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WILLIAMSTOWN, Ky. – As the colossal replica of the biblical Noah’s Ark rises incongruously from the countryside of bluish Kentucky, Ken Ham gives the presumption he’s often repeated.
The ark stretches 1 and a fractional shot fields agelong — “the biggest freestanding timber-frame operation successful the world,” Ham says. It holds 3 monolithic decks with woody cages, food-storage urns, life-size carnal models and different exhibits.
It’s each designed to reason that the biblical communicative was virtually existent — that an past Noah truly could person built specified a blase ship. That Noah and a fistful of household members truly could person sustained thousands of animals for months, floating supra a planetary flood that drowned everyone other successful the wicked world.
“That’s what we wanted to bash done galore of the exhibits, to amusement the feasibility of the ark,” says Ham, the organizer down the Ark Encounter taxable parkland and related attractions.
And with that, helium furthers his extremity to asseverate the full biblical Book of Genesis should beryllium interpreted arsenic written — that humans were created by God’s fiat connected the sixth time of instauration connected an Earth that is lone 6,000 years old.
All this defies the overwhelming statement of modern scientists — that the Earth developed implicit billions of years successful “deep time” and that humans and different surviving things evolved implicit millions of years from earlier species.
But Ham wants to win wherever helium believes William Jennings Bryan failed.
Bryan, a populist person and fundamentalist champion, helped the prosecution successful the celebrated Scopes Monkey Trial, which took spot 100 years agone this July successful Dayton, Tennessee.
Bryan’s broadside won successful tribunal — gaining the condemnation of nationalist schoolteacher John Scopes for violating authorities instrumentality against teaching quality evolution. But Bryan was wide seen arsenic suffering a humiliating decision successful nationalist opinion, with his sputtering attempts to explicate the Bible’s spectacular miracles and enigmas.
The adept witness' infamous missteps
For Ham, Bryan’s occupation was not that helium defended the Bible. It’s that helium didn’t support it good enough, interpreting parts of it metaphorically alternatively than literally.
“It showed radical astir the satellite that Christians don’t truly judge the Bible — they can’t reply questions to support the Christian faith,” Ham says.
“We privation you to cognize that we’ve got answers,” Ham adds, speaking successful the accent of his autochthonal Australia.
Ham is laminitis and CEO of Answers successful Genesis, which opened the Ark Encounter successful 2016. The Christian taxable parkland includes a zoo, zip lines and different attractions surrounding the ark.
Nearly a decennary earlier, Answers successful Genesis opened a Creation Museum successful adjacent Petersburg, Kentucky, wherever exhibits likewise reason for a literal mentation of the biblical instauration narrative. Visitors are greeted with a diorama depicting children and dinosaurs interacting peacefully successful the Garden of Eden.
The radical besides produces books, podcasts, videos and homeschooling curricula.
“The main connection of some attractions is fundamentally this: The past successful the Bible is true," Ham says. “That’s wherefore the connection of the Gospel based connected that past is true.”
Creationist content inactive common
If Ham is the astir salient torchbearer for creationism today, he’s hardly alone.
Polls mostly amusement that determination betwixt 1 successful 6 and 1 successful 3 Americans clasp beliefs accordant with young-Earth creationism, depending connected however the question is asked. A 2024 Gallup poll recovered that 37% of U.S. adults agreed “God created quality beings beauteous overmuch successful their contiguous signifier astatine 1 clip wrong the past 10,000 years oregon so.”
That percent is down a little, but not dramatically, from its mid-40s level betwixt the 1980s and 2012. Rates are higher among spiritual and politically blimpish respondents.
“Scopes lost, but the nationalist consciousness was that the fundamentalists lost” and were dwindling away, says William Vance Trollinger Jr., a prof of past and spiritual studies astatine the University of Dayton successful Ohio.
But the scope of Answers successful Genesis demonstrates that “a important subset of Americans clasp to young-Earth creationism,” says Trollinger, co-author with his wife, English prof Susan Trollinger, of the 2016 publication “Righting America astatine the Creation Museum.”
Leading subject organizations accidental it’s important to thatch improvement and old-Earth geology. Evolution is “one of the astir securely established of technological facts,” says the National Academy of Sciences. The Geological Society of America likewise states: “Evolution and the straight related conception of heavy clip are indispensable parts of subject curricula.”
The contented has been repeatedly legislated and litigated since the Scopes trial. Tennessee repealed its anti-evolution instrumentality successful 1967. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled successful 1968 that a akin Arkansas instrumentality was an unconstitutional promotion of religion, and successful 1987 it overturned a Louisiana instrumentality requiring that creationism beryllium taught alongside evolution. A 2005 national tribunal likewise forbade a Pennsylvania schoolhouse territory from presenting “intelligent design,” a antithetic attack to creationism that argues beingness is excessively analyzable to person evolved by chance.
Science educators alarmed
Some lawmakers person precocious revived the issue. North Dakota’s Senate this twelvemonth defeated a measure that would person allowed nationalist schoolhouse teaching connected intelligent design. A caller West Virginia law vaguely allows teachers to reply pupil questions astir “scientific theories of however the beingness and/or beingness came to exist.”
The Scopes proceedings acceptable a template for today’s culture-war battles, with efforts to grow vouchers for attendees of backstage schools, including Christian ones teaching creationism, and to present Bible-infused lessons and Ten Commandments displays successful nationalist schools.
Such efforts alarm subject educators similar Bill Nye, the tv “Science Guy,” whose 2014 statement with Ham was billed arsenic “Scopes II” and has generated millions of video views online.
“What you get retired of religion, arsenic I recognize it, is this fantastic consciousness of community,” Nye says. “Community is precise overmuch portion of the quality experience. But the Earth is not 4,000 years old. To thatch that thought to children with immoderate backing — beryllium it spiritual oregon these singular ideas that humans are not related to, for example, chimpanzees oregon bonobos — is breathtaking. It’s silly. And truthful we combat this fight.”
Nye says grounds is overwhelming, ranging from fossils layers to the organisation of species. “There are trees older than Mr. Ham thinks the satellite is,” helium adds.
Religious views connected origins vary
One weekday successful March, visitors milled astir the Ark Encounter and Creation Museum, which gully an estimated 1.5 cardinal visits per twelvemonth (including duplicate visits).
“We are churchgoing, Bible-believing Christians,” says Louise van Niekerk of Ontario, Canada, who traveled with her household to the Creation Museum. She’s acrophobic that her 4 children are faced with a public-school program permeated with evolution.
The Creation Museum, van Niekerk says, “is encouraging a robust alternate worldview from what they’re being taught,” she says.
Many spiritual groups accommodate evolution, though.
Gallup’s survey recovered that of Americans who judge successful evolution, much accidental it happened with God’s guidance (34%) than without it (24%). Catholic popes person shown openness to improvement portion insisting the quality psyche is simply a divine creation. Many wide Protestants and adjacent immoderate evangelicals person accepted astatine slightest parts of evolutionary theory.
But among galore evangelicals, creationist content is strong.
The Southern Baptist Convention, the nation’s largest evangelical body, has promoted creationist beliefs successful its publications. The Assemblies of God asserts that Adam and Eve were humanities people. Some evangelical schools, specified arsenic Bryan’s namesake assemblage successful Tennessee, affirm creationist beliefs successful their doctrinal statements.
There's a larger contented here, critics say
Just arsenic Ham says the instauration communicative is important to support a larger information astir the Christian Gospel, critics accidental much is astatine involvement than conscionable the quality root story.
The Trollingers wrote that the Answers successful Genesis endeavor is an “arsenal successful the civilization war.” They accidental it aligns with Christian nationalism, promoting blimpish views successful theology, household and sex roles, and casting uncertainty connected different areas of technological consensus, specified arsenic human-made clime change.
Nye, too, says the connection fits into a much wide and ominous anti-science movement. “Nobody is talking astir clime alteration close now,” helium laments.
Exhibits beforehand a “vengeful and violent” God, says Susan Trollinger, noting the transverse connected the ark’s ample door, which analogizes that conscionable arsenic the wicked perished successful the flood, those without Christ look eternal hellfire.
And determination are much parallels to 1925.
Bryan had declaimed, “How tin teachers archer students that they came from monkeys and not expect them to enactment similar monkeys?” The Creation Museum, which depicts violence, drugs and different societal ills arsenic resulting from content successful evolution, is “Bryan’s societal connection connected steroids,” wrote Edward Larson successful a 2020 afterword to “Summer for the Gods,” a Pulitzer Prize-winning relationship of the Scopes trial.
More attractions are planned
The protests that initially greeted the depository and ark projects, from secularist groups who considered them embarrassments to Kentucky, person ebbed.
When the authorities initially denied a tourism taxation rebate for the Ark Encounter due to the fact that of its spiritual nature, a national tribunal overturned that ruling. Representing Ham’s radical was a Louisiana lawyer named Mike Johnson — present talker of the U.S. House of Representatives.
Despite those blips, Ham’s monolithic ministry charges forward. Expansion is next, with AIG attractions planned for Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, and Branson, Missouri — some tourer hubs offering much opportunities to beforehand creationism to the masses.
Todd Bigelow, visiting the Ark Encounter from Mesa, Arizona, says the grounds vividly evoked the information that Noah and his household indispensable person felt. It helped him admit “the opportunities God gives america to unrecorded the beingness we have, and hopefully marque bully choices and repent erstwhile we request to,” helium says.
“I think,” Bigelow adds, “God and subject tin spell manus successful hand.”
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Associated Press writer Dylan Lovan contributed.
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