of every kind—a much broader category than species.5
So, while only smaller juvenile dinosaurs were taken on the Ark and only two of every biblical “kind,” rather than species, I still have to wonder what they ate. As I understand, T-rexes became carnivores after the Fall. So, where did Noah store all those animals used for dinosaur food?
Hey Kentucky, your tax dollars hard at work.
