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Kentucky Announces Creationism Theme Park
riverat1 writes "On December first, Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear announced that a creationism theme park is expected to open in 2014. Park developers are seeking state tourism development incentives and could receive up to $37.5 million over a 10-year period. Gov. Steve Beshear said he does not believe the incentives would violate the principle of church-state separation because the 14-year-old tax incentives law wasn’t approved for the purpose of benefiting the Ark Encounter. The park will have a 500 foot replica of the Ark with live animals on it and a Tower of Babel explaining how races and languages developed. The park will be turned over to Answers in Genesis after it is built. They are a non-profit organization which may allow them to discriminate in hiring on the basis of religion."
she would be proud
in 6 days?
Now I can finally get the state to approve my Pastafarian noodle coaster with Scientology bumper cars
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
...that the park actually evolved from lower forms of parks, each being incrementally better than the previous park.
It is just a rumor.
The Kai's Semi-Updated Website Thingy
Not only had this better not see one red penny of taxpayer money, but any public official who says it doesn't violate separation of Church and State should be immediately impeached for not upholding protecting the Constitution.
If people want to build these things and run them with private money, even for a profit, I don't care. But the second you start taking my money to proselytize your religion, I get VERY agitated.
Join FFRF.
Sadly... this isn't the first. These sorts of parks have even been lampooned in Bill Maher's Religulous.
Hell yeah I would. Are they offering any stock?
PT Barnum says this park will be a hit.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Because this park doesn't claim to be fantasy.
How is that /not/ a violation of the separation of church and state?
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
let it be built in a flood zone.
They have money
If they had money the state wouldn't have to kick in $37 million.
To be fair, there's no evidence at all that evolution has ever occurred in Kentucky.
I typically like Americans United, but I'm not sure I'd support a lawsuit here. The Governor makes a valid point, backed by several other organizations that are usually good Church/State watchdogs. The tourism development law doesn't care about the possible ulterior motives of the developers, or the validity of the science presented by the facility. It cares about the development of tourism, which seems likely to occur if this facility is built. Now if they turned around and *didn't* fund a non-Christian theme park which had similar projections for jobs and businesses, then there would be a problem... As it is, this seems like a valid application of the state's money, much though I disagree with the park's purpose.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
Don't they only build theme parks for things that are fantas - Ohhhhhhhhhhhh.
Sigs are for Terrorists.
Does not mean what some of you think it means. All it does is prevent the state from establishing a state church like the Church of England and interfering with (disrupting) church activities and the free exercise of your freedom "of religion". There is no freedom from religion. Your rights do not extend into the lives of others. If you choose to be an atheist, that is you personal choice but you cannot impose that choice upon the rest of society, other individuals or restrict the free exercise of religion by anyone even if they are public officials. They still retain all of their personal rights and freedoms.
I'm not sure how I feel about this park and the use of tax payers funds but then again, I'm not sure if it is fair for the tyranny of the minority to always win over the majority. If the majority of tax payers are in favor of this, I don't see the problem. There is plenty of tax money spent on other things that are not necessarily for the benefit of all tax payers.
You're an idiot. Freedom *of* religion necessarily means freedom *from* religion. You are free to practice your religion because you are free *from* being coerced by other religions. Otherwise, you are forcing a religion onto people who don't believe. And no, it is not okay to fund this with tax-payer money even if the majority agree, just as it would not be okay to bring back slavery if the majority agreed. Minority rights must be protected in a civilized society. But, when overbearing tyrants like you want to force your religion/ideology/whatever on everyone else, you always whine about the "tyranny of the minority".
In any event, your Pat Robertson inspired interpretation of the first amendment is not what is understood by the Supreme Court, even on the conservative side.
Besides, take a step back and look at what you are suggesting. You are arguing that, so long as 50%+1 of the people of a state vote to pay to support a particular religion, they should be able to force their religion upon everyone else in the state.
Similar to the upcoming US election results
The taxpayers had no choice but to give their tax money to the state. The state has chosen to use this money to fund a theme park with the clear motivation of putting forth a particular set of religious beliefs. Hence, the taxpayer is being forced to fund religious teachings that he may or may not believe in. This is in violation of both the US Constitution and the Kentucky Constitution.
I wonder sometimes if the original writers of some of today's religious texts would be thinking "whoosh" when they heard that people thousands of years later are taking them literally.
Who wants to bet that in a few thousand years people will be saying you're not going to the Grey Havens if you don't accept that Gandalf was dead and resurrected. Accept him as your white wizard or be damned!
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
I can't believe I'm defending these cretins, but I don't think they are getting government money. I believe they are getting tax breaks under a tourism promotion program. I hate to say it, but I think this is legal.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I agree with you. They're not only creating jobs, they're creating jobs for stupid people, which is the hardest kind of job to create.
Non gratis rodentus anus
I would actually guess that the goal is to cement the indoctrination of the young, which is where the evangelical movement is sorely hurting as I understand it. Much the same thing that Phillip Morris did with Joe Camel actually.
Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.--Mark Twain
I've seen creationists deal with this exact problem. Their solution is the meat-plant - a plant which they claim is composed of animal proteins, allowing even purely carnivorous animals to survive for decades while the prey species breed to a sustainable population and with such a huge energy density that even the amount stored on the ark could last as long as it needed. Naturally none of this meat-plant survives today, because the flood killed most of it and the animals from the ark ate the rest. But it must have existed, because otherwise the genesis account doesn't make sense. Besides, the bible clearly describes meat-plants in Genesis 1:30: "Also, to every beast of the earth, to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, in which there is life, I have given every green herb for food”; and it was so." As for all those carnivorous animals with huge teeth, sharp claws and such when they were made to eat only plants, that's because the presence of sin in the world caused their DNA to mutate and express those sinful features.
I'm not making that up. That insanity really is the Creationist explanation. Including the bit about sin being a targetted mutagen.
Giving state money to a religious group isn't unconstitutional. Giving state money to one religious group and not another is unconstitutional. The 1st Amendment and the separation of church and state guideline boils down to forbidding the government from establishing a state religion--by giving preferential treatment to one over another, for example--not forbidding the expression of religion with government money. For example, the whole "moment of silence" in schools to allow for multidenominational prayer. Now, if Kentucky subsequently denied a similar claim for the "How big was that ark again?" atheist theme park, you've got a 1st Amendment case.
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Whats the point in going to a theme park where all the rides consist of closing your eyes and covering your ears with your hands while yelling.
I welcome our new 99% overlords.
They’re not funding a church, they’re funding a construction project that will generate tourism which happens to be owned and operated by a church.
Simple question. If a Muslim or Buddhist group were making a religious theme park and received government money to construct it, would you be okay with that? How about Scientology or Rastafarianism? Or, the Temple of Set? If you answer no to any of these, you should be able to see why this construction project should receive no government money or special tax breaks.
Oh, and it doesn't just "happens to be owned and operated by a church" as you say. It is a religiously-themed park. If it were a simple nature park that just happened to be owned by a church, I would have no problem with this. But, they are making a park specifically to push their own religious ideas.
Similar to the upcoming US election results
Awesome! I can't wait to ride a ride or get in a building designed by someone who doesn't believe in science.
I would never go to that park. How could anyone believe that 4 men(Noah and his 3 sons) could accomplish what is shown in that picture? It would be very hard for even this generation to build such a ship. Even with all our modern sawing machines and steel bolts and steel plates to connect the wood it would be hard to prevent leaks from occurring. The first question is why. Why would a loving god choose a flood to destroy most of its creation? Most of the blame would be god in the first place since it was the bad angels that came down to earth to give birth to the giants. That god should be able to protect weak humans from his more powerful angels. Where are the fossil remains of these giants? Why kill off the animals since they would have had no blame? A god that can create a universe out of nothing could just as easily made evil creatures disappear. In fact if that god made them disappear one at a time I would think that at some point the rest would get the point and reform their wicked ways. How did the kangaroos get there and get back? How long would it have taken for the vegetation to grow back enough to support the plant eaters and than how long before the plant eaters had enough numbers to support the meat eaters? 90% of the water on this planet is salt water so the flood would have covered the earth with salt water and the vegetation had to grow back after that soaking. Where did all the water come from and where did it go after the flood? The whole bible is filled with stories about a god that can not be bothered with humans until he deems it that he must destroy them. It would have taken a lot more time for 3 men and 3 women to repopulate this planet with all the distinct races than the 4,000 years that the bible had given it. In just a little over a thousand years they would have had to go back to Egypt and built all the pyramids and have forgotten their past so they could enslave the Jews so they could escape in the exodus. It is totally beyond my belief.