Jessa Duggar Wants To See The Dinosaurs And Unicorns At The Ark Encounter
Jessa Duggar is excited about the opening of the controversial Ark Encounter in Williamstown, Kentucky. The massive structure is supposed to be a life-sized replica of Noah’s ark as it is described in the Bible’s book of Genesis, and Jessa recently used her Instagram page to promote the tourist attraction. The Ark Encounter was built by a young Earth creationist organization called Answers in Genesis that doesn’t just aim to make money off of the ark; the group also hopes that the Biblical boat that doesn’t float will convince visitors that a Biblical flood really did wipe out all life that wasn’t on Noah’s vessel. Some creationists believe that this life included dinosaurs and unicorns, which can both be found in cages inside the Ark Encounter.
Last Saturday, Jessa Duggar informed her fans that the Ark Encounter would be opening this Thursday. However, she hasn’t revealed whether she and husband Ben Seewald have visited the attraction. As the Hollywood Gossip reports, some of Jessa’s Instagram followers don’t seem to be as excited about the Ark Encounter as she is, and her Instagram post about the giant wood structure is getting a lot of negative attention.
“Could have fed and made shelter for many starving children out there… but no lets build a ark,” one of Jessa’s followers wrote.
“While people are starving in the world, money is spent on this monstrosity. Only in America…sadly,” another commented.
Others pointed out that a massive amount of trees had to die during the making of the wooden structure, and the Ark Encounter doesn’t even prove that Noah’s ark could have been built during Biblical times; it was created with the use of modern machinery, not the types of simple tools that would have been available back then.
Some commenters were seemingly okay with the creation of the creationist attraction, but they weren’t fans of the cost of admission, something that shouldn’t be a problem for a well-off reality show star like Jessa Duggar. There were also a few complaints about the inclusion of dinosaurs among the animals that supposedly walked onto Noah’s ark two by two.
“It would cost my family $220 just to get in, that is absurd! Also, they are putting dinosaurs and other ‘prehistoric’ animals on the ark, claiming they went extinct not in the flood, but in the ‘ice age’ that followed. I will certainly not be visiting,” one skeptic wrote.
Noah’s ark attraction, complete with dinosaurs in cages, ready to open in Kentucky https://t.co/KhD1Tn3HT9 pic.twitter.com/mbuKcirHMv
— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) July 7, 2016
According to the Huffington Post, the Ark Encounter includes models of various dinosaurs because the man behind the tourist attraction, Answers in Genesis President Ken Ham, believes that the Earth is only 6,000 years old. He thinks that humans and dinosaurs coexisted alongside unicorns, which are also included among the Ark Encounter’s menagerie of creatures. However, a post on the Answers in Genesis website opines that it’s wrong to think of Biblical unicorns as looking like the mythical white horses with horns in the middles of their heads. Some creationists believe that the unicorn mentioned in the Bible was a real creature that either resembled an extinct giant rhinoceros called an elasmotherium or an extinct ox with two horns called an aurochs.
That giant Noah’s Ark in Kentucky features dinosaurs in cages https://t.co/qqzVW1Debu pic.twitter.com/TA6jMc9M2Q
— Huffington Post (@HuffingtonPost) July 7, 2016
If Jessa Duggar and Ben Seewald do visit the Ark Encounter, it wouldn’t be the first time that they’ve toured one of Ken Ham’s tourist attractions. In September 2014, they visited his Creation Museum near the future location of the Noah’s ark replica. As Us Weekly reports, Jessa Duggar shared an Instagram video taken during their date that showed Ben cracking a joke about being in Jurassic Park. He likely had dinosaurs on the brain because he’d recently seen a few dinosaur sculptures; as Buzzfeed reports, the Creation Museum features exhibits showing dinosaurs and humans living side-by-side.
After visiting the Creation Museum, Jessa Duggar decided to play paleontologist by attempting to argue that the existence of fossils is evidence that the Biblical flood actually happened.
“If there really was a worldwide flood (as the Bible speaks of), what would the evidence be? Billions of dead things buried in rock layers, laid down by water, all over the earth,” Jessa wrote. “And that’s exactly what we find. Billions of dead things buried in rock layers, laid down by water, all over the earth. An Evolutionist and a Creationist will look at the same thing, but come to different conclusions because of their different starting points.”
Because Jessa Duggar was such a big fan of the Creation Museum, don’t be surprised if she and Ben Seewald chaperone an Ark Encounter double date with Jinger Duggar and Jeremy Vuolo in a future Counting On episode.
[Image via TLC/YouTube]
