Noah

[R13]

Hit the button making the title, supposed to be Noah's Ark Theme Park, tax payer funded? Doesn't sound too legit funding a fictional religious story theme park.



LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WHAS11) – Construction has yet to begin on the northern Kentucky faith-based amusement park and already the initiative has thrust Kentucky into the national spotlight. The project is called “Ark Encounter” and the governor's decision to give the group developing the park millions of dollars in tax breaks is taking a lot of criticism; specifically whether Governor Steve Beshear can legally offer tax incentives to the faith-based park. I caught up with Governor Beshear Tuesday and he says the decision is legally sound.
"We did a thorough analysis of the law, obviously, before we encouraged the application to be put in, and there's nothing remotely unconstitutional about this because these kinds of incentives are open to any type of theme park that wants to come and apply, " says Governor Steve Beshear.
The incentives would essentially be a refund of sales taxes collected on the tickets to the park and other items sold there. The Beshear adminstration and the group developing the park says it legally qualifies under the Kentucky Tourism Develoment Act.
"There's nothing that should discriminate against us, so it is a profit venture with a nonprofit component involving our ministry here that will be designing and operating the park when it opens," says Mark Looy with the Creation Museum.
The Ark Encounter development is a for-profit project, which qualifies for the tax incentives. The full scale Noah's Ark itself will be built at a cost of $24.5 million by the nonprofit 'Answers for Genesis' which operates the Creation Museum. In all, the construction project will employ 900 people and is expected to attract 1.6 million visitors in its first year.
"Here we are on private property, privately funded. You would think in America you would be able to build something without opposition. We thought this opposition would rear its head with the Ark Encounter because it does deal with a theme from the Bible's Old Testament," says Looy.
Governor Steve Beshear says despite the criticism and controversey, his decision comes down to jobs. "I'm not arguing with them over religion or religion issues. My whole point here is that people in this state didn't elect me to argue issues about religion. They elected me to create jobs for our people and that's what we are doing," says Gov Beshear.
The groundbreaking on the new amusement park will begin next year and be completed in 2014.


Noah's Ark amusement park sparks controversy for Kentucky | WHAS11.com | Louisville news, Kentucky news & breaking news | WHAS11.com | News for Louisville, Kentucky

[centennialdawg]

The tale of Noah and the Ark are only fictional if you don't believe.

[R13]

Actually just in reality, there's absolutely no proof whatsoever that ever happened. There's somethings you can say that with, no matter how far fetched, but a world flood thousands of years ago or really ever, never happened.

[1inStripes]

As part of my Western Traditions class there was a scientific study that was about a geneology of the Earth's crust that showed where at one point the Earth was covered in water completely. Thats been 10 years ago, and I cannot remember the theory name at this time. If I can find it later I will try to post it.

[R13]

Maybe, one time, millions of years ago, earth was forming etc. etc. kind of possible theory - which I've never really heard of anything besides creationists claiming this and that - is different from absolutely no geographical evidence or blank period in a civilization that would ever back that up, not even in the area he supposedly lived and definitely nothing in the time frame it claims - ever . Water would have to be tens of thousands of feet high to do that, no evidence of that at all, it's physically impossible anyway because there's just not enough water on earth to do this. The Bible has some historical relevance of some things, not aware of any of stories in there like that ever being proven true or close to it. Noah's is a cute story to tell kids, but never ever happened and on no planet is possible.

Just not one of those faith things, it just didn't happen. No evidence of the land having suffered from it, none from the animal/plant species and none from civilization records. That flood story had been passed around long before the Bible of Christianity, like a lot of the stories, it was just passed on with it.

[1inStripes]

Of course its been around since before the Bible. The time of Noah was before the Bible.

[R13]

I'm talking about before Noah, before the religion, a great flood story has been passed around for a long, long time.

[Monkeyhead]

Egyptians also refered to it in some of their heiroglyphics

[Biggin]

the Epic of Gilgamesh?