Even by Kentucky standards, it was stunning. Democratic Governor Steve Beshear standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the Evangelical Right to announce a $37 Million tithe in tax incentives to finance a creationist theme park named “Ark Encounter.”
Following the inevitable outrage over this latest ladder over the Wall of Separation between Church and State, the quick thinking state executive came up with a novel rationalization for giving away state money to the church — jobs, of course. “The people of Kentucky didn’t elect me governor to debate religion,” Beshear said. “They elected me governor to create jobs.” I suspect they didn’t elect him to finance religion either, but what do I know? The park is expected to draw 1.6 million yahoos visitors a year and bring 900 new jobs.
The $150 million project is the brainchild of The Answers in Genesis (AIG) group, who brought us the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky in 2007, and Ark Encounter, LLC. At the Creation Museum, one can see those frolicking raptors nuzzling cave children and you can even saddle up your own triceratops. All very Biblical, and according to AIG, the next generation Ark-Park will include “a walled city, … a replica of the Tower of Babel with exhibits, a 500-seat 5-D special effects theater, an aviary, and a first-century Middle Eastern village.”
Who could ask for anything more from a historical park? True history you say! Tut, tut, we are in the Age of Miracles and all things are possible. Just listen to an AIG representative when asked if dinosaurs will be depicted on Noah’s Ark.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDB0A23jcNI&feature=related
No word yet on unicorns!
Source: Miami Herald
–Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger
Mespo,
“I suspect they didn’t elect him to finance religion either, but what do I know? ”
I think you may be being over generous.
I call dibs on the t-rex with rocket launchers
EB, Well done sir, well done. 🙂
LK:
But hes a rising star a$$ in the GOP,More like an astroid.
Eniobob, dang, your Governor is an a$$ if that article is accurate.
Our Governor just has “thin skin”
Sparks fly at Gov. Christie’s Parsippany town hall meeting regarding superintendent salaries
Published: Friday, December 03, 2010, 9:00 PM Updated: Friday, December 03, 2010, 9:02 PM
Ginger Gibson/Statehouse Bureau Ginger Gibson/Statehouse Bureau
PARSIPPANY — Gov. Chris Christie took off his jacket, rolled up his sleeves and warned the crowd: This, he said, is when his explosive town hall moments happen.
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2010/12/sparks_fly_at_gov_christie_tow.html
Makes as much sense as praying to a God that has a devine plan..
But a destructionist theme park, tearing apart all the lies in religion, that could provide meaningful work for ages.
Amen…..
J. Brian Harris, Ph.D., P.E.,
Law/Snuff … You, sir, have a very dry wit and I enjoy it.
I keep waiting to see who will pick up the gauntlet.
Until that time arrives, would it interest you at all to address the subject of religious mysticism (St. Antony, Hildegard von Bingen and The Book of Divine Works, etc.) for I would be very interested in reading your views on the matter.
are they gonna make it big enough for two brontasaurus this time?
I never thought there could be a project worse than government tax incentives to build a Wal Mart, but there it is…….
I’m trying to think of some way in which this is remotely defensible. Maybe if the grant was made under a general program that gave tax breaks to any business generating more than X number of new jobs?
I happen to find the phenomenon of religion as an aspect of the human condition to be a worthy field for scientific inquiry, and so I study established religions and non-established religions, and religious superstitions, all from as scientific a vantage as I can garner.
My scientific heart leaps with joy at the notion of a replica of the Tower of Babel. One day, quite a few years ago, I set out to discover what would happen to my scientific understanding of religion if I decided to read through the whole Bible (including the Apocrypha) as literally as I could.
In making a journey, it might be useful to know something about where the journey ends, if such knowledge is possible. So, I began with the Epilogue of the Book of Revelation, where I found the admonition to neither add nor take away from what is in the book. Well, reading it literally might usefully attain that goal, and I began at Genesis 1:1.
What I read seemed confusing and contradictory until I got to Genesis 11, the Tower of Babel story. When I read through all of Genesis 11 several times in a row, neither adding nor taking from what I read, the whole Bible began to make flawless sense to me.
From Genesis 11:7, The Bible: An American Translation (University of Chicago Press, 1935), “Come, let us go down, and there make such a babble of their language that they will not understand one another’s speech.”
When I finished reading all the way to the Epilogue of the Book of Revelation without finding any mention of making human language understandable, my religious faith was greatly strengthened.
All we have, according to the Bible, is a language we cannot understand, as I found by reading the Bible literally. My conclusion is that the Bible effectively forbids its being read literally, and does so literally.
My literal reading of the Bible left me with one, and only one, dogma, which is a literal dogma, “There shall be no other dogma.” Said literal reading also left me with one, and only one, doctrine, which is a literal doctrine, “There shall be no other doctrine.”
I now have two faith-based religious principles, no other dogma and no other doctrine, and everything else belongs to the realm of science.
I wonder whether any of those who advocate literal reading of the Bible ever literally actually read it literally…
Alas, all legal dogmas and doctrines and all other forms of dogmas and doctrines went the way of all other religious dogmas and doctrines for me. To me, the law, except as it is scientifically verifiable, is just another religion.
Sorry about that.
My dad, who was a scientist who financed his scientific work by doing his version of ordained ministry, once used a sermon illustration that may be troublesome here.
Imagine a local church with a minister of the sort many folks think Jonathan Edwards was (one of his sermon titles, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”) two to three hundred years ago, with a sermon lasting two or more hours.
Next, imagine the sermon being mostly a list of specific sins, going on for more than two hours, and imagine a matronly pillar of the church in the front pew, praising the minister for his naming of the various sins, crying out for each sin, “Amen, Reverend, Amen!”
Then it happens, the minister makes a horrible mistake, decrying, let us suppose, the sin of using snuff. The matronly pillar of the church cries out in a state of furious rage, “Now, you have done it, Reverend, you have really done it. You have gone from preaching to meddling.”
Have I gone to meddling here?
Fine play on words in the title, Mespo.
What a strange, silly world in which many religious people live. Notwithstanding all the wonders of science that allow these people to create such absurd museums and theme parks, they mindlessly shun that same science to wither intellectually within a preposterous castle in the sky world.
“The people of Kentucky didn’t elect me governor to debate religion,”
But they didn’t elect you to get the state in losing court battles either.
Enjoy your pending Lemon challenge, Gov. Excessive Entanglement.
A theme park for creationists??? Right up there with Disney et al eh, cant wait to venture there and get all the right answers and yes see the uniconrs to as they will be there, have to be, cant wait……..bring it on.