WHY WE FIGHT

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What does it mean exactly to be a secular activist?

It simply means you are not going to sit by and let the Religious Right, namely the Christian Right, receive special treatment from the government. It means you're not just going to get mad that this is happening. It means you're not just going to sit and wait for someone else to act. It means you are going to do something about it — you are going to act.

Being an activist can mean many things to many people, and we will look at that subject more closely in chapter 5, but at its core, being an activist means that you give a damn and you are going to fight. In my case, my fight with Ham had started, yet I didn't even know it.

After the Nye vs. Ham debate was over, Ham wasted no time using the resulting publicity to raise money for his Ark Encounter project. Ham claimed victory, writing a long series of blog posts attacking the arguments Nye had made in the debate and even writing a book about the debate in which he further described his views. Further, Nye had agreed, as part of the debate, to allow Answers in Genesis to sell DVDs of the debate, thus adding to Ham's profit from the debate.

This was the first time Ham and AiG had some real notoriety and, as I had feared most, a taste of fame and sense of purpose. People wanted to know what Ham would do next. To be clear, I was not innocent in any of this, seeing as how I too had begun to write about his every move, but I made this decision knowing few other media outlets would actually question him or hold him accountable for the claims he made.

Through my posts on AlterNet and Salon, I covered Ham extensively during this postdebate period, focusing on his scientifically illiterate creationist beliefs. I also knew Ham had been trying to capitalize on a big block of funding, at the expense of Kentucky taxpayers. The Ark Encounter had applied for a tax incentive under the state's Tourism Development Act to the tune of $43 million dollars, a request based on the outlandish scale to which he thought he could build the attraction. His application was welcomed by the Commonwealth of Kentucky with open arms.

From the beginning, the state had expressed its excitement about the project, praising Ham in a 2010 press conference for deciding to keep the park in the state, as other states in the area had fought for the park, believing it would generate tourism dollars for them. In return, Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear promised a massive tax break to his group.

The very first real Ark Encounter piece I wrote was for a site called Atheist Republic, where I recapped Ham's attempts to get a tax rebate from the Commonwealth of Kentucky for his Ark project and the project's failed attempt to raise enough money to begin construction. Rachel Maddow's coverage of the Ark project on MSNBC had set Ham off on a bit of a rampage. He was furious the liberal media had "lied" about his planned park, claiming his group would not be receiving tax money but rather a rebate (from tax money).

I saw his anger as a natural extension of his frustration. At that point, the project seemed doomed. Ham couldn't even raise enough money to drive tractors to the field to break ground, and the $43 million incentive offered by the state was set to expire, so I went back to writing about Ham's weekly freak out over the then newly produced Cosmos series hosted by Neil deGrasse Tyson. All was right in the world as I started researching other issues that I thought were important for a safe and secular society, which led to articles against anti-vaccine lunatics like Jenny McCarthy. I had no idea the huge turn my life would soon take based on one tweet Ken Ham would send out announcing news I had not seen coming.

Ham and Answers in Genesis had scaled down the Ark Encounter project and reapplied for a tax credit for a smaller version of the park. To my shock, the promise of a tax incentive to Ham was not dead after all. The state had apparently approved an $18 million incentive for the project under the Tourism Development Act, which allows local businesses that bring in tax money to receive a sales tax rebate at the end of the year.

When I saw his announcement via Twitter, I thought immediately of Kentucky's educational system, which had just been in the news for the dire financial situation it was in. I thought about how much $18 million could do for the state's students and its classrooms. And then I thought how instead that money was going to a man who wanted to teach children that every animal alive today descends from animals that had been saved by a man who had built a large wooden boat just before a massive worldwide flood. This is a claim that most children intuitively know is nonsense, but still, if Ham could get to them early enough, I knew he could create more close-minded young-earth creationists.

So I tweeted to Ham that he was stealing tax dollars away from the state and it was costing Kentucky taxpayers $18 million dollars. He flat-out denied this claim and told me that "no government funds will be used to build the ark." I knew this to be a false statement; he had said many times that the millions of dollars the state would return to his group through the tax-rebate program would be used to complete phase two of the park's construction.

My tweet sent Ham on a bit of a tirade. He started writing blog posts about me, saying that secularists and atheists hate Christians and that we want to hurt Kentucky by stopping the Ark Encounter from bringing in millions of dollars to the state. Both charges are laughable and don't merit a response. But he raises an issue worth considering. All other issues aside, is there an economic case for the project? There's at least one comparable destination that might give us a sense of the Ark Encounter's possible benefit to the state — the Creationism Museum. How is it doing? Well, it has seen a drastic decline in attendance since it first opened, despite the addition of zip lines and other non-museum-related attractions intended to drum up business. As a 2012 City Beat article details:

On its 2011 federal income tax return, Answers in Genesis reported a 5 percent drop in museum revenue to $5.1 million. Worse, AIG slumped to its first-ever financial loss — $540,218. As of deadline for City Beat's print edition, AIG hadn't provided financial results for fiscal 2012, which ended June 30.

If his biggest attraction, the Creation Museum, could not generate a massive influx of money for the state, why would I think that the Ark Encounter would either? It doesn't seem like the kind of theme park people will travel to from around the world to see again and again like they do for, say, Disneyland. Come to middle-of-nowhere Kentucky to see a large landlocked boat full of fake animals and no roller coasters! Fun for the whole family? I think not.

Our back-and-forth tweets continued. In the meantime, I had also started my own blog called Danthropology on the Patheos network, where I spent a...