Retraction Coming from the HuffPost? Doubt it

I am wondering if the anti-Christian website the Huffington Post will be commenting and complaining about a bar and brewery (with restaurant) that wants to open in our Cincinnati area—which was once a church—that is being partially funded by tax dollars. Money is coming from the state of Ohio and Cincinnati to help out this pub. Now, the HuffPost site claimed this past week that our Ark Encounter in northern Kentucky (south of Cincinnati) is receiving tax money for its construction. But it’s not. Not at all! On the contrary, the Ark Encounter will add revenue to the treasury of Kentucky through sales tax collected from the millions of future visitors and also through state income tax generated from new workers who will be hired at the Ark and in the area. So no money will come out of the state budget to build the Ark. Period. How many times must we say that on this website, in our frequent dealings with the media, and even in our live online press conference earlier this month about the Ark?

A TV station in our Cincinnati and northern Kentucky area has reported about the proposed bar: “The new brewpub is being funded in part by the city, the Cincinnati Equity Fund, and historic tax credits from the state.”  Now, shouldn’t the HuffPost be complaining bitterly about this tax-supported bar? And at the same time, shouldn’t it print a retraction of its false Ark-funding comment? Don’t hold your breath.

In fact, we have had to contact the New York Times on a couple of occasions to correct its bad reporting on the Ark Encounter project. A Times’ columnist falsely stated that that the Ark will be built “with $43 million in state tax incentives.”* But no state monies will be used to construct the Ark. A previous editorial against the Ark Encounter in the Times made the same false claim.** Our letters to the Times that were submitted to its editor to correct these errors were never printed, where we clearly stated that taxpayers “will not see their money used to build or operate the Ark Encounter. No money will be taken out of the state’s budget to fund the Ark.”***

The two largest papers in our state—the Louisville Courier-Journal and the Lexington Herald-Leader—have also made this false claim about the Ark receiving tax monies for its construction.

Upcoming Reviews on the AiG Website

Over the next couple of days, you can read reviews on the AiG website of the new Hollywood film The Son of God, which is now in movie theaters (it covers the life of Christ), and also the TV program Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey. Cosmos is an update of the famous TV series (which was full of evolution content) in the 1980s hosted by the late Carl Sagan. The new series will be shown over many weeks on the Fox Channel and the National Geographic Channel (and on other networks). We expect that the series will promote cosmological and biological evolution much more than the original.

Thank for stopping by and thanks for praying,

Ken

*Charles Blow, “Dinosaurs and Denial,” New York Times, December 8, 2012.

**May 31, 2011, New York Times, p. A22.

***Our letter to the Times clarified that “if the Ark meets attendance goals and sees tourism dollars flow into the state, it will receive rebates on sales taxes paid by its visitors. At the end of an operating year, the money going back to the attraction will be from those who chose to visit; no unwilling taxpayer will subsidize the Ark. Thus, there is no establishment of religion. Neither is anyone being forced to visit and hear about the history of the Earth according to the Bible, including its account of the Ark.”