Religion

Ken Ham’s Ark Park to “Debunk” the Happy Story of Noah

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Sorta transcript:

You may recall that the creationist Ken Ham is currently using taxpayer money to build a full-size replica of Noah’s Ark in Kentucky. That’s kind of like saying you’re building a full-size replica of Hansel & Gretel’s Candy Cabin — who’s really going to argue over the details?

Believe it or not, we’re quickly approaching the opening date of the Ark Park: July 7, 2016. So I decided to check in on Ken and see what he’s up to, which, it turns out, is having a full-on meltdown on Twitter because people are making fun of his boat.

“Those who reject God & believe evolution should blame evolution for all the horrible things in this world as evolution would be the cause,” he wrote, not able to wrap his mind around the idea that natural forces don’t really care if you blame them for things.

“Secularists mock @ArkEncounter as they don’t want to acknowledge they are in need of the Ark of salvation–Noah’s Ark is a picture of Jesus.“ Of course, according to Ham the Great Flood happened 2,000 years before Jesus was even an itch in his daddy’s pants, but I think I get what he’s saying and personally I’m happy to acknowledge it: the Ark is like Jesus, because it saved a ridiculously tiny minority of people while God Himself brutally tortured and murdered millions of others, including babies.

For the record: I agree with Ken Ham. The Christian God is a horrible monster.

Ham is not in any way trying to contradict this reading of the Bible, and in fact the Ark is going to have an entire exhibit debunking the “dangerous” image of Noah as a happy old man surrounded by cute animals and rainbows. Ham wants people to know that it is not a happy children’s story — it is a horror film in which God literally commits mass murder, and he believes that it’s dangerous for kids to grow up thinking otherwise.

This illustrates the fact that Ken Ham has overlapping goals with many atheists: a lot of us believe that if more Christians truly comprehended the horror of the Bible, including the God-sanctioned murders and rapes and slavery and slaughters, they’d wake up, realize that it’s all a bad soap opera, and give up religion.

For that reason, I am interested in seeing the public’s reaction to Ham’s Ark. Yes, it’s disgusting and a blatant violation of church and state that it’s using taxpayer money, but it’s also an interesting experiment. What will happen when the public can truly grasp how incredibly small that boat is, and how overwhelmingly impossible it would be to collect every animal species on the planet onto it? What will happen when moderate Christians realize that these people don’t just think of this as an allegory but as an actual thing that happened? What will kids think when they’re told that their cute images of Noah are evil and dangerous and wrong? If this project is ever completed, maybe we’ll find out.

Rebecca Watson

Rebecca is a writer, speaker, YouTube personality, and unrepentant science nerd. In addition to founding and continuing to run Skepchick, she hosts Quiz-o-Tron, a monthly science-themed quiz show and podcast that pits comedians against nerds. There is an asteroid named in her honor. Twitter @rebeccawatson Mastodon mstdn.social/@rebeccawatson Instagram @actuallyrebeccawatson TikTok @actuallyrebeccawatson YouTube @rebeccawatson BlueSky @rebeccawatson.bsky.social

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11 Comments

  1. I predict that as with every other issue in the world nowadays, nobody will have their minds changed at all.

  2. Rebecca Watson,

    Ken Ham needs to start using logic and stop viewing the world through his “biblical glasses.” Off course, he won’t actually do that, or he’d have to stop being a creationist, but Ken seriously doesn’t even understand how dumb the idea of viewing the world through any type of “glasses” is.

    Wearing Biblical Glasses
    https://archive.is/RWXMC#selection-401.0-401.24

    Ham’s Biblical “Blinkers”
    http://www.noanswersingenesis.org.au/ham_biblical_blinkers.htm

  3. Listen Rebecca, please! before you start flaming others at least collect ALL the proper facts! Noah’s did NOT collect ALL the animals but only the CLEAN animals. If you want to say how terrible God is and how he promoted rape, murder etc you need to read the whole bible Inc apocrypha, book of jubilees and definitely the book of Enoch. The book of Enoch will explain why the flood happened. If you’re not going to read that then you have no business commenting on the Bible as you’re leaving out important issues.

    1. aghhhh shouldn’t have typed and edited this on my phone whilst busy! Ill amend this soon with the clean, one pair of unclean and the hybrids that were around at that time.

      1. Hey, sorry about my confusing posts but what I meant was….NOAH was able to take more than one pair of clean animals after it’s kind and ONLY the clean animals as their wasn’t that many at that time (know the difference between species and kinds). For example look at the unicorn in ancient days and how it has become a mythical creature when the truth is it was a early rhino. Or the woolly mammoth etc, Species come and go but kinds live on. And he limited the unclean to one but read The Book of Enoch and it explains a bit more about the flood and how man and beast became tainted.

        Please delete my other 2 posts as they seem a bit rude and Are not accurate due to me writing on my phone :)

        1. According to the KJV (and others in fairly close wording) Genesis 7:2

          “Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male and his female: and of beasts that are not clean by two, the male and his female.”

          7 Clean and 2 Unclean. This merely adds to the numbers problem. More mouths to feed, more space needed, and more poop. In fact a big ol’ pile of poop.

          The distinction between species and kind is irrelevant to this discussion since Ken Ham and his ilk do not use species correctly anyway, and kind is a weasel-word used to explain away passages in the irrefutable text that are refutable.

          You know, the weasel. As a species different from ferrets, minks, ermine, meerkats, polecats, and stoats, but as a kind all the same along with skunks, badgers, and even fricken’ otters. How that single instance of kind became all those other species without evolution is just magic I guess. But magic is not a problem for Gandalf the Super White.

          As for the Book of Enoch and other apocrypha. Why would we, who don’t believe the main book to be worth the blood shed over it, take into account fan-fic just to allow you to explain away things as head-canon? If they weren’t good enough to make the official cut why should we allow their use to explain away the plot holes in the original?

          Silly rabbit, hand-waving is for kids.

          1. It was the The Council of Laodicea that decided not to put certain books in the Old Testament because they didn’t think what these men experienced would benefit people but it’s the total opposite. The Book of Enoch has some fantastic chapters in it ie cycles of the moon and son, how he saw the spirit Jesus before he came etc. But most of all Enoch was only of the few perfect men to walk the earth and directly related to Noah. I can’t really discuss the books with you if you haven’t read them and completely dismiss them. I posted here to receive some insight on the info and to find out how much atheists know about the bible just like I read science, not to be insulted by you.

          2. *SUN not SON. I swear this auto correct on iOS 9.3 has gone bonkers.

          3. The reason we do not accept the Bible as fact, as you have asserted, is precisely because it has been altered to fit the politics and religious believing of the times. Or at least that is one of a myriad reasons.

            At The Council of Laodicea, The Council of Nicea, The Coucil of Hippo and so many more synods the “irrefutable word of God” has been proven to be malleable to the will of men.

            I was being unnecessarily snarky with you, and I apologize, but I have not insulted you. That is unless you believe not buying your texts as facts is an insult. I assure you it is not.

            Now, I’ll explain to you why I, and so many other atheists, do not accept the Bible and its apocrypha as proof.

            It is a set of stories written by several different authors, many unknown, over the span of several decades at least dozens of years after the supposed events. If it were backed up by more contemporary writings that jibe with the facts (it’s really not), and if it were backed by physical evidence (it’s really not), and if it were shown in the historical record to be more than merely poor in relating actual events (it’s really not) then I and others would see it as one among all those other facts as proof of what it says.

            But as it is the Bible is simply a collection of stories, some that have been in and out of favor, that relate the oral history of an ancient tribe. It is, as such, anthropologically interesting as oral-cum-written history but it is not considered fact as it is not backed up by other proofs.

            Any time you wish to use the Bible as proof to a non-believer (as you did when you chided Rebecca for not having all the facts), just keep all that in mind. Also, don’t assume that the person you are conversing with does not know what you are talking about just because they refuse to accept it, that too could be seen as an insult.

  4. To be fair, Jesus is just a standard Greek demigod put in a monotheistic setting, and El did have sons.

    Wait…Baal, Yam, Mot. Zeus, Poseidon, Hades. Hmm…

  5. According to some he took babies to save space that is a bit counter productive with breast fed mammals that means taking the mother. And sharpened spikes to stop them breeding in the year afloat. and god put them into hibernation to save food and ease the toilet emptying needs. Seems lick a lot of bother when god could make all the animals from scratch in a day

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