During the grand opening in July, visitors marveled at these technological novelties. But many I spoke with also confessed that they had never really worried about these details before; instead, they had just ascribed it to God’s power. Tim Lovett, the ship’s engineer, has heard this too often during his decades researching the ark’s design—and he has no patience for it. When we sat in Ezmara’s Kitchen, the park’s cafeteria named in honor of Noah’s wife, he dismissed those who attribute the ark solely to miracles. “It’s a bit of a disease,” he told me. “I’m only going to assume miracles if it’s there, and if it’s not there, it’s unhealthy for me to assume it’s a miracle… [God] doesn’t do miracles willy-nilly.”

Lovett’s fastidious focus on the ark’s “plausibility” is as much about politics as it is intellectual rigor. “The Israelites in the desert were not of particularly good character,” he explained. They simply “waited for miracles” and “sat in a tent complaining”; they were, in other words, “a bit like people sitting on welfare.” While certainly not universal, this sentiment has deep roots in conservative evangelicalism. As historian Timothy Gloege has argued, Christian fundamentalism has been intertwined with consumer culture and a faith in modern capitalism from its beginnings in the 19th century. This connection continues to flourish at Ark Encounter, where the text is interpreted, and then reconstructed, as a celebration of radical self-sufficiency.

During its first decades, Gloege explains, fundamentalism borrowed from the popular media of its day: converts were taught to read the Bible as if it were a realist novel or newspaper. A century later, the literalist style of reading has changed along with popular entertainment. At Ark Encounter, visitors learn to read the Bible as a producer would read a screenplay—the location, characters, and dialogue may be given, but the reader must fill it out with a set, lighting, sounds, and actors. It becomes fully realized only through performance.

While touring the ark, visitors are invited to consume fictional reenactments of Noah and his family as if it were a popular summer movie. When first entering the ship, visitors confront an overwhelming cacophony of life as imagined during the deluge: there’s the deep, bassy pound of waves, the hiss of wind, and the chatter of rodents hidden in the wooden cages that surround the path. The ceiling is lowest here; the lights are dimmest. The corridor winds around animal crates until visitors turn a corner and see the family huddled together; at the center is an animatronic Noah, who bends up and down in prayer like a bobblehead.

It’s a visceral experience, but more than that—it’s a lesson on how to read and visualize the Bible. This is no cartoon ark, no hermetically sealed miracle. If this isn’t immediately obvious to visitors, it will be when they stroll through the “Fairy Tale Ark” exhibit, which inveighs against light-hearted illustrations of the ship. Jonathan Crawford, an organic farmer from Pennsylvania and donor to Ark Encounter, complained to me about picture books that depict “a little bathtub with animals sticking out. The pictures are showing a falsehood.”