Creators of the lost ark: replica of Noah’s vessel unveiled in Kentucky

God curbed his dramatic tendencies on Tuesday, neglecting to initiate a global flood during the figurative launching of a full-size Noah’s ark replica in Kentucky.

The Ark Encounter, based in the north of the Bluegrass state, is sculpted to proportions specified in the book of Genesis. It is 510ft long, seven storeys tall and, given its base is made of concrete, almost certain not to survive another of God’s watery caprices. (The vessel would displace – while sinking like a stone – 15,000 to 20,000 tons of water).

Answers in Genesis, a creationist religious organisation that believes God created the Earth in six days and that the world is 6,000 years old, is behind the modern-day ark, which will open to the public on 7 July. The group estimates that 1.4m people will visit the vessel in the first year and that the ark will bring $4bn to the Commonwealth of Kentucky. The ark is a non-floating exhibition offering both a glimpse into Noah’s life at sea and an opportunity to learn about Answers in Genesis’s theories on how our planet came to exist.

For those making the journey to Williamstown, 50 miles north of Lexington, a genuinely impressive structure awaits. In fact the ark’s scale is such that even Charles, the taxi driver who dropped me off there on Tuesday morning and had never heard of the Ark Encounter, despite living only twenty miles away, was impressed.

“Wow,” he said as we pulled up at the ark’s port side. “That’s neat as hell.”

Neat is quite a good adjective for the ark’s exterior. It looks brand new and pristine. The pale yellow wood on its long hull – Radiata pine imported from New Zealand – brings to mind Ikea’s ubiquitous birch veneer furniture collection. In fact, the whole ship looks like something one might find at Ikea: smooth lines, minimal design and a baffling assembly method.

Answers in Genesis got the details for the build from measurements written in Genesis 6, in which God tells Noah the ark should be “300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide, and 30 cubits high”. A cubit is roughly the distance from your fingers to your elbow – you can buy a “Noah’s cubit” in the gift shop.

Noah’s ark, according to Answers in Genesis, took between 55 to 75 years to build. Once it was constructed, Noah herded the world’s animals, two by two, into the bowels of his vessel, where he tended to them until the flood receded.

The Ark Encounter comfortably beat Noah’s construction time, having been assembled in less than two years. It holds no livestock, but has models of various creatures stored in wooden cages.

Creationists believe that rather than taking one of every modern species onboard the ark, Noah took ancestors of the animals we know today. According to this belief, the original ark would have held two early forms of canine, whose offspring developed into wolves, foxes, domestic dogs and other animals upon leaving the ark. As such, the model animals held on the Ark Encounter are approximations of what dogs’, cats’ and rhinos’ ancestors would have looked like.

There’s a cat-type mammal that has a head like a lion but is about the size of a big house cat. There’s something that looks like a rhino but without the horn.

And, given Answers in Genesis believes that dinosaurs walked the earth at the same time as man, there are also dinosaurs. Lots of them. There’s one which is akin to a brachiosaurus, with a long neck and tail. There’s one that looks like a stegosaurus, with spines on its back. There’s some sort of dwarf-T Rex, and a depressed-looking leathery-thing that might be related to a pterodactyl.

The animals are stored across three levels inside the ark. Huge wooden columns – tree trunks harvested in Washington and Montana – support each floor. The stern of the ship is free of animal storage, allowing visitors to see the curvature of the craft’s hull, with huge beams holding pine planks in place.

It succeeds in giving a sense of what it might have been like on the ark. Or on an old wooden ship.

That impression is slightly spoiled by the presence of two Pepsi-branded refrigerators stocking a range of soft beverages, but – just as in Noah’s day – people do get thirsty.

The ark, which cost around $100m to build, has been the subject of some controversy. Answers in Genesis was awarded a tax break, reportedly worth $18m, by the state of Kentucky, allowing it to recoup taxes on money made from visitors. The break was rescinded after it emerged Answers in Genesis would only hire Christian staff members, but the organisation sued and won.

This June it also emerged that those wanting to work at the ark have to sign an agreement disavowing same-sex marriage and pre-marital sex. Staff and volunteers at the ark confirmed to the Guardian they had committed to the pledge.

Ken Ham, president and co-founder of Answers in Genesis, defended the Christian-only policy at Tuesday’s media preview.

“If you’re a religious organisation, you can have a religious preference in hiring. It makes sense. I can’t think of Planned Parenthood employing someone like me,” Ham said.

“Besides which,” he said, “this is going to create jobs outside of the ark.”

Answers in Genesis executives conducted interviews with the media on the third level of the ark, which, according to some accounts, is where the unclean animals were stored on the original. Thankfully, the top level of the Ark Encounter is instead home to a re-creation of the Noah family living quarters.

In this modern-day interpretation, Noah and his sons live in surprising luxury. The imagined seafarers’ accommodations look like something Roger Moore’s James Bond might blunder into on a jaunt to Morocco, complete with wooden latticing, red curtains and soft lighting.

To the rear of this soothing scene, Andrew Snelling, the organisation’s research geologist, sat down to chat. Snelling disputed the science that suggested the Earth is 4.5bn years old, citing testing Answers in Genesis had conducted.

“I know I’m rowing against the tide,” he acknowledged. “And I’m regarded as not a real scientist because I believe in creation, I believe in the flood.”

In this area of Kentucky, there is a particularly large number of fossils, Snelling said.

“We’ve got limestone layers underneath the ark here and they’re full of marine fossils, clams, corals, those sort of shallow water marine invertebrates,” he said, which suggested that at some point there had been a global flood.

“So if you think about it, today we’re a thousand feet above sea level and we’re 500 miles from the ocean.

“Why aren’t the marine creatures buried in the oceans? That’s where they lived. But they’re actually buried up on the continents.”