Ark Encounter humbuggery: "No Help From Noah."

If Noah had been truly wise,
He would have swatted those two flies.

No Help From Noah: The County That Banked on a Religious Theme Park to Solve Its Money Problems, by Alan Greenblatt (Governing)

Facing bankruptcy, Grant County, Ky., invested in the park hoping for a new revenue source. But cash has yet to start flooding in.

It’s possible that Grant County, Ky., has touched bottom. The county, which lies midway between Cincinnati and Lexington, almost ran out of money this spring, which would have prompted a state takeover.

In March, county officials approved a 2 percent payroll tax on local workers. This will bring in more than $3 million in the coming year, enough to avoid bankruptcy. But things will still be a bit dicey. Collection of the new tax won’t start until the beginning of the fiscal year, July 1 -- the same day the county faces a $500,000 payment on the debt it owes for jail operations. “We think we can make it to the end of the fiscal year,” says County Judge Executive Steve Wood, “but we may have to take out a loan.”

For a while, the county thought Noah’s Ark would save them. Desperate for a new revenue source, local officials gave hefty land grants and tax incentives to the Ark Encounter, a religious theme park that includes a “life-sized reconstruction” of Noah’s ship, along with a creation museum. The park opened last July, but due to the tax breaks, it hasn’t translated into any sort of public revenue windfall for the county.

Visitors to the Ark complex also haven’t been spending as much money as had been initially hoped. In part, that’s because there are few other attractions nearby to entice them to stay. There also aren’t enough hotel rooms to accommodate tourists or restaurants to draw them into local business districts. “We haven’t had anything really built yet,” Wood says. “That was probably wrong on our part” ...

Cumberland Falls, rocks, and heads of stone.

Yesterday D was compelled to attend a meeting held at Cumberland Falls State Resort Park, which is located roughly 15 miles west of Corbin, Kentucky. Having never been, I decided to accompany her and share the driving time.

It was a gorgeous morning, and so I walked from the lodge to the falls and back. Near the visitors center, there was an explanation of how the falls came to be.

It isn't nuclear physics: Water meets rocks soft and hard, and erosion is the result. Of course, this process of forming rock and wearing it away has occurred over millions of years, hence the irony.

The same state taken to erecting signs like this, which reflect science, awards charlatans like Ken Ham economic development funds to build a replica of Noah's ark -- which reflects superstition.

It's another Secular Sunday: Localism, creationism and the Ark Encounter.

Digressions like this one are perfect grist for quiet Sunday mornings at home, with coffee and kippers, far from the churchgoing population.

I suppose it's true that any reference to localism in the context of our region, in one or the other well-intentioned efforts to locate the components rendering us distinct and different, must be inclusive and recognize the self-defeating prevalence of superstitious nutjobbery.

What makes it even harder is that we cannot blame it entirely on Kentucky, or else Rhonda Rhoads would not be an Indiana office holder. Does it get any more representative than a Creation Museum?

Creationism, its museum, and Idiot America.

While founder and chief cartoonist Ken Ham is little more than a caricature, albeit it influential among the numerous delusionists, Bill Nye says quite sensible things, like this:

"We need scientifically literate voters and taxpayers for the future."

Meanwhile, LEO reports that Ham's next great revenue stream is in trouble. As an atheist and secular humanist, I can only hope that my psychic energy has played a part in depleting Ham's investment coffers.

Ken Ham: Ark Encounter close to failure because of “atheists,” “secular” media and possibly the devil himself, by Joe Sonka (LEO Weekly)

... How dare the Enemy — capitalized — trick people into not giving millions of their dollars to a man who makes his living getting rich by telling people that humans used to ride through the desert on saddled dinosaurs?

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