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Last week on our way home, we met our son, daughter-in-law and four grandchildren in Williamstown, Kentucky for a visit to the Ark Encounter, and I have a few thoughts to share with you about our experience…
If you aren’t familiar with it, the Ark Encounter is a life-sized recreation of Noah’s ark that was put together several years ago by Ken Ham and his team to teach about Creation and the great flood found in Genesis and is in the same park as Mr. Ham’s Creation Museum.
Within the ark, along with background music and air conditioning, you will find a number of exhibits showing what life might have been like during the flood, along with exhibits showing how the animals might have been kept, cared for and fed throughout this period. There are also exhibits about the pre-flood world, how the ark might have been built and the post-flood world. Notice that I have said “might have been” a couple of times− obviously nobody really knows these things for certain, and that also applies to the exterior appearance of the ark itself. Since there is no way for anyone in the 2st century to know these things for sure, the developers had to make their best educated guesses for these things: That is reasonable and understood.
There are a few dinosaurs on the ark, along with other creatures that are more familiar, something that struck me as odd, and animal species are split into “kinds”. For example, there were a pair of the “deer kind” which after the flood developed into all of the species of deer that we know today through some sort of process that I’m not quite clear about.
OK, maybe I’m nit-picking.
I guess what I’m really getting to is that there is some interesting theology going on in the ark.
Were the people in Noah’s time really vastly advanced technologically and that technology was lost in the flood so that Mankind kind of had to start all over again? I must admit that is an intriguing theory, but I’m not sure we have any Scriptural guidance on it. Did the Roman gladiators fight dinosaurs in the arena? Hmmm…
There are a lot of little things like that which, frankly, left me a bit queasy after a while… but that’s just me being a victim of my training, I suppose.
For me, the best part was the movie explaining how they made the ark; that was quite a job, and the woodworking inside by Amish craftsmen is truly something to see.
Would I recommend a visit?
The people working there were amazing; polite, helpful and friendly; that’s big plus. If you want to try and visualize what the ark might have been like, and just the sheer scale of the thing: Yes. If you are looking for sound theology: Not so much.
Here I am with my pal Babe Ruth. I’m the one dressed like a bank robber
The next day, all of us went to the Louisville Slugger Museum and Factory in nearby Louisville− you know, where they make baseball bats. I give that one 5 stars… go, take the family to see that, the kids will love it- you can actually swing Babe Ruth’s bat, or Willie Mays’ bat…
Yep, that’s the place for you!
Life Project Blog 
We are hoping to visit the Ark later this summer as a family. My wife and one son saw it and Babe Ruth Museum a few years ago.
You’ll have a great time, I’m sure.
I used to be a a strong young earth, but while studying to defend it better, I realized I had been wrong. The Ark, as promoted by Ken Ham and others called Young Earth Creationists, is not only unlikely literal, it is impossible. Check out the relative calm and good video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fg2LGUSXFxk&t=128s.
People don’t know or ignore what the proposed literal flood was like. YEC “scientists” talk about it, then ignore it as they try to explain it.
What was the flood really like? (summary)
Critical to understanding the Flood and evidences pertaining to it is grasping a clearer idea of what the flood might have been like. .
1 – Baumgardner in his 2018 paper proposes tsunamis that were, in the open ocean, over a mile tall. (https://digitalcommons.cedarville.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1020&context=icc_proceedings)
The worldwide ocean of the Flood was swept by wind storms that would make modern tornadoes seem like a zephyr. (Schmich, p. 121) The shock waves from present-day submarine earthquakes have been known to damage or destroy vessels far from land. The amount of energy released by Baumgardner’s model would completely boil off the Earth’s oceans.
2 – Dr. Snelling says that 71 huge meteors stuck the earth during the single year of the flood, hard enough to leave crater evidences. (https://answersingenesis.org/the-flood/did-meteors-trigger-noahs-flood/)
3 – Ken Ham asserts that the evidence about volcanoes causing mass extinctions we find means that there was stupendous volcanism all during the one year of the Flood. (https://answersingenesis.org/apologetics/did-volcanoes-cause-the-biggest-mass-extinction-ever/)
4 – Catastrophic plate tectonics was running rampant, further sloshing the oceans. The continents were separated and formed after the flood from a single continent (Pangea) at an incredible rate (.5 to 1 mile per year, not the long, slow movement of the 1 cm a year proposed by geologists). That is over 80,000 times faster. Imagine the horrendous chaos.
Assuming that all of the initial separating and colliding and driving up of mountains occurred in the first half of the year, North America would have had about six months, or 180 days, to move 3,700 miles away from Europe. That is a pace of about twenty miles a day —about the pace of a meandering walk.
5 – Radioactive decay rates were boosted hundreds of millions — or even billions of times — (to make the radiometric evidences we find fit into 6,000 years), creating, according to Baumgardner 13 TIMES enough heat to melt granite. So, at best, the oceans were boiling; at worst they were vaporized and the Ark was sitting on boiling/vaporizing rock. (https://answersingenesis.org/geology/geologic-time-scale/heat-problems-associated-with-genesis-flood-models-part-1/)
6 – The Flood was accompanied by violent movements of the earth’s crust and by volcanic activity of momentous proportions. Tremendous tidal waves and rushing currents scoured and deeply eroded the continental surface. Entire forests were ripped up and transported large distances to be dumped where the currents slowed. (Kofahl and Segraves, p. 226)
And in this “washing machine” all the fossils and geological layers were neatly and finely separated. Hmm
Thid id great information and we appreciate that you shared it here.
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On a lighter note – I am glad you identified yourself in the photo with Babe Ruth – I may not have recognised you otherwise! God bless you and your family, Don. Glad you could spend time together.
🙂