Ken Ham his theme park and Donald Trump

Written and collected by Zia H Shah MD, Chief Editor of the Muslim Times

Donald Trump had a sweeping victory in Nevada, last night, despite his spat with the Pope, his condoning of torture and suggesting a total ban on the entry of all Muslims, which most constitutional scholars find not only unconstitutional but unpractical.

What is the lure of Trump?

Noah’s ark in artist’s imagination

For this we may need to visit Williamstown Kentucky, where Ken Ham is building a Noah’s ark theme park, which will open in July of this year.

Ken Ham, president and chief executive of Answers in Genesis, the Christian organization behind the project, announced the opening date at a press conference and said the park will be able to accommodate 16,000 guests per day.

“It’ll certainly be one of the biggest Christian attractions in the world,” he said from the site of the park.

In the summer of 2014, Kentucky officials awarded the park’s developers tax incentives, potentially worth more than $18 million over 10 years.

The opening date for the park was based on a verse from the book of Genesis – the seventh verse of the seventh chapter details when Noah and his family entered the ark, Ham said.

Because of the perceived high interest in the park, he said attendance will be limited for the first 40 days and nights, tying the opening again to the Noah story, Ham said. Those tickets will be available for purchase in January through an online reservation system.

Answers in Genesis also runs the Creation Museum, 40 miles north in Petersburg, just outside of Cincinnati. It is an organization that believes the world is about 6,000 years old and events in the Bible, such as the creation of the Earth in six days, happened as they were written.

Despite the fact that there is mounting evidence that our universe is billions of years old and that there is no evidence for a global flood put forth by Ken Ham, the theme park is expected to have more than a million visitors this year.

There is no evidence that torture works and it is against all international conventions; yet Trump has no reservations advancing it and his followers have no qualms in cheering him for his unethical ideas.

Grand canyon that has been carved by the Colorado river over the millennia

Sir Charles Lyell, 1st Baronet, FRS (14 November 1797 – 22 February 1875) was a British lawyer and the foremost geologist of his day. He is best known as the author of Principles of Geology, which popularized James Hutton‘s concepts of uniformitarianism—the idea that the Earth was shaped by the same processes still in operation today.

Niagara falls has been moving upstream as more and more soil is eroded over the decades and centuries a proof for the concepts of uniformitarianism

Grand Canyon and Niagara Falls are among the countless exhibits to scientifically prove the concepts of uniformitarianism put forth by Charles Lyell.

Principles of Geology by Sir Charles Lyell also challenged theories popularized by Georges Cuvier, which were the most accepted and circulated ideas about geology in England at the time.

Noah’s global flood was totally dismissed by the academic circles, yet Ken Ham is able to reenact it two centuries later.

Explanation lies in blind faith of the Evangelical Christians. Donald Trump has led all his life away from the Christian principles that his Evangelical base espouses, yet they have no hesitation in anointing him as their candidate, blindly shall we say.

Ken Ham lost in a well covered debate against a scientist Bill Nye, but that only helped him to collect the money needed to build his theme park. Thanks to his Evangelical supporters, who fail to see the reality.

No matter how much Trump’s competitors expose him in the well televised presidential debates, his followers only seem to grow in their commitment to him and so far he has won three of the four primaries, to be the Republican party nominee for the President of USA.

Is it their blind faith in exceptionalism of USA that they are unable to see through the rhetoric of Trump, who claims that he will make America great again by torturing, discriminating, bullying and slandering each and every minority and reenact the glory days of white America, possibly the one before the civil right movement of 1960’s?

Literal reading of the Bible  has created young earth scientists and undue emphasis on exceptionalism of USA has created the myopic base of the Republican party, which has made its tent small enough to accomodate only the white Christians.

No less of an authority than President Jimmy Carter, a Nobel Peace Prize recipient has described this phenomenon for us: Jimmy Carter: Southern White Men Turn To The GOP Because Of ‘Race.’