Ken Ham Responds to 'Anti-Creationist' Rachel Maddow 'Rant'
Creation Museum CEO and President Ken Ham responded to what he called an "anti-creationist rant" by MSNBC host Rachel Maddow, who criticized the $43 million in Kentucky tax incentives being given to his ministry's full-sized Noah's ark attraction.
"Rachel Maddow just went on a long anti-creationist rant on MSNBC (for anyone who still happens to watch low-rated MSNBC) as she commented on the Creation Museum's new Allosaurus fossil (she showed photos of our new exhibit)--then she mocked our Ark Encounter project--actually spent quite a lot of time mocking and scoffing, and totally misrepresented how the construction of the Ark is being funded," Ham wrote on his Facebook page on Tuesday.
Answers in Genesis, the ministry behind the ark attraction and which Ham heads, has clarified earlier that "no money is coming out of the state budget to build the Ark." "[L]et us say for the umpteenth time: no state monies will be used to construct the Ark," the group has stressed.
Get Our Latest News for FREE
Maddow criticized the Creation Museum and pointed out that the Kentucky state government has offered $43 million in tax incentives for the Ark Encounter project, which is currently being built. She was also critical of the museum's presentation that dinosaurs lived alongside people and were present on Noah's Ark at the time of the great flood as described in Genesis, arguing that fossil records prove otherwise.
"If you are a Creationist, if you believe that God created the world in six days, and that the Bible is a literal history, then fossils are an awkward thing for you," Maddow stated.
The host highlighted critical studies of the new Allosaurus fossil and the museum's claim that it is thousands, and not millions, of years old.
"... there will be dinosaurs on the new Noah's Ark that's being built in Kentucky, along with all the people and the animals as if they all lived at the same time," she said. "There will be dinosaurs on Noah's ark, just as soon as the creationists finish finding the dinosaurs in piles of leaves and plant debris, and putting them on the ark with little assist from state government – 43 million in tax incentives. Your tax dollars at work – amazing."
Ham has stated numerous times that he believes dinosaurs really were on Noah's ark.
"Evolution has used dinosaurs more than almost anything else to indoctrinate children into millions of years of evolutionary ideas. Evolution has claimed dinosaurs evolved over 200 million years ago. That no humans ever lived with them…that some mysterious event led to the extinction of dinosaurs," Ham, a Young Earth Creationist, said in a 2013 interview.
"But the Bible gives a different history. God tells us he created all land animals the same day He created man about 6,000 years ago and what's more there were even dinosaurs on Noah's ark because God told Noah to take pairs of every kind of land animal. You see, dinosaurs are no mystery at all if you accept the Bible's account of creation," noted Ham.
In his latest Facebook post, he thanked Maddow for "one of the longest pieces I've seen on secular TV on the Creation Museum--which means we are making an impact!"
Earlier in May, Ham also criticized CBN host Pat Robertson for calling Young Earth Creationists "deaf, dumb and blind" for their view that the Earth is only 6,000 years old.
"Pat Robertson illustrates one of the biggest problems we have today in the church-people like Robertson compromise the Word of God with the pagan ideas of fallible men!" Ham wrote in response to Robertson's statement that evidence such as oil samples show that the Earth is much older than Young Earth Creationists believe.
