Holy State-Of-The-Ark Politics! $50 Million In Tax Dollars Go To Replicate Noah's Compulsive Hoarding!

Gopher Wood is EXPEN$IVE! 

Uh, what the hell IS gopher wood?

"Make thee an ark of gopher wood;rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch. And this is the fashion which thou shalt make of it: The length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, the breath of it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits. A window shalt thou make to the ark, and in a cubit shalt thou finish it above; and the door of the ark shalt be set into the side thereof; with lower, second and third stories shalt thou make it."

That's it folks. Everything else is pure imagination and speculation. The ark was a friggin' box 450' long, 75' wide and 45' tall made out of wood that's never mentioned again in the Bible and certainly doesn't exist today. It had one lousy window about 45" square and one side door (size? who knows?). 

So the chubby boat with the house on top is really pure fiction, based upon drawings and etchings like that of Gustave Dore' (see below)

Americans United for Separation of Church and State are protesting the plan to provide $11M in Kentucky state road improvements to support the Christian theme park where the centerpiece attraction is an alleged replica of Noah's Ark.

Added to that $11M are $40M in sales rebates!

The rationale behind all of this is that the Ark Park will bring in a great deal of traffic ... and revenue to the area. Makes you wonder, though, if the same consideration would be given to a Buddhist Theme Park with a 200 foot statue of Buddha. 

The Creation Museum

All rationales aside, the Creation Museum from which the Ark Park is a spin-off has had a healthy one million visitors since its construction in May, 2007. The $27 million enterprise was immediately blasted as "a monument to scientific illiteracy" by scientists, and the sight of dinosaurs romping with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden gave vent to the term, "Yabba Dabba science." Case Western Reserve's eminent astro-physicist, Lawrence Krauss formed a protest of some 600 scientists (see below). Of course Ken Ham, founder of Answers in Genesis, the Museum's parent organization came back with the zinger "Lawrence Krauss Blasphemes Our Lord."

The there's the juicy problem the Creation Museum had with Adam:

The evangelicals behind the just-opened Creation Museum are up-in-arms upon discovering that they hired a Sirfuxalot Model (Eric Linden) to portray Adam in one of the videos they've been showing to children. Additionally, the AP reports that Linden also owns the domain Bedroom Acrobat, a sexually suggestive site where he has appeared posing with a transvestite.

And science  has not let up on the simple fact that the Creation Museum plays fast and lose with it (science). One glaring point: the museum posits that all dinosaurs were vegetarians and some turned to being meat eaters after "The Fall." What about T-Rex and his huge teeth? Simple: all the better to eat coconuts with. PZ Meyers had this to say about the handling of dissent at the museum:

At the Creation "Museum", one of the jobs of the guards is to suppress criticism. They hover about in rather conspicuous uniforms, armed with tasers, and some use police dogs to check out the visitors. They don't want dissent expressed in their building, and they admit it themselves.

Cuts to Education But $43 million to Noah's Ark

While Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear handed in a state budget that cut 6% from education, he steadfastly included a $43 million tax rebate to the Ark.  Beshear, a Democrat (!) sees the venue as a money-maker for Kentucky, while it's creator Ken Ham (of AiG) is unabashedly Evangelical:

“When people say the money donated for the full-size Noah’s Ark should be spent instead on feeding the poor or giving to another cause, they are essentially arguing that no money should be given to building the Ark Encounter. Yet consider the words of the Great Commission given by Jesus Christ.” The “Great Commission” refers to Jesus’ calling of his disciples to spread their beliefs throughout the world.

So the Ark Encounter IS FOR PROSELYTIZING. And woe betide anyone who thinks differently:

PZ Meyers:At the Creation "Museum", one of the jobs of the guards is to suppress criticism. They hover about in rather conspicuous uniforms, armed with tasers, and some use police dogs to check out the visitors. They don't want dissent expressed in their building, and they admit it themselves.
A Big Joke

It never ceases to amaze the rest of the world how American, Right-wing Christianity continues to embarrass the rest of us. True, it has made its forays of bigotry and stupidity into parts of the world yearning to join the 21st century (think Uganda)* but the clowns of God (leaders) keep pummeling us with a maniacal ferocity of all things unreasonable and inane. Speculation about the Ark Park should produce some very outlandish, very comic questions, e.g. will the Ark feature all the animals? Will it have room for waste (or was Noah the world's grand scale polluter)? What languages will be confounded at the Tower Of Babel? Yiddish? 

Perhaps the Kentucky legislature is playing an enormous joke on its taxpayers by sanctioning another enormous joke: the Ark Park will ultimately cost $172 million and Ken Ham will continue to thumb his nose at the poor.

*Pat Robertson is still fighting to get a Christian theme park in the Holy Land.

Known Diseases Attacking the Republican Brain: Prognosis Negative

The guy whose brain was scanned for the above picture doesn't have a chance of survival - at least not as an American human being. He has been diagnosed as one of those unfortunate beings who places in the lowest twenty percent of self-identified Republicans and as such suffers chronic attacks of bigotry, intolerance, self-righteousness, secessionist tendencies, overbearing (fake) patriotism, hard-boiled homophobia, and totally rank hypocrisy. His I.Q. has been reduced to a level below that of an amoeba. This reduction is brought on by irrational hatred of just about everything he is told to hate.

None of these terrible conditions have ever been treated simply because he was unaware of them. If caught in time (before the age of reason since these viruses attack rudimentary reasoning first) they might have been treated.

The most obvious sign that his mental capacities were impaired was when he stated on a Research 2000 survey that he thought Sarah Palin was better qualified for the position as President of the United States than Barack Obama. Examining researchers were horrified that this man's deterioration had been so long and advanced.

He also AGREED to all of the statements below. To be fair, they were put in question form, and some ideas were delineated by proper grammar, so they might have been put in a way that may have been difficult for him to understand.

NEGATIVE THOUGHTS AND IDEOLOGIES OF REPUBLICANS

Abortion is murder	76%
ACORN stole the election	21%
Congress shouldn't make it easier to join unions	68%
Contraceptives should be outlawed	31%
Creationism should be taught in public schools	77%
Gay couples should not have state or federal benefits	68%
Gays should not be allowed to serve in the military	55%
Gays should not teach in schools	73%
Illegal immigrants should not be allowed to work here	59%
Jesus Christ is the only way to salvation and heaven	67%
Marriages are equal partnerships	76%
Obama is a racist	31%
Obama is a Socialist	63%
Obama should be impeached	21%
Obama wants the terrorists to win	24%
Obama was not born in the United States	42%
Sarah Palin is more qualified that Barack Obama	53%
Sex education should not be taught in schools	51%
The birth control pill is abortion	34%
There should be no same-sex marriages	77%
Women should be able to work outside the home	86%
You support the death penalty	91%
Your state should secede from the U.S.	23%

Put together in a different graph, the poll shows us that there is the possibility that a substantial amount of people could have agreed with ALL of these statements. Let's look at it in another way:

Now let's see to possible variables: some Republicans did NOT agree with every statement. Some statements may not be considered too radical. Also, some statements do no necessarily mean that a person negates the opposite. E.G., it's possible that some Republicans believe that Creationism should be taught along WITH evolution.

Variables aside, however, the results of the poll (2,000 self-identified Republicans across the country and across demographics) show a very, very sczisophrenic group of people, the majority of whom agree with the statements that: a. abortion is murder, but they would voted for the death penalty, b. gay cannot teach in public schools, but some of them could serve in the military, c. purport to be patriots but some of them want to secede from the Union, and d. folks who think abortion is murder would also outlaw contraceptives - at a time when more "misbegotten" children are born than at any other time in history.

Indeed, the reasoning power of self-proclaimed conservatives has been on a downward spiral for the last generation. That may be why the number of self-proclaimed Republicans has decreased steadily since the 1960s. 55 million people in the U.S. were registered Republicans in 2004. It's doubtful that today's number is in the high 40's. Look at the bottom part of the graph and make some assumptions of our own: counting a wide range of variables, that bottom 20% can be honed down to 10%, don't you think? Is that fair?

Well, if it is, than 10% of people who identify as Republicans are: pro-Sarah Palin, anti-Obama people who will refuse to let their children have any sex education let alone purchase condoms. They will allow their women to work outside the home and think that their marriages are equal partnerships, although domestic violence cases continue to rise. They will certainly support the death penalty but at the same time chant that they are "pro life," without any qualms of hypocrisy. Some of them want gays to serve in the military more than they want them to teach in schools, but giving them any rights concerning marriage or spousal claims is beyond their comprehension. Finally, why any of them would think that Obama WANTS the terrorists to win is incomprehnsible. That statement alone defines the bottom 20% as irrational and, dare I say it, not qualified to vote.

And according to the least amount of calculation, there are approximately 4 MILLION people out there who have agreed to ALL OR MOST OF THE STATEMENTS. Four million. Who are voting irrationally. Who are amongst us. Who want their state to secede from the Union. Who do not like the rest of the people in the U.S. simply because they are not made of 100% whatever they label themselves as.

I'm sorry, but it looks to be true. Movements start with just a few people, but when movements begin to mass and affect the nation's psyche, then we all have to deal with them. Sorry, but at this time, to go on would make me seem like a fearmonger. Please, just think about it.