Quick reflections after a visit to the Ark Encounter

Hi all. Last Friday, with my sister’s family and my parents (all of whom live in southwest Ohio), I had a chance to visit Answers in Genesis’ famous Ark Encounter. You know, this thing:

And my, it was big:

I am sure some of you would love to read DEEP SCIENTIFIC AND THEOLOGICAL REFLECTIONS ON WHAT I OBSERVED THEREIN… and there is a little of that below. But that would be a huge project, and going through the Ark with young children limited my ability to carefully read and ponder every sign, so what follows here is more general thoughts on what the Ark Encounter might teach us about Christian institutions… but that’s still a valuable thing, so here you go with many rapid-fire reflections.

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A phenomenon

Ken Ham, the man who started and leads Answers in Genesis, has built a phenomenon here. One of my first reactions after arrival was “there sure are a lot of people here” and “they are from all over the United States and the world”. And we might add, “and they are from many different Christian traditions too”. If Christians build good institutions, people will visit them. If Christians do not build good institutions, people are going to visit the institutions of the world instead. We would do well to celebrate, better, our own history and our own beliefs and (though you can certainly disagree with AIG’s particular paradigm of natural history), that is what Answers in Genesis is doing here, and that is admirable and worthy of imitation.

We saw the man in the flesh, by the way (very far away, giving a talk in an auditorium near the Ark, here).

Children will remember how big it all was

Young children who don’t care to read the signs are going to come away with one major impression, and that is “whoa, Noah’s ark was really big”. And I think Ken Ham would be not entirely displeased with that reaction - that is one reason he built the thing. One room we visited was the room of “fairy tale arks”, depictions of the ark in children’s literature and the like. (Remember pictures can be clicked to make them bigger.)

Ken Ham included this room in part because he hates stuff like this. When you’re a kid you see these cutesy little arks that would fit two giraffes and a monkey, and what enters your brain (as you get older at least) is “this Biblical story is totally implausible”. And I am quite certain Ken Ham would say that if you start to doubt one story, you’ll start to doubt other stories. And so he goes and builds a gigantic ark to put into the brains of your children that what the Bible describes is a really enormous structure. Not a bad time, while I’m here, to include the door.

A Christian zoo

There was a zoo at the Ark Encounter that also has some implications for how we run the “Christian alternative” institutions. The (live animal) zoo, located just outside the ark, was probably the most-enjoyed part for the young kids with us. (Well… the boy probably most enjoyed the fossil find, which was part of the zoo.) And to an extent it was just a “normal” zoo. Here is the kangaroo walk.

But there were a couple things I noticed. One, a couple days before, we had actually visited the Cincinnati Zoo, and watched their bird show while we were there. And the bird show had this lame under-message throughout about the importance of recycling… and it did make me think that humans sort of need this moral, “why are we even in this business?” message for their institutions. Were it a Christian zoo, I thought, the primary message could be something like, “let us praise God for this awesome creation that he has made”. A secular institution in 2022-America cannot say this, and so it is left with the not-entirely-useless, but certainly inferior, message, “you should recycle”.

And so it was a nice coincidence, after having those thoughts, to actually visit what is probably one of the few Christian zoos in existence and find that “let us praise God for what he has done” was the primary message! For comparison, the sign listing the shows available at the Ark zoo.

Or, as another difference, I appreciated the desire to distinguish between what we might call “good environmentalism” as a charge to take care of God’s creation, and bad environmentalism that comes to worship the creature (or is broken in some other way). Click on the below to zoom in if you’d like.

There was actually a decently strong “care for creation” theme throughout the Ark Encounter that might surprise some, but it was subordinate to more fundamental beliefs, as it should be.

Also, unsurprisingly, you saw the AIG young earth creationism (YEC) paradigm in some of the signage and exhibits. For one, they had a couple zebroids, a half-horse or half-donkey, and half-zebra animal.

I didn’t actually see this said anywhere, but very likely they had these creatures as part of AIG’s paradigm that Noah brought a relatively small number of animals onto the ark, two of each “kind” (like the “horse kind”), and then all of our modern animals, in just a few thousand years… well, Ken Ham would shoot me if I say “evolved”, but they could have all developed from one pair of each “kind” that Noah would have brought onto the ark. Therefore, AIG would emphasize, our modern animals (in the same kind) are not as different from each other as you might think - see, a horse and a zebra can mate and produce offspring. Note for example in the photo below that the animal signs indicate the “kind”. (Again, click to make bigger if you’d like.)

This shall also be my excuse to post a photo of the camel rides. I don’t actually know what they told them on the ride but the kids came down talking about Moses, which has never happened at any other zoo, I can tell you that.

Artistic and historic license

Artistic and historic license was taken to create the exhibits inside the ark… and this much is acknowledged on one of the very first signs you see. You sort of have to, because the amount of information contained explicitly in a relatively short Bible story is not that much, and there was also a strong desire to provide “concrete” answers rather than filling the Ark with “well we don’t really know, but maybe…”. So, for example:

So that is a little diorama offering a picture of the evil world just before the Flood… and although Ken Ham himself would tell you this is speculative, you do see quite a bit of AIG’s paradigm in this picture. Most obviously, of course, you have humans and dinosaurs living together, the dinosaur here part of some sort of combat in an arena. But you also see Ham’s belief that the pre-Flood world may have been quite populous, and at a higher level of civilization/development than the historical consensus would believe for that time period. In fact I snapped a photo talking about what the population might have been.

I’ve heard Ham say before that he believes that the human genetic code has only degraded with time. So, in part because he had better genetics than you, and in part because he lived such a long life, Noah was probably a lot smarter than you are (and the same would go for the rest of the world around Noah). So the technological development may have been higher than is commonly believed, is the point. There were also “exhibits” inside the Ark talking about Noah’s metalworking and reading/writing skills. Here:

And here:

Let me give you one more “evil world pre-Flood” diorama because they are pretty neat looking.

An interesting interior

Let me just give you a medley of other interesting things I saw inside of the ark. Here is a shot of the interior for starters:

Another recurring theme was that the space inside the ark was very busy - lot of animals to take care of, after all. At left we see containers to store food or water for the animals. Overhead is imitation candles, the idea being this is one way the interior of the ark was illuminated. I had mentioned before that, if you know anything about AIG’s paradigm of biological history, it is probably that Noah brought along two of each “kind”, the kinds being the ancestors of the modern animals. So one dog kind developed over time into all the “dog” species we now have, for example:

Or… and the below is also a nice illustration of the fact that, even when a claim is speculative (and as I said, this is admitted up front), the final claim is still presented concretely. AIG’s best-guess, in their paradigm, is that Noah had to find room for 6,744 animals on the ark, and so that is what this sign says:

Therefore, one major feature of the interior of the ark was cages for each of the different animal kinds.

And then let me show you just these critters in particular. The “construction” of everything was high quality, you’re not going to ding AIG for that.

And, in addition to plenty of space for the food stored on the ark before the rain began, there was also room for food production that occurred on the ark. Some of it looks very normal:

Other proposals were less conventional, such as the idea that Noah’s family bred moths on the ark to keep many of the reptiles and amphibians fed and happy.

The humans inside the ark

And then… I mentioned that the young children with us probably enjoyed the outside zoo more than they enjoyed being inside the ark proper. But those things inside the ark that will probably be most memorable for them are not the endless containers to store animal food, but rather the (often animatronic) humans they saw. Early on you see Noah’s family praying. Later you see Noah retrieving a dove.

There was extra-Biblical material incorporated when explaining the humans as well. Who is that woman at his bottom left? I believe that is intended to be Noah’s wife, and she is named elsewhere in the exhibits as “Emzara” (in fact they even made that the name of the main restaurant at the Ark Encounter). That name is found nowhere in the Bible, but is taken (and admittedly so) from the Book of Jubilees (and the same name is used in The Genesis Apocryphon according to some internet searching). Is it possible tradition preserved her name and that name was accurately captured in those books? Of course it is possible, but we don’t know that for certain.

Similarly, Ham’s wife (that is, the wife of Noah’s son Ham) is identified as Kezia, and I’m not actually sure where they got that name, or if they just made it up.

And here they are in “pretty plush living quarters”, as my sister said:

And I will leave you here with one more animatronic Noah talking about life on the ark, the kids listened to him for quite a while actually:

A couple quick comments to end this post

And finally, just a couple other cute things about the ark encounter. One, at our first pass through, all the “smash a penny” machines were broken. I was amused by the sign.

And then, finally, the main restaurant was a big buffet, and even that was pretty neat inside. But there are two final comments worth making. One, the tables inside were clearly expecting large families, so they know their audience. And two, at least for 2022, kids under 10 are free to get in. Big families, seems to me, always get smashed with admission prices and then they get smashed again when they have to buy lunch and then they get smashed again if they peruse the gift shop. Christian institutions who make admission at least free for young children are doing a good thing, I think.

THE END

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