For family reasons, I spent Christmas this year in scenic Florence, Kentucky. Once the presents were opened and the piñatas destroyed, I snuck off to see the newish jaw-dropper from Ken Ham’s Answers In Genesis: The Ark Encounter.

It really was a remarkable sight—an enormous ark rising out of the Kentucky fields. For the next few days, I’ll be sharing my reflections about the trip.

Wowzers.

As SAGLRROILYBYGTH know, I’m no creationist, but I’m not interested in poking fun at the young-earthers. I don’t even want to get into a shouting match about why this kind of science doesn’t make sense to me. Rather, as I finish up my new book about American creationism, I wanted to use my visit to understand radical creationism better. And it worked, sorta. My trip has my head whirling with questions like the following:

• How does the Ark museum help explain why so many white evangelicals love Trump?
• If the idea of dinosaurs hanging around with people is so radically different from mainstream science, why does AIG harp on it so much?
• Why the fascination with poop?
• Do other museums these days put huge blown-up comic books on the walls?
• Who are the young-earth creationists competing with?
• Why are the AIG folks so obsessed with college?

Right off the bat, though, I can’t help but remark on the most obvious lesson I learned from my field trip: In many ways, the Ark Encounter is at least as much about making money as about saving souls. Like all museums everywhere, we had to overpay for parking—ten bucks in a mostly-empty lot. And like all museums everywhere, for some reason we could have coughed up fifty-one cents for a squashed-penny Ark Encounter memento.

Squeezing every penny out of visitors…