At the sight of the wooden vessel, tourists – decidedly more than two-by-two, a caravan of buses surrounding the site – gasp in wonder. Christian school students storm the ramps, many completing science quizzes based on anti-evolutionary teachings.

The founder of Answers in Genesis, an online and publishing ministry with a strict creationist interpretation of the Bible, employed 700 workers to erect the $120 million Ark Encounter, which is five stories high and a football field and a half in length, and packs a powerful “whoa” punch. He had the massive boat designed by a veteran of amusement park attractions, commissioned an original soundtrack to enhance the experience, and stocked the interior with an animatronic (and freakishly real) talking Noah, along with lifelike models of Earth’s manifold ...