Thoughts from My Visit to AiG’s Ark Encounter & Creation Museum
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Those who have visited Answers in Genesis’ Ark Encounter or Creation Museum will have their own perspective on the experience and its value. I’ve just returned from my own first-time visit to both and have some observations and thoughts for those who haven’t yet made the pilgrimage.
Is it just a big entertainment business making a few people rich?
Revenue is an inherently tempting thing. Just getting a paycheck every couple of weeks brings hazards as well as blessings. One of the hazards is that as revenue increases, my life and work might become increasingly about revenue.
We’d be fools to think that Ken Ham and Answers in Genesis are invulnerable to that temptation. There are also signs that could be viewed as evidence that AiG is on that road.
- It’s Number 1: The Ark Encounter and Creation Museum have made Northern Kentucky the biggest faith-based tourist destination in America.
- Answers In Genesis to Launch Answers.tv Streaming Platform
- The Latest Biblical Attraction: The Tower of Babel: Answers in Genesis plans a three-year expansion at its Ark Encounter site in Kentucky.
The growth above is in addition to AiG’s already-expansive ventures into Sunday School, VBS, and homeschool curriculum.
Because of how evangelical ministry tends to drift, I had concerns about this before I went to Ark Encounter (Ark) and the Creation Museum (CM). Being there didn’t erase those concerns. I hope and pray that AiG won’t be sucked into the “more and more, and bigger and bigger, is better” trap that afflicts so many megachurches and other large ministries.
That said, I don’t believe that right now, AiG is just an evangelical entertainment biz, pandering to the lowest common denominator of evangelical thrill seekers and belief-validation seekers.
Some reasons why:
- If you’re going to do infotainment at all, you should do it right.
- Doing it right is expensive.
- AiG is shooting for top notch quality, and usually achieving it.
Pretty much everything at Ark is top-notch and nearly everything at CM is also (Exception: The planetarium show on aliens is much in need of an update. The show on the scale of the universe more than makes up for it, though!).
Both sites—which are a good 40 minutes apart by freeway—are kept in excellent condition and surrounded by extremely beautiful gardens. Both are full of exhibits that are as good as any I’ve seen anywhere. I’m not a museum buff, but Ark & CM rival the best museums I’ve toured in visual appeal, clarity, variety and thoughtfulness of the exhibits.
I imagine it would be hard for passionate non-believers to get past that and appreciate the quality of the exhibits, but it’s probably not hard for Christians with different views on the events of Genesis to appreciate.
Are these sites effective apologetics or just preaching to the choir?
Multiple aspects of both Ark and CM surprised me—a few examples:
- Though it has “theme park” like stuff on site (zip line, camel rides for kids, a VR show of some sort, etc.), the Ark itself is pretty much a museum housed inside an exhibit … a cool idea by any standard.
- The love of Christ and the gospel pops up all over in all sorts of ways, both subtle and intentionally non-subtle. In places, the gospel is portrayed with extraordinary beauty and grace. I teared up a bit more than once.
- The level of detail! Multiple times during our day there, my critical thinking circuits would go, “Hmmm, but what about this…?” only to later find that very question directly addressed. The evidence and reasoning in the answers is selective—it has to be—but AiG seems to have thought of all the questions.
- With a few givens in place (e.g., “kinds,” no hibernation, cubit size), I found the project persuasive as a demonstration of one way Noah’s ark could have done the job literally as described in Genesis.
- Tone: The tone is mostly educational, not polemical. I also saw less inappropriate dogmatism than I expected.
But are these sites effective apologetics? Several points on that.
- Ark is definitely more infotainment-oriented than CM.
- Both are clearly aimed at general audiences, not intellectual elites, though CM is a bit more toward that end of the scale.
- Both are clearly aimed at declaring the whole gospel story and educating Christians about Genesis—not mainly equipping believers for debates with skeptics or winning over critics on intellectual grounds.
- Ark is not presented as a “you can believe Genesis now that you’ve seen it” thing. It’s more of a “you can understand Genesis better now that you’ve seen it” thing.
If you go to learn, you won’t be disappointed. If you go hoping to use something there to win your agnostic or atheist friend to Christ—there’s good stuff for that also, but probably not in the “conversion by winning the debate” vein.
Could it be better in some ways?
You can always find ways to make something better.
Infotainment. The blending of “theme-parkiness” with “museuminess” involves some trade-offs. If you dial down the entertainment aspect, you reach fewer people, including some who would be drawn into more thoughtful engagement with the ideas. But the entertainment aspect feeds the skepticism of those who are approaching the big questions more intellectually and suspect the projects are just fun and games and money. I’d like to see CM become even less theme-parky, though it’s already noticeably less so than Ark.
Counterarguments. At multiple points in both Ark and CM, but especially CM, I was aware that there are alternate views and counterarguments against what AiG was presenting. I couldn’t recall what they were and thought the exhibits might be enhanced by acknowledging these more and maybe pointing inquirers to where they can dig deeper into those debates. For example, CM is emphatic that earth must be 6,000 years old because the genealogy in Genesis notes the ages of individuals when they died—so there can’t be gaps. The exhibit leaves it at that.
You can only say so much in exhibit format—and many of CM’s exhibits are already a lot of reading. So I sympathize. Still, maybe there’s a way to use tech to allow guests to tap a Dig Deeper icon and find out why, for example, some still see maybe tens of thousands of years in Genesis but still consider themselves young earth creationists.
Assumptions. Ark is extremely well imagined, and I use “imagined” intentionally. It’s full of detailed explanations of how waste disposal, food distribution, ventilation, water, and more may have been engineered to allow eight people to care for around 800 animals each. Some brilliant engineers had to work through all of that—which means Noah, his family, and whatever other resources he could access, would also have to have done a lot of brilliant engineering.
I don’t find that difficult to believe. There was plenty of time to design and test systems, find failure points, and design new ones, etc. Also, though “Noah built the ark,” we don’t have to believe he never hired anybody for design, materials, and labor.
But a huge portion of the project is built on the assumption that God didn’t simply put all the animals into hibernation. I’m aware of the counterargument that Genesis doesn’t mention hibernation, so we’re filling in gaps from our own thinking on that. But if you visit the Ark you can hardly help but realize Genesis also doesn’t mention intricate waste disposal, food distribution and water management systems! Any view that takes the flood and ark account as historical/factual has two choices:
- Leave the details to God: “It’s not important to me how God made it all work.”
- Imagine a great deal to theorize how it all could have been done.
A portion of a small animals exhibit from Ark…
A portion of a large animals exhibit at Ark …
Is it less biblical and theologically sound, or more presumptuous, to imagine hibernating animals, a smaller cubit, and a smaller ark that isn’t so thoroughly engineered? (AiG’s attitude is that maybe hibernation happened but it wasn’t necessary.)
One other fact that hit me during these visits is that the AiG concept of “kinds” (Gen. 6:20, 7:14) means they do believe in the evolution of species. They would strongly prefer not to say it that way, because they define “evolution” as the complete naturalistic, molecules-to-man package. But in AiG’s view, a “kind” is a broader category than a species, and we have far more species today than Noah had “kinds” in his day. That would mean that after the flood, specimens of each kind evolved into the many species we have today—by natural selection (see photo of CM exhibit).
Given the relationship of kinds to species and the role of natural selection, maybe we need to stop being so broadly negative about “biological evolution,” and learn more nuanced ways of communicating the differences and similarities between creationist and naturalist views of life on earth.
Should you go?
You don’t have to be convinced that AiG has all the details right to benefit from the Ark Encounter and the Creation Museum. At the very least, these projects are thought-provoking, interesting, and well integrated with the theology of God’s grand plan of creation, fall, redemption, and restoration (CM uses the “Seven C’s” of Creation, Corruption, Catastrophe, Confusion, Christ, Cross, Consummation).
Believers don’t need to see a full scale ark model to be firm in their faith in God and His Word. Ark and CM are not about that. They’re about learning and deepening understanding as well as viewing the world in a more God- and gospel-centered way.
I think you should go. Should you bring your agnostic or atheist friend? That depends on a lot of factors, but it could certainly be a route to some thoughtful conversations about the big questions of what life is, why we’re here, what’s gone wrong, and what it all means.
A small animal storage area from Ark …
The graphic novel style gospel exhibit at Ark …
(Photo credits: Me and my Pixel 5.)
Aaron Blumer 2016 Bio
Aaron Blumer is a Michigan native and graduate of Bob Jones University and Central Baptist Theological Seminary (Plymouth, MN). He and his family live in small-town western Wisconsin, not far from where he pastored Grace Baptist Church for thirteen years. In his full time job, he is content manager for a law-enforcement digital library service.
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One question that I didn’t catch the answer to at CM (and haven’t yet searched AiG for) is the curious fact that in Genesis 1 we have “evening[s] ” and “morning[s] ” and “day[s] ” before there is a sun or a moon or, as far as we can tell, anything at all but the contents of earth and its atmosphere and “light” from an unknown source. The sun moon and stars arrive on day four (Gen 1:14-19).
So… I find it difficult to get very dogmatic about “24 hour days” when there isn’t even rotation or orbit around anything yet. I’ve heard some kind of answer to this in the past, but I’ve forgotten it… and have not forgotten the question! I suspect I didn’t find the answer satisfying.
As for Mark’s objection about “things appearing to have happened that can’t possibly have happened,” I don’t see how the sped up time idea fails to solve that problem.
On uniformity of phenomena/natural laws, etc., CM and AiG in general emphasize a distinction between the “observational” and the “historical.” I think it’s fair to say that they don’t think it’s valid to project present processes into the distant past. I wonder what they’d say though to this question: Why is distant past different from, say, yesterday or last year? How far back must one go before we should set aside the assumption of uniformity? I don’t want to slip into a fallacy on this point: the fallacy that if you can’t define the boundary between A and B precisely, there is no such thing as B (“fallacy of the beard”). It’s just a question I’m interested in.
On Greg’s point that appearance of age seems unavoidable. We know from Einstein that the rate at which time passes is relative. If you’re moving away from point A fast enough, time at point A passes much faster relative to you than it does for you (time dilation). Extreme gravity can have some odd effects on time as well.
So, how many hours passed on earth kind of depends on your point of view… or “inertial frame of reference” I guess. At the moment, I lean toward the idea that everything that appears to have happened, happened, and from a point of view, took as long as it appears to have taken. From another point view, it took an instant. Prior to Day 4, is there even a “universe” as we know it? Beyond the immediate area of the earth, what could an hour or a day possibly mean?
These things seem beyond my pay grade. :-D
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
I find Aaron’s recent comments interesting. He’s doing some serious thinking, and I’m benefiting from what he said. However, when it comes to apparent age, I’m not sure how his insights make a practical difference. (Probably because I don’t understand the issues sufficiently.) In my simplistic way of thinking, apparent age refers to the way things appear to us on earth. A tree, one day after it was created, would appear to us to be many years old because the only experience we have with trees mandates that it takes many years for a seed to mature into a full grown tree. It appears old because our experiences with trees informs us that trees that look like this are several years old. Unless informed by the Creator that He made fully formed trees instantly, we could only assume a several years process but we would be wrong. Creation is unique. It happened once and has not been repeated, nor can we replicate it today. Our assumptions of uniformity lead us astray regarding the origin as well as the date of origination.
The question of how far back we cross the line between uniformity and non-uniformity doesn’t seem difficult to me. Immediately after creation, uniformity “kicked in.” At the time of creation, uniformity did not apply. The assumption that applying principles of uniformity can inform us regarding origins or elapsed time is skewed because everything was created originally mature and fully functioning. It had manifestations of significant periods of elapsed time, but only because of our assumption of uniformity. Acknowledging the impossibility of accurately measuring elapsed time given the divinely revealed fact of God’s creative act is necessary to protect science from conclusions that are wrong because they are based upon a faulty assumption. Science can study what is present. It cannot tell us how the object of scientific examination originated or how long it took to arrive at its present state. Obviously, plants and animals that can be presently observed from infancy to maturity can be accurately studied. But no one can tell where the first plant or animal came from because no one was present to observe it when it first appeared. The only one present at that time is also the One who created it. What we know about origins must be received by faith in the revelation of the One who knows. All efforts to understand origins apart from the Creator’s revelation are impossible.
G. N. Barkman
“As for Mark’s objection about “things appearing to have happened that can’t possibly have happened,” I don’t see how the sped up time idea fails to solve that problem.”
The problem is one of science. “Sped up time” is NOT a scientific answer. There is no measurement whatsoever anywhere that time flows at different rates in the past, relativity aside, which is not what “sped up time” is. So, saying “time sped up” answers the objection, but there is not one shred of evidence for it. There is not one known way it could happen OTHER THAN A MIRACLE. Hence it is not a scientific answer. And that leads to my claim that a young universe, if real, means science cannot be done astronomically.
Also, my comments were about “Appearance of Age” rather than “Sped Up Time.” Appearance of age is a real clunker, but I do not think claiming time flowed really fast for a few days helps at all either because there is no reason to accept other than trying to fit a particular biblical interpretation. So you can claim it all day long but until you find a physical reason for it you are not doing science…
[Kevin Miller]Using this logic, wouldn’t most miracles be inherently deceptive? When Jesus turned water into wine, and it seemed to the drinkers just like wine made with natural processes, was Jesus being deceptive?
You are not understanding my point. IF MIRACLES CAUSED the universe to be 6000 years old, but appear 13.6 billion years old, I am fine with that. BUT…. you cannot then claim to use science observed here on Earth to in any way understand out there… so you cannot measure distances for example beyond what geometry allows (about a few hundred light years) because everything else relies upon scientific processes which did not apply due to the miracle.
So if miracles caused a young universe, it costs something. That something is scientific knowledge.
If God heals a person, that is a miracle. If God cause the Red Sea to part, that is a miracle, etc. But those are individual and unique cases that do not represent the whole. No one else has ever walked on water than Peter and Jesus.
Stars and the universe are different. If the universe is young, EVERY STAR is the direct product of a miracle. There were no regular births! Every photon from galaxy M81 is a direct result of a miracle. None of it was from a natural process. As a result you cannot “do science” on miracles by definition. It is utter nonsense to talk about HR Diagrams, T Tauri stars, Cepheid Variables, protostars, accretion disks forming to form solar systems, nuclear fusion, etc. if there is not time for physical processes to form stars and planets and galaxies.
See the difference?
[Mark_Smith]Stars and the universe are different. If the universe is young, EVERY STAR is the direct product of a miracle. There were no regular births! Every photon from galaxy M81 is a direct result of a miracle. None of it was from a natural process. As a result you cannot “do science” on miracles by definition. It is utter nonsense to talk about HR Diagrams, T Tauri stars, Cepheid Variables, protostars, accretion disks forming to form solar systems, nuclear fusion, etc. if there is not time for physical processes to form stars and planets and galaxies.
See the difference?
Are theories about how stars are formed “science”? Or are they theories attempting to explain the data of one star compared to another star? Is it possible to explain the data in a different way? Yes.
How do you “do science”? You observe the natural phenomena, you record data about that phenomena, and you attempt to make conclusions based on the phenomena. Once you get into making conclusions, assuming your observation and data recording are accurate, you can go way off reality if your presuppositions are wrong.
The question is, are the biblical presuppositions the right ones or the evolutionary cosmologists?
Maranatha!
Don Johnson
Jer 33.3
[Don Johnson]Are theories about how stars are formed “science”? Or are they theories attempting to explain the data of one star compared to another star? Is it possible to explain the data in a different way? Yes.
How do you “do science”? You observe the natural phenomena, you record data about that phenomena, and you attempt to make conclusions based on the phenomena. Once you get into making conclusions, assuming your observation and data recording are accurate, you can go way off reality if your presuppositions are wrong.
The question is, are the biblical presuppositions the right ones or the evolutionary cosmologists?
So you agree with me… if YEC is correct there is no science of astronomy.
[G. N. Barkman]All efforts to understand origins apart from the Creator’s revelation are impossible.
So that’s another one agreeing with me. If YEC is correct, there is no such thing as the science of astronomy.
[Mark_Smith]So you agree with me… if YEC is correct there is no science of astronomy.
Not at all. I disagree with your definition of science.
Maranatha!
Don Johnson
Jer 33.3
[Don Johnson]Not at all. I disagree with your definition of science.
Then by all means, define science. Here’s mine that I use to teach in classes as a scientist by the way with a PhD in physics:
“Science is a human endeavor that seeks to explain natural phenomena with natural explanations.”
And, if you would, explain how you can measure the distance to something using light if the light did not actually travel from there to here using natural processes. If you disagree, show me the experiment that shows miracle produced light acts like regular light.
I’m no scientist, but what Mark says makes perfect sense to me. Miracles are miracles precisely because they don’t follow scientific rules. So if the current observations in astronomy are part of the miracle of creation rather than processes that actually happened, then how do we do astronomy scientifically? It’s not that we can’t believe in YEC, but we should at least know exactly what we are giving up when we claim YEC.
It’s one thing for Adam to be created as a thirty year old man for instance, but it’s quite another for him to be created as a thirty year old man with cavities, scars, healed broken bones, and a life’s backstory. Yet that’s analogous to what we see when we observe astronomy, and it does seem inherently deceptive to me (although I also undertand that God has the right to do as he wishes). I’ve spent much of my life believing YEC, but am not as sure over the last few years. I don’t spend much time thinking about it anymore because I don’t think it’s very important for my personally. I think it’s more important for me to understand God as Creator when looking at Gen 1,2.
[Mark_Smith]Then by all means, define science. Here’s mine that I use to teach in classes as a scientist by the way with a PhD in physics:
“Science is a human endeavor that seeks to explain natural phenomena with natural explanations.”
And, if you would, explain how you can measure the distance to something using light if the light did not actually travel from there to here using natural processes. If you disagree, show me the experiment that shows miracle produced light acts like regular light.
Interestingly, the Merriam-Webster gives a different definition altogether, basically meaning the summation of knowledge in a particular field, for example, def. 3:
3 a: knowledge or a system of knowledge covering general truths or the operation of general laws especially as obtained and tested through scientific method
b: such knowledge or such a system of knowledge concerned with the physical world and its phenomena
That’s closer to what you mean, but not exactly. Here is the definition they give for “scientific method”
circa 1810: principles and procedures for the systematic pursuit of knowledge involving the recognition and formulation of a problem, the collection of data through observation and experiment, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses
That would be more or less what I mean by science.
Astronomy certainly exists because we can collect data about light sources in the sky (we call them stars, etc) and then formulate hypotheses about that data. The question is whether the current hypotheses are correct. I suspect not.
BTW, spare me the “I’m a physicist” appeal to expertise. You feel free to comment on many areas where you have no expertise, so don’t use it as an argument when people comment in an area where you have some further training than others.
As Christians, we have to start with worldview and authority. Wil we accept the biblical worldview or not? Your appeal to billions of years suggests not.
Maranatha!
Don Johnson
Jer 33.3
Mark, if God accomplished creation in a way that precisely reflects apparent age, then there’s no reason science can’t be done on it.
It is just a vastly more complicated version of, “Did Adam have a belly button?” I assume he did.
The Genesis description of Adam’s actions says he could see. So I also assume his brain was fully developed such that he could see, even though the occipital and parietal lobes of the brain only work in adulthood because they developed in response to visual stimulation in early childhood.
Mark: If the universe is young, EVERY STAR is the direct product of a miracle. There were no regular births! Every photon from galaxy M81 is a direct result of a miracle. None of it was from a natural process.
But if, as is certainly the case if the universe is young, God’s choice was to make EVERYTHING with apparent age, then everything is exactly as though it was old. And thus everything is measurable just as though it is old.
[Dan Miller]Mark, if God accomplished creation in a way that precisely reflects apparent age, then there’s no reason science can’t be done on it.
[…]
But if, as is certainly the case if the universe is young, God’s choice was to make EVERYTHING with apparent age, then everything is exactly as though it was old. And thus everything is measurable just as though it is old.
I agree with you, but I think the reason he says that “science” can’t be done on a young universe is because when the measurements seem to be accurate, and some theories are borne out by the results, the answer is “phony.” I.e., if we discover dead stars or a supernova that by its distance must have happened > 2 million years ago, it’s “deception” if they have only been in existence a few thousand years. I don’t really agree with where that argument leads, but I can sort of understand it. However, I don’t know why it’s more disturbing than the fact that science can’t explain Adam being created as a mature human. If his body shows signs of having grown to maturity, but he didn’t actually grow, isn’t that “deception” as well? Is it impossible for us to understand biology now, if we don’t understand what happened to Adam?
I think it’s obvious that science can only tell us about processes that are functioning now, and it can’t tell us what happened at the time of creation. That means science is limited in its ability to describe time, which, as we know, God can change at will. So what? Our scientific understanding of time and relativity have been changed many times by new discoveries. Even if science can’t tell us how the universe came to be, or how old it is, using current processes can still give us accurate measurements of distance if God put everything in place with real distance, even if it was compressed time. In other words science works just fine within the bounds of God’s creation and the laws that make it function. The fact that accurate time measurements far into the past might be outside this is hardly disturbing if we accept the creation account as given in Genesis.
Dave Barnhart
[Don Johnson]As Christians, we have to start with worldview and authority. Wil we accept the biblical worldview or not? Your appeal to billions of years suggests not.
Don, are you saying that a biblical worldview requires one to believe in YEC? That if a person believes that Gen 1,2 is not necessarily teaching a literal six day creation then they do not have a biblical worldview?
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