Encounter with Ark Encounter
The sign says bees might sting, because we’re in a fallen world. But if they had stingers even before the fall, it kinda seems like maybe the creator knew which way things were going to go.
There are precise calculations. The calculations have citations, and some of them are even from sources outside the Bible. They’re showing their work. They’re not showing the children.
Insects and spiders probably weren’t on the Ark. This includes the ones with stingers, that the sign warned us about outside. It does not include the moths that were there to feed the reptiles and frogs, or the mealworms, if necessary. They don’t cite a source for the insects and spiders not being on the Ark. I guess that’s more of a gut feeling. Or they didn’t want to have their guests run screaming at the thought of spiders hiding in all the little dark corners.
Dinosaurs were definitely on the Ark. Once you accept that every kind of animal was on the Ark, because the Bible says so, and that must include dinosaurs, because their business plan says so, there’s no other conclusion that can be drawn. Noah had to painstakingly care and feed for all these dinosaurs on the Ark for a year, but they’re not here now, which makes you wonder what was the point of saving them. They don’t show what happened to all the dinosaurs. They don’t show the children.
We have to understand that God only wiped out all but eight human beings because the others deserved it. God is just, so they must have deserved it. They support this with paintings and dioramas that look like Robert E. Howard collaborated with Iron Maiden on a high school history project. There are dinosaurs. There is the implication that sex was being had. Strong implication. But all the illustrations of sinners are tastefully covered. They don’t show any naughty bits. They don’t show the children, either.
The refillable souvenir cups come with a “Flood of refills.” Which is, undeniably, a bargain.
There is a movie running on small TVs at the bow or the stern; it’s hard to tell from inside which is which. This movie won an award, we are told. In the movie, an obnoxious know-it-all coastal reporter from one of those very real and and very popular woke tabloids, which definitely exist, brattily interviews a patient and saintly man who, in the universe of the movie, runs the Ark Encounter. He is named Noah, inevitably. The reporter asks whether the whole thing is built with taxpayer money to make a profit. Noah simply does not answer this question, which itself is definitely an answer. To explain the true purpose of the exhibit, he takes her inside the Ark and into the movie version of the very theater we are watching this movie in, although in the universe of the movie, the theater is much larger and has an impressive, IMAX-like screen and can project a holographic image out onto a stage. The tiny TVs in the actual theater on the actual replica of the Ark do a pretty good job showing what their creators wish they were, which seems like a thankless task. They don’t show the children.
There are side by side images of geological formations eroded by water on Earth and on Mars. This is presented as proof that erosion on Earth happened rapidly after one cataclysmic flood rather than gradually over billions of years. The implication, I suppose, is that God also caused a flood on Mars at the same time as the flood on Earth, which seems like a waste of water, unless the Martians were sinners too. They don’t show the Martians. They don’t show the children, on either planet.
How was one man able to build a structure this size? Well, he worked on it from the time he was about 500 until he was about 600, so he really had time to get into a groove. Also, we are assured that ancient men were clever and capable, not grunting savages. We know this because how could grunting savages have built the Ark? It’s a watertight case. Also, a sign dismisses theories that aliens built all the ancient monuments; these theories are based on the fallacy that ancient humans could never have achieved such feats. I am uncomfortable to find myself agreeing with the sign. Alright, Ark Encounter, we may not agree on much, and we may not agree for the same reason, but on this one issue, same team.
There are dried chili peppers hanging from the ceiling of the elaborate recreation of a kitchen that Noah and his family must have used. The maps elsewhere explained in painstaking detail that the world Noah lived in before the flood was the megacontient Pangea and the continents sloshed into their current configuration during the single year they were underwater. They don’t show how all the chili peppers ended up in the Americas while all the people ended up in Asia. They don’t show the children.
There’s a display where they calculate the estimated human population of the Earth before the flood. Since it was no big deal to live for hundreds of years back then, the neighborhoods really filled up. The low estimate is a few billion; the high estimate is something like 150 billion. Which inevitably means some pretty high proportion of those billions were children at the time of the flood. They were just playing with their pet dinosaurs, or refusing to eat their vegetables, or asking for one more song before bedtime. Maybe they were watching their parents have orgies and commit human sacrifice, but they weren’t exactly in a position to stop it or even understand it. And they died, all those billions of children, shrieking and terrified as a wall of water swept them away for no reason they ever had a chance to understand.
They don’t show the children.