212 – We Believe in Dinosaurs

🎙️ Blake Smith and Karen Stollznow step outside MonsterTalk’s usual cryptid-and-ghost beat to tackle something that hits closer to home for anyone who has ever watched a dinosaur documentary in the American South: Young Earth Creationism, the public funding fights it has spawned, and the feature documentary that put it all on screen. Their guests are Clayton Brown — co-director (with Monica Long Ross) and co-producer (with Amy Ellison) of 🎬 We Believe in Dinosaurs 💵 — and Dan Phelps, a geologist and paleontologist who spent years fighting the Ark Encounter‘s receipt of Kentucky state tax incentives.

A note up front: this episode deals directly with religion and politics — two topics MonsterTalk normally sidesteps. The connection to the show’s usual subject matter is, as Blake notes, hard to miss: the Ark Encounter puts dinosaurs in cages alongside Noah’s family and claims the animals weren’t extinct until the Middle Ages.

🦕 The Film and Its Subjects

We Believe in Dinosaurs is Clayton and Monica’s third documentary exploring the uneasy relationship between American culture and science. Their first followed the search for the Higgs boson at Fermilab‘s Tevatron; their second covered the 1989 cold fusion controversy. For this one, they trained their cameras on the construction and opening of the Ark Encounter in Williamstown, Kentucky, and on the people — believers, scientists, and former creationists — caught in its orbit. A key figure on screen is David McMillan, a former committed creationist who eventually left the movement and provides the film with some of its most psychologically revealing moments.

The filmmakers deliberately chose not to make a point-by-point scientific rebuttal of creationist claims. As Clayton explains, real science takes a semester to teach; the film’s strength is emotional and human, not forensic.

⚖️ Tax Dollars, Church, and State

Dan’s involvement with the Ark Encounter predates the film by years. When Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear announced the project in 2010, Answers in Genesis — the nonprofit ministry behind both the Ark Encounter and the Creation Museum — was in line for more than $60 million in state tourism tax incentives. The final arrangement settled at $1.825 million per year over ten years. On top of that:

– The local government sold the project 100 acres of land for $2.
– A city council leak that raised the land’s market price was compensated with nearly $200,000 in cash from local government.
– The state spent $11 million improving interstate access to the site — infrastructure that turned out to be largely unnecessary given actual visitor numbers.

The incentive package hit a snag when Dan exposed, via a newspaper op-ed, that Answers in Genesis had quietly added religious hiring requirements to Ark Encounter job listings — requiring applicants to attend a “Bible-believing church,” sign a statement of faith, and affirm positions on premarital sex and sexual orientation — without notifying the state. Americans United for Separation of Church and State intervened, the state withdrew the $18.25 million commitment, and Answers in Genesis sued. The case was decided in the organization’s favor at the trial court level; a subsequent change in governor — to conservative Christian Matt Bevin — meant the state declined to appeal, and the incentives were ultimately paid.

📚 Homeschool Pipeline and the Reach of Answers in Genesis

Beyond the legal and financial battles, the film surfaces a subtler influence: Answers in Genesis is one of the top search results when families look for homeschool science curriculum online. Their warehouse — shown in the documentary — ships DVDs, books, and study guides that don’t merely call evolution a theory, but affirmatively teach that the Earth is 6,000 years old and that this can be demonstrated scientifically. As Clayton notes, Answers in Genesis is remarkably good at presenting complex-sounding answers in simple, emotionally satisfying packages — filling the gaps that mainstream science education often leaves. David McMillan’s account of his own creationist years illustrates the point: he felt he knew more science than average people, not less.

Dan, who teaches geology at the community college level, points out that it takes a full semester just to cover the basics of how life has changed over time — a timeline that creationism collapses into a few confident sentences.

🧬 The Gish Gallop and the Debate Question

The episode revisits a recurring skeptical flashpoint: should scientists debate creationists at all? Dan is firmly opposed, citing the rhetorical tactic named after creationist debater Duane Gish — the Gish Gallop, a term coined by anthropologist Eugenie Scott — in which a creationist floods the zone with so many rapid-fire claims that a scientist cannot possibly rebut them all in the available time. Dan recounts a public radio appearance opposite an Answers in Genesis employee who compared scientific peer review to a racist traffic stop. The formal debate format, Dan argues, implicitly grants creationism the status of a legitimate scientific alternative — which it is not, having been effectively refuted by geologists (many of them Christian ministers) as far back as the 1830s.

Clayton offers a partial defense of Bill Nye‘s 2014 debate with Ken Ham: for many people in that audience, it was the first time they had ever heard their beliefs challenged, or even heard the suggestion that Genesis might be read as allegory rather than history.

Ken Ham’s own epistemological frame — drilling children to respond to any fossil age claim with the rhetorical question “Were you there?” — gets particular attention. As Dan observes, if that standard of evidence were applied to legal proceedings, forensic science would be impossible and no one could ever be convicted of a crime.

🏛️ Creation Museum vs. Ark Encounter

The two facilities operate under different corporate structures. The Creation Museum (Petersburg, Kentucky) is a nonprofit. The Ark Encounter (Williamstown, Kentucky) is a for-profit corporation, but the surrounding land is held by a nonprofit — one piece of a complex web of for-profit and nonprofit shells operating under the Answers in Genesis umbrella, including a little-known entity called Taken Back Enterprises (51% owned by Answers in Genesis). Dan describes one parcel of 45 acres near the Creation Museum purchased for nearly $1.75 million by this entity despite an appraised value of $230,000 — and currently taxed by the local government as if it were worth only $10,000, with corresponding losses to local school funding.

Content-wise, the Creation Museum features the famous triceratops with a saddle and displays claiming some dinosaurs breathed fire and were the origin of dragon legends. The Ark Encounter leans more heavily on text panels and invented biographical details for Noah’s family (including names for the wives, who go unnamed in Genesis). It also features a diorama depicting a Roman-style arena with giants, humans, and a Carnotaurus fighting together in an antediluvian spectacle.

🔗 Related Links

– Ark Encounter – Wikipedia
– Creation Museum – Wikipedia
– Answers in Genesis – Wikipedia
– Ken Ham – Wikipedia
– Duane Gish – Wikipedia
– Gish Gallop – Wikipedia
– Nye–Ham Debate (2014) – Wikipedia
– Eugenie Scott – Wikipedia
– National Center for Science Education (NCSE)
– Dan Phelps’s 2016 article introducing the Ark Encounter (see existing show notes for Dan’s full set of articles)
– Contact Dan Phelps — Dan is looking for volunteers to help research the property and corporate records of Answers in Genesis entities across Kentucky counties. If you have time and access to county clerk records, reach out.

📚 Further Reading

– 🎬 We Believe in Dinosaurs 💵 — available on Amazon, Apple TV, Google Play, Vudu, and Fandango
– 🎬 Alien Intrusion 💵 — the other Australian Young Earth Creationism-adjacent film discussed on MonsterTalk

Note: ads inserted into the distributed audio alter the timestamps in unpredictable ways, so timing references in these notes are approximate.

Download MP3 (Right-Click, Save As)

[Warning: This episode deals with politics and religion.]

Karen and Blake discuss the new film We Believe in Dinosaurs with filmmaker Clayton Brown (who co-directed with Monica Long Ross) and paleontologist Dan Phelps. 

Want to help Dan with his research into the financial entities behind these parks? Reach out to him and volunteer: [email protected]

We Believe in Dinosaurs is streaming on:
Amazon | Apple TV | Google Play | VUDU | X-Box 

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Discussed in the interview:

Alien Intrusion – the other Australian Young Earth Creationism we’ve covered.

NCSE – The national center for science education 

Related Articles by Dan Phelps:
2016 article introducing the new Ark Encounter 

The Ark Encounter as “Anti-Museum” 

Photos from the Ark Encounter and Creation Museum courtesy Dan Phelps: