Will there be dinosaurs on the Ark? AiG compromisers say maybe not

Jonathan Meador has a must read story on the Great Ark Encounter Scam in the new edition of LEO.

As we mentioned last Thursday at the Beshear administration’s ceremonial rubber stamping of $43 million in tax breaks for Ark Encounter, Mike Zovath from Answers in Genesis is claiming that they are open to taking the sell out, compromising, non-Young Earth approach to their new park. We believed (and still do) that this was just spinning the consultants and Beshear in order to guarantee that their big government handout was not jeopardized on Thursday. They’ve compromised in words, but they’re still going to stick some dinosaurs on that giant boat before they open (and pray that it doesn’t burn).

But in Meador’s story, check out this on the record compromising on Ken Ham’s “missionary lizards”:

Zovath has told multiple media outlets that the park will pursue scenario A; however, the choice to pursue a mainstream version of Christianity within the park’s programming represents a capitulation of sorts for Answers in Genesis, most notably for Ham, whose most recent book, “Already Compromised,” chastises Christian colleges for deviating from fundamentalist “Young Earth” teachings and argues that “Christians can’t compromise God’s Word.”

So if Ark Encounter is in danger of straying from Answers and Genesis’ literal interpretation of the Bible, a burning question must be asked: Will there still be dinosaurs on the Ark?


“(We’re) not positive,” Zovath explains. “The fact that it gets so much publicity is probably a good reason to consider having (dinosaurs) on the Ark, because people write about it. Just like in the Creation Museum, we get so much press and so much publicity and so much interest in the lobby where the dinosaurs and the kids are playing together. People get interested in it, and they want to know more about it, so that could be a strong reason to include that in the Ark itself. Again, we’ve got an awful lot of exhibits, and it’s a pretty complex project, really large, as you can imagine, so we’re kind of concentrating on the big chunks and then working our way down to the specific details of each exhibit.”

That quote, perhaps more than any other I’ve ever seen, speaks volumes about what a charlatan, grifter organization Answers in Genesis is.

Despite the fact that half of what Answers in Genesis is in the business of doing is vilifying and discrediting Christians who don’t advocate their version of biblical literalism (i.e., Flintstone Truth), here is their spokesman on the record yet again saying that he is willing to do just that in order to receive his big government handout. Maybe Ken Ham can put himself in a new chapter of the book he just released, joining the rest of the Young Earth compromisers.

But this quote also reveals something that I’ve always suspected: their use of and emphasis on dinosaurs is nothing but a cynical con game that allows them to market to children and their parents the economic equivalent of crack. They push Flintstone Truth not because they actually believe such insanity, but because it allows them to milk lots and lots of money out of stupid people.

I went into this in much more detail in this post from late-December, but it’s no coincidence that Ken Ham took his Flintstones Freakshow to America the year after Jurassic Park became the number one box office and marketing juggernaut in the history of motion pictures. He saw the dinosaur craze taking off, and he wanted to cash in. Just like the recent surge in children’s movies with dragons has lead to Ken Ham’s new push that dragons were real.

Despite his repeated claims, dinosaurs are not “missionary lizards” to Ken Ham. They are “merchandise lizards”. Plain and simple.

So the Great Con of Ken Ham and his Answers in Genesis grifters continues. Of course, now it’s not just weak-minded parents that they are grifting. It’s the Commonwealth of Kentucky, to the tune of $43 million.