Ignorance may not be bliss but the country was probably better off not knowing that the congressman from Louisiana who is now Preacher Speaker of the House was the senior attorney for the Alliance Defending Freedom, a legal advocacy group working to erase the boundary between church and state. He represented Ken Ham, builder of the Noah’s Ark theme park. Ham thought the State of Kentucky should give him funds from its tourism-focused sales tax to realize his dream of building a Bible-based Noah’s Ark in Northern Kentucky and so he hired Johnson.
You can’t make this shit up. You can’t even come close. We now have a House Speaker who started out his legal career pushing creationism, when he wasn’t busy grifting off of the Biblical Noah’s relationship to Jesus Christ, and that was after Noah’s relatives built the pyramids. I think that would make Noah an Egyptian, but don’t ask me. My head is spinning like a top and might fall off any minute now and roll away.
folks, pic.twitter.com/lot2IyxV1Z
— hannah gais (@hannahgais) October 25, 2023
Of course, building a giant wooden ship big enough to carry dinosaurs isn’t cheap—the Ark Encounter park would eventually cost more than $100 million, according to Ham himself. So Ham went to the state of Kentucky for support, only to have the state’s subsidies withdrawn due to the blatantly religious nature of the project and Ham’s plan to require employees to sign pledges that they believed in the tenets of Young Earth Creationism.
Enter the new Speaker of the House, Johnson, who filed suit for Ham to get access to that money.
As Johnson himself wrote in an op-ed still available on Answers in Genesis, the “Ark Encounter” should have access to state sales tax revenue because it would be an economic boon to the region that was protected by the First Amendment. “Kentucky officials are smart to enthusiastically embrace the Ark Encounter,” Johnson wrote, “and the millions of tourists the park will welcome to the area from every viewpoint, race, color, religion and creed.”
Young Earth Creationism has been almost completely rejected by the scientific establishment, due to its reliance on faith, as opposed to scientific evidence. In one Gallup survey, as many as 98% of members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science believe that humans evolved over hundreds of thousands of years—a view that three-quarters of Americans share.
Answers in Genesis repeats the “98% figure” as proof of how rigged the scientific establishment is.
But to Johnson, the question of whether the state of Kentucky should financially incentivize creationism wasn’t just a religious or scientific issue, but one of free speech, concluding his op-ed by claiming “If the secularists were truly proponents of the First Amendment as they claim, they would want to welcome that civic discourse (and tremendous economic development), rather than stamp it out. When the Ark Project sails, everybody will benefit—even those who are stubbornly trying to sink it.”
And so Kentucky actually agreed to this. “To put it plainly, the new Speaker of the House ensured that Kentucky sales tax revenue would support a theme park that claimed Noah’s Ark saved the dinosaurs from a flood that happened on a planet that was 10,000 years old.”
That’s the bottom line, friends. And he did it in the name of free speech, which is the umbrella under which all manner of outrages are justified nowadays. And here are more glad tidings.
With his new position as Speaker of the House, Johnson won’t just have enormous political influence and sit second in line to the presidency. He will be giving a powerful public voice to Biblical literalism, a belief system often used to justify slavery, discrimination, homophobia, and spousal abuse. He appears to already be taking advantage of the speaker’s pulpit to evangelize, telling the House in his first remarks after winning his election “I believe that scripture and the Bible is very clear that God is the one that raised up each of you and God has allowed us to be brought here to this specific moment and time.”
We are in for one hell of a ride. If Johnson has his way, photographs of Xian families of yore, riding on the backs of dinosaurs, will be on the mantlepiece of every home anytime now. Maybe in time for Xmas. What’s that you say? Photography wasn’t invented until the 1800’s? Oh ye of little faith, Noah invented photography because he had so many dark rooms in the hull of the ark and he said, “shame to let all this space go to waste, plus I need a hobby, I’m going to be here 40 days and 40 nights” and so he invented the camera in his spare time, movies, too, because 40 nights can get boring if you’ve got nothing to watch.
You think I jest? I put nothing past this crop of grifters presently in government under the GOP banner. Jack nothing. This is the UFO and dinosaur crowd we’re talking about, headed up by the reality TV guy.
Sadly, you need a nation full of self entitled morons in order for him, Trump, and the rest of them to be in power in a nation that lies, and talks about freedom, democracy, and equal justice. He’s just another manifestation of cretins on parade.
Why not photography? After all, there was a popular TV show with people and dinosaurs. You know, The Flintstones! Johnson and idiots like them seem to believe that shit was for real!
Ok. I am a Jew and a Civil Engineer. I take issue with this putz giving any kind of credit for the pyramids to the Hebrews (my ancestors). Like it or not (and I don’t like it), they were enslaved by the Egyptians. They were taking orders from the Egyptians-not giving them. They were not designing pyramids, palaces, or anything else. They were being tethered to large pieces of stone and pulling them into place. Some might have been stone-cutters. That’s it. Period. I wish I could say “my ancient ancestors were the engineers/architects in ancient Egypt but they weren’t. And carpenters, 2000 years ago, were joiners of wood. They made furniture.
This ignorance is irritating and is getting quite old. GOTV people.
Actually the pyramids pre-date the Habiru in Egypt and the ‘Children of Israel’ were nowhere near Giza – they were making bricks up in the Nile Delta
Anyway – I think he should get the subsidy – as soon as he explains his source of ‘gopher wood’
Were Noah’s movies in B&W or color? Just asking for a dinosaur.
let’s stay on subject, and I have done exhaustive research. Noah’s Ark, two of all animals on Earth disembarked on what by most will agree was based on the Egyptian circular Nile trading ship
1) Did it rain for forty days, and forty nights
( I don’t know, but getting hit by lightning is a thing in Oklahoma so, hush my mouth
2) I’m going to skip alot of Noah after land by white doves were discovered, cause the repopulation of the Human Race, is troubling
3) all good we made it whew,
or did we?
Let him complete his interpretation of the Ark, as long as a plank is installed so M. J. can ‘walk the plank’ as he is hoisted, err torpedoed – on his own petard.
Let’s see…Sarah was childless til she was 90 years old. Abraham was 100. I work twice a week on a locked dementia unit with a 94 year old. There are many who are close to 90. Anyone who believes that people who can’t even recognize their family, stand up without help, feed themselves, or walk without assistance, is up for childbirth long after their ovaries are useless, and suddenly can be fertile, after that much time, and does what is biologically impossible, please forward all your money to me because I’m actually Jesus come back to earth, and I need cash. I’ll remember you on judgement day, if I don’t get dementia in the meantime. This asshat believes EVERY word in the Bible is literally true. Hell, even the books weren’t authored by who’s named in the title. Moses didn’t write the Torah. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John didn’t write their ascribed books. This man is a phucking religious zealot and a self entitled moron. Oh, and should Biden and Harris go down in a plane crash, he will be YOUR NEW PRESIDENT. You gay folks need to arm yourselves just in case. Think I’m kidding? If I had been in Germany when Hitler took power, I’d been stocking ammo and weapons and looking for fellow resistance fighters. Harsh? No. What’s harsh is we lost 400,000 boys to stop fascism, and the dumbasses in this country, after WATCHING TRUMP AND THE REPUBLICANS FOR FOUR YEARS, GAVE THE HOUSE TO THESE KILLERS! We’ve now come full circle.
In his introduction to Howl, a seminal work by the Beat poet Allen Ginsberg in 1956, William Carlos Williams wrote: Hold back the edges of your gowns, Ladies, we are going through hell. You betcha.
If you haven’t read it, then you know little about the cultural revolution of the 50s and 60s. Allen starts his personal journey by saying: I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness…
Welcome to America kids. Good phucking luck if you fail to vote democratic in every race that comes up. Or… just hold back the edges of your gowns.
Do they even allow the P and VP to travel in the same aircraft? I thought that was a no-no just because it makes such a tempting target. Well, that and the possibility of the opposite party holding the house majority. I mean, it’s probably the first one…
(sarcasm) You have to admit that the ark is a sight to see. (/sarcasm)
Don’t assume that:
1)/Johnson knows whay he is talking about when he quotes the Bible. Most rwnj Christians don’t. I doubt he understands the many different versions as the result of myriad translations, so.it becomes a game of telephone, too garbled to.bear any resemblance to what was originally taught. I.doubt he realizes they Gospels get all weren’t written down until.around 50-60 A.D. I suspect he doesn’t know some obviously incorrect bits like Jesus being born in winter (you don’t drag pregnant ewes onto the field in winter: Xmas was chosen to be the date because it coincided with many pagan wintet solstice festivities) in response to a census ordered by Augustus ( no evidence that such a census ever happened, and the Romans were pack rats with history,; they would have adored computers and cloud storage and would have had backups for their backups, not just a measly National.Archives) and Herod’s massacre of all males under 2 (no evidence of that either and the Jews tended to write down that sort of horror). I strongly doubt he understands the historical context in which Christian propaganda was written and that no one followed JC around taking g careful notes and the Gospels contradict themselves.
2) He understands the legal.decisions on separation of church and state.It goes back to at least 1879 and Reynolds v.U cited States. And he ignores the ban on religious tests in the constitution even before the Bill.of Rights.
3)He cares.